| KEVIN PERKINS | |
Never mind smelling the flowers, don’t forget to take time out to see the satirical side of fishing life and grab a laugh along the way as well. So here’s a regular column from Kevin Perkins to remind us that life is for laughing at, or taking the p*** out of, whenever we can. |
GENTLE REMINDER All this talk of tackle shops shutting due to competition from the internet and discount outlets leads me to wonder about the future for the humble maggot. How many times in the past have you gone into a tackle shop with a bait box in your hand with your opening line being “A pint of maggots and……”? If the number of outlets is dwindling, how long before it becomes uneconomical to produce maggots, because I can’t see any other High Street shops offering to stock this particular commodity, can you? We could always turn to mail order, I suppose, at £ 2.50 for a pint (sorry 575ml, best say that before the Weights and Measures police come round in the middle of the night and drag me off) and only around £ 7.50 for next day delivery. You wouldn’t want them hanging round much longer than that, unless it was casters you were after. And if your delivery is delayed for more than four or five days your package will probably be making the same gentle buzzing noise as that battery powered piece of medical equipment in your wife’s underwear drawer. There again, in my humble opinion, the days of the commercially bred maggot may well be numbered anyway. If the tree hugging, animal rights, politically correct lobby get their way, we will all be eating nothing more contentious than lentils in the not too distant future. Once we have all been forced into vegetarianism, there will be no meat by-products for the maggot farms to use, unless they can persuade the flies that a diet of broccoli and bean sprouts is a more healthy option. You could always breed your own maggots, of course. Pigeon breast being one of the favourite mediums, I understand, although as soon as the RSPB gets wind of that it will be knocked on the head. Cormorant, now there’s an idea…….. Hanging up a dead sheep works and should provide more than enough bait for a session, (although not if you live seventeen floors up in a flat) but the bunny huggers would outlaw that, unless you could prove it was road kill. Tyre tracks all round a field of gambolling baa lambs showing evidence of a chase, might not be treated too favourably. Perhaps the fox hunting fraternity might welcome a chance to offload their (now only despatched by legal means) quarry for the purposes of maggot breeding, Trouble is if they then go round telling everyone they are only chasing foxes because we anglers are making them do it…. well it won’t go down too well, will it? No, I feel the future is bleak for the humble maggot, and we will have to look to other baits in future. Using sharp pointy implements to gouge worms out of the ground will also be deemed to be an affront by WormRights campaigners, as will keeping them in compost, unless it is all composed entirely of organic and fully biodegradable waste material. In the same vein bloodworms will become a protected species and be transferred to chalk streams so the poor things don’t have to live in stagnant ponds and sewage outlets any more. Looks like we will be reduced to pellets and boilies then, so that’s not so bad. Except that the pellets will have to be entirely vegan in their make up. Offering the likes of halibut flavoured pellets to fish will be looked on as nothing short of cannibalism, so that won’t be allowed. Bread would seem to be fairly innocuous, but as most fish will probably have to be put on a low carb diet, can’t see that one getting past the fish welfare censors. So, we will be left with just boilies, and in certain circles there will be a huge sigh of relief, as nothing would appear to change. Except, of course, home made boilies will be banned, straight away, unless your kitchen has stainless steel surfaces throughout, you have a basic Food Hygiene Certificate, and you can somehow manage to label each individual bait with a list of its contents, fats and calorific value. Of course if you do manage to qualify to ‘roll your own’ you will have to pay particular attention to the approved ingredients list: No nut products, for fear of fish having allergic reactions So, Soya flour paste, or perhaps hair rigged steamed carrot cubes will be about the limit when it comes to baits in the future. However, fish will be leaner and fitter with this new diet, and their environment will be far better as all the lakes and ponds are to be drained and re-filled with Evian water. So much better all round without maggots, don’t you think? |
