Debarbed

Also what else I find interesting, is that I have no National affiliation. Ok I was born in Jersey, to a Scottish mother and English father, history on both sides of the wall. Grew up in both countries. But that’s not my identity. So maybe that’s why I don’t support a National team. But it’s also very weird to do so.

I mean, let’s say you were born in Switzerland for example (or any of the other 200+/- countries). You don’t play sport yourself but you are watching a team or an athlete who comes from the same place as you happened to be born and they win. Somehow this reflects on you… how exactly? Djokovic is a Serbian tennis play and wins a match. I’m Serbian. Wow how good am I? Fat bastard who can’t run a mile. Brazil wins a football world cup. I was born in Brazil. I must be awesome. But I don’t understand the rules or play the stupid game. Bizarre.

This whole tribal urge that we evolved with is so strange and it’s moved to national identity with teams and imaginary land borders on maps (and look at how many problems that causes). It’s obviously very deep-seated but I don’t think it serves any good purpose. When we were living in small tribes it must have done so. Here in Malaysia people don’t even support their home teams but instead teams from the UK premiere league… Liverpool or Manchester United might be “their” team”??

Now that is even more bizarre. But one of my friends I used to fish with in my early years came from Clacton Pier. He didn’t support Clacton FC (because they were crap) but instead a team from the North somewhere. I think it was Man U. If he had actually visited they would have said “get out of here you plimsole wearing southern bastard!!”

I like people but I really don’t understand them.

Anyway for me, I loved watching the sheer skill of SA, NZ and France. And I’ve even evolved enough now to appreciate the lesser, but still fairly important, skills of the backs.

So this cleverly brings me around to this week’s exciting topic. Barbed or barbless hooks?

In the last 30 years I’ve fished a barbed hook twice. Once was while fishing with Tom White, primarily because he gave it to me, I was younger at the time, and fishing on his boat for Tarpon. This hook embedded itself deeply into the palm of my hand and it served me right.

The other time was trying to land a sailfish and I’m still not convinced it was necessary but I’ll find out in the future.

So that’s one fish and one palm out of tens of thousands of other fish landed, a few fingers and some other body parts too (I’ve never hooked my John Thomas). The palm wouldn’t have been such a fuck up had I crimped the barb, but being an ex-rugby player I removed it myself anyway. The sailfish is an unknown. But what I do know is that I only allow barbless hooks on my boats. If anyone wants to fish a barbed hook then they can fish another lake,  and I will not teach them to cast. It’s extremely difficult to remove barbless hooks from Snakehead as it is.

There is no logic in it.  You hook more fish with barbless anyway.  So if you are not crimping your barbs flat then please try. It’s so much easier to remove the hooks from you, the fish, your friends. You won’t lose more fish and you’ll never go back to barbed.

Have a great week.

Cheers, Paul

POD. My Green Curry skills have now transferred to Red Curry. Get very excited about your next trip here. More ways to cook beans and potatoes next week.