Fluff chucker or maggot dangler?
I recently replied to a thread about an article in The Times about fly fishing (just been posted again) and perhaps unfairly commented that it was all a bit too twee and poetic for me. This story (I haven't printed it all) probably wouldn't get published in The Times but is written by a river keeper on the Test and in my eyes has a little more relevance to modern times.
Fluff chucker, or maggot dangler?
I always imagined that Fluff Chucker was the screen name of a particularly well-endowed small person who starred in the pornographic version of Snow White and the seven dwarfs and most probably a distant relative of that other legendary porno actress, Muff Diver. I have therefore always been a little confused as to why us fly fishermen are somewhat sarcastically referred to by our coarse fishing brothers as Fluff Chuckers. I stand nearly six foot tall, have never starred in a porn film and have sympathetically been told on numerous occasions that quality is much more important than quantity. It is of course because us fly fishermen do in principle, chuck fluff. We prefer to call what we chuck a fly or perhaps a nymph but there is no doubting a resemblance to fluff and to a coarse fisherman the term fluff chucker is derogatory enough whilst at the same time still recognising the fellow angler and affording a certain amount of respect if not necessarily an understanding. That feeling is of course, quite mutual.
Most fly fishermen would argue that not only is it not fluff on the end of their line, but also that they are not actually chucking it. Having been a keeper for many years and witnessing some alarming attempts at fly fishing and all degree of different techniques, I would need a more accurate meaning of the word or indeed the phrase, to chuck. Roll cast, snake cast and steeple cast are the terms professionally used to describe our form of fishing although I do tend to lean towards - to chuck, having watched a few practice the art at Nursling.
We do not always caress the line to the other side of the pool with an effortless flick of the wrist. (Flick off the wrist being of course something completely different.) We do not always engage that poetry in motion style of casting which becomes an art form to watch and a pleasure to perform. No, there is no doubting a chuck slips in now and again along with the obligatory throw, the occasional launch and the embarrassing hurl. Fly fishing is not always as graceful a pastime one would like to imagine and the effort that some require to get that stupid little ******* of a nymph, fly or whatever you like to call it to the other side of the bloody river, belies its gentle traditions. However, as you can no doubt already tell, being called a fluff chucker by our coarse fishing comrades quite obviously doesn’t bother me one little bit and is nothing more than a gentle tease by our brother anglers. Our maggot dangling, worm drowning, dog biscuit, cat food, luncheon meat, sardine-flavoured boilies, bread using, doze under a bloody bivvie all day, brother anglers that is.
Many fluff chuckers are accused of snobbery and people always ask me if fly fishermen are as stuck up as they sometimes appear and think of themselves as superior to maggot danglers. Absolutely, of course they are but it’s not only coarse fishermen that they look down on. Snobbery is rife amongst fly fishermen and depends on such utterly trivial things as price of rod or colour of waistcoat and on which direction you prefer to cast your fly. Many fly fishermen are without doubt well and truly up themselves and wouldn’t dream of using bread, unless of course it was wrapped around the correct, and the appropriate, up-winged olive.
Thankfully the days of the chalkstreams being the exclusive playthings of Lords and Ladies have ended and whilst it is still relatively expensive to fish for game fish and unfortunately out of reach for many younger people, the occasional passionate, working class angler slips through the net and quite often turn out to be the best rods having learnt their trade as coarse fishermen and are far more likely to catch both trout and salmon. To catch a certain species of fish you have to be able to think like that particular fish and a good coarse angler is much better equipped and prepared to do this. For example a coarse fisherman is far less likely to blindly fish through a pool hoping that something might just jump on the end without firstly giving thought to water conditions and where the fish are more likely to be. This might be water temperature or type of weather but coarse anglers are far more attuned to taking such things into consideration and therefore usually more successful. I hasten to add that some people are naturally good fly fishermen and some are born hopeless but on average a good game fisherman has served a tough apprenticeship sat around lakes and on canals learning about all species of fish and of their behavioural patterns. I also think that good coarse fishermen eventually succumb to the temptation of a new challenge and progress from lakes through to rivers and then on to game fish. They will quite possibly start their fly career on a hole in the ground filled with suicidal lumps of rainbow progressing onto a river filled with, in some cases, slightly smaller lumps of rainbow. They will eventually work out that fishing for stocked trout is not quite as difficult as they had first imagined, indeed, to catch a decent roach on a float takes a lot more skill but the more determined, and sadly the wealthier, will go in search of wild fish, maybe eight ounce trout or thirty pound salmon but by then they will have reached the pinnacle of game fishing. Some will return to the lakes, some will do both but the good ones feel obliged to master all forms of fishing whether using a fly rod or a twenty-metre pole. The important thing as far as I am concerned is that we are all brothers of the angle and must stick together and not create divisions between the various forms of fishing whatever our reservations about different methods or indeed different classes. That said there is nothing wrong with a little banter between codes and leg pulling when appropriate as is often the case on my beat at Nursling which happens to run alongside a big lake which is occupied at weekends and Wednesday evenings by great throngs of maggot danglers trying to win twenty five quid and in attempting to catch Queenie, the resident thirty five pound common, for the seventh time in a fortnight and to see if she has gained five ounces since her last surrender.........
Donny Donovan 2005
Reg Wyatt
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or do mean the bloke who was one of the best poachers around and why they gave him the gig to save the fishery
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