Lee Swords Fishing

Well this is a sad February blog because as anyone that is anyone in specimen angling knows, Terry Lampard died last week, very sad indeed. I have been fortunate enough to have fished with some of the greats in modern angling and even more fortunate in that I can count a few of them as friends.

http://www.martinbowler.co.uk/terry-lampard-perch

What is a sickener for me is that I never got to meet Terry Lampard in the flesh, although I do have a letter from him and a signed copy of his book, that however doesn’t stop me feeling like I really missed out.

I will however raise a glass to him from my bottle of Glenfiddich Caoran and hope that he looks down on me kindly and guides that elusive 15lb barbel and Drennan Cup weekly award my way.

Terry you were the master. R.I.P.

Horse Meat !

It seems that the horse meat saga is going to roll and roll and roll…Therefore as a chef I have an intrinsic interest in the whole sorry saga!

What the hell do people expect? Seriously wake up and smell the bloody coffee! Supermarkets now have an almost unchallenged monopoly position on supplying the human food chain in this country and they command how much they will pay to the suppliers.

So when a supermarket demands that the food supplied to them actually costs less than the feed used to raise the animal in question, is it any surprise that our food chain becomes susceptible to being adulterated with ersatz beef!

Animals are traded across borders so that names and titles can be implied, titles such as British Beef, British Turkey and not only that animals are kept in highly engineered conditions so that they can be called “free range” or ” barn reared” …All of these names add prestige and increase profit…It is a joke!

People in Britain are spoiled, they are in a position whereby they can walk into any shop and pick-up whatever they like for dinner, they are NEVER hungry which is something that then allows them to anthropomorphise certain animals or give them an elevated status that they do not warrant.

( That is right, nobody in the UK is ever hungry unless they choose to be hungry, the welfare state gives ample money to allow a person to feed themselves, if that person chooses to smoke this money or piss it up a wall then that is by the by)

Other countries do not have such a high regard for animals as we do, this may have something to do with them being a little less well off than we are and maybe a little hungrier. So is it a good idea to trust them with the slaughter, butchery or supply of items into our food chain if we are going to be quite so particular?

They may see the possibility of making a bit of extra profit as too tempting an opportunity especially when the untrained eye would not be able to tell the difference. You think I am being disrespectful to our suppliers? Racist even? Not at all…I am a food professional and am simply making black and white observations.

You try giving a dressed rabbit to a person old enough to have been around during the rationing years, they WILL want to see the paws of the rabbit …but why?

Because without the paws a dressed rabbit and a skinned cat look the same…and taste very similar.

So I will say this, so what if  budget meals contain horse meat, just so long as the horse meat contains nothing that could cause injury to the consumer why not?

http://www.exoticmeats.co.uk/horse-meat.html

What is the “better” option? Render it down into animal feed or turn it into blood and bone meal so that we can all have nice green lawns? You don’t actually think that there is a gigantic horse cemetery somewhere nice with rows upon rows of little white crosses or little green crescents for the Arab thoroughbreds do you?

The most likely options for a dead horse are the maggot farm, the knackers yard glue factory, the continental meat market or a Findus ready made lasagna…I myself prefer the last two because that way nothing is going to waste.

I have eaten horse meat and can say hand on heart it was very nice indeed so what is the problem? seriously? What is the big deal, is it that a horse can compete in the Olympics? Does that mean if we were to bring “One man and is dog” into the Olympic fold we would have to stop eating lamb and mutton and the Taiwanese would have to stop eating dog?

Would it Hell as like…We should thank our lucky stars that we are never so hungry that we can afford ourselves the luxury of ordering the wanton destruction of ten million pounds of processed meat just because some of it contains a bit of Shetland Pony.

