It's A Love/Hate Thing

In fishing, there’s no accounting for people’s tastes and whether or not you like Marmite

- David Profumo

ONE of angling’s enduring strengths is that it’s a broad church—everyone goes fishing in his (or her) own different way and with individual expectations. The spectrum of delights ranges from billfish on a 16-weight rod down to microfishing for miniature species with microscopically sharpened hooks and even a single human hair as a line.

In life, there is sometimes no accounting for peoples’ tastes— Jane Austen, Jeff Koons, spinach, Abba—and fishing is no different. You could compare it to a box of assorted chocolates, but I prefer the analogy of Marmite, that great divider of folk.

‘Love it or hate it’ was famously one of its slogans (as it happens, together with my hoards of tackle and piscatoriana, I’ve accumulated a collection of Marmite jars, including limited-edition examples such as the handsome Guinness and Diamond Jubilee models).

Until the high-Victorian era, with its passion for classifying and sub-dividing everything, most anglers were all-rounders,happy to fish for pretty much anything, chiefly for the pot. Then came the notion of ‘coarse’ and ‘game’ species, notionally based on table qualities, but, in truth, rooted in snobbery.