In fact while I am on it I will list the meats that I have eaten…Beef and veal, sheep in the form of both lamb and mutton, goat mutton and goat kid, crocodile, kudu, spring bok, unassigned antelope, chicken and poussin, quail, woodcock, snipe, mallard  as well as muscovy and barberry duck crosses as well as wild teal and wigeon,  pheasant, partridge ( red-legged and grey), grouse, whale (the blubber…vile…never again) numerous pork products and several suckling pigs the size of small dogs, kangaroo, emu, ostrich, wild boar, goose ( wild and domestic), squirrel, turkey…bloody hell…pretty much the only thing I haven’t eaten is human flesh although I do nibble on it from time to time but I am very gentle and no lasting damage is done other than maybe a bit of stubble rash if I haven’t shaved for a few days.

I think this is a wake up call to everyone, the world population is growing out of control and it needs to be fed…this time we can afford to dump ten million pounds of human grade meat into an anaerobic digestor so that we recovery just about enough power to sooth our consciences…try doing that in say fifty years when there are another couple of billion mouths to feed…That type of wasteful option will be a no-no!

After all we live in a world that places a lot of merit on fast food items that have far less nutritional merit to them than a decent plate of horse meat!

So, to all those that are tearful and upset that Black Beauty is now just black and crozzled and sitting on a bun by the side of the A1 go down to the butchers and buy yourselves a set of bollocks blanch them in hot water for a few minutes, peel away the tough sinewy membranes, slice them thinly and coat in egg and breadcrumbs before shallow frying in a little clarified butter and eating whilst piping hot!

DELICIOUS!!!…JUST LIKE BLOODY HORSE!!!!!

Blizzards and snow storms batter the US!! We will be next!!!!

Get used to it…It is called winter…We used to have one every year.

What is it with the doomsayers and scaremongers of this world? In Britain if a single  flake of snow falls lazily out of the sky it is Armageddon, time to get up to ASDA and Tesco and  stock up on bread, milk , sugar and shite flavoured processed cheese (but leave the economy lasagnas in the freezer just in case its not kosher)

Seriously, do you think that the population of Alaska go off like this when it snows and the roads are white over? Or that Sweden shuts down its school system because its minus 1 degree centigrade?

No way they just get on with it…And so should we!!

 

Fishingmagic.Com Ban Ron Clay!!

Oh my dear God, what is the world coming to when a harmless old geezer gets the chop from a website he has been frequenting from the day of its conception?

Is this what fishing has come to?

Look at this picture, this is what fishing is about…Fun!

Andy Renton in the middle is in a proper battle with leukemia, that is serious stuff to worry about, that is life and death shit… not crap like whether or not an old bloke has signed an agreement to adhere to a code of conduct, lighten up for Christs sake.

So Ron makes the occasional faux-pas on the PC front and sometimes he supports Australia or South Africa at cricket and Rugby..so what?

Does it really matter? Does it matter my arse!

What matters is that we enjoy our fishing, Andy Renton gets better soon and Ron continues for many years yet, without him the world of angling is a little bit less colourful and a slight more devoid of individuality.

Anyway I have a special track for the person that swung the “ban hammer”, listen to it…the words are for you…This song is about you.

 

And who is the loser here? I have two pieces by Ron Clay on this site and they have raised somewhere in the region of 2.75k page views between them in not much over a couple of weeks on a backwater fishing blog that is less than six months old, Ron is welcome to post what he likes on here because at the end of the day anything on the internet that is even remotely competitive is “stats driven” and Ron is driving my stats along quite nicely thank you very much indeed!!

Therefore, I think I am quite correct in stating the blatantly obvious…fishingmagic.com…you have dropped a proper bollock with that call. Proper.

Reyt, that is me about done with the weekly blog thing…I am looking at making one or two slight changes, the “Kingfisher” stuff will be getting its own little tab because it is nothing to do with fishing and everything to do with war-gaming but as it states on the opening page of my site this isn’t your average run of the mill site….it is part fishing blog…part something all together different :O)

I will also be hoping to post up a few YouTube clips very soon as DannyJ is getting good with the editing…i just have to get good at pressing the “record” button!

I also have a couple of bottles of whisky that have yet to be reviewed “old versus new Bells” and “Ledaig”