I was reading a lively piece by Rory Sutherland about how speed shouldn’t always be prioritized when I was stopped in my tracks by the parenthetical in the following passage:
Someone I know who is an expert at Transport for London found out that quite a lot of people, quite a lot of the time, actually enjoy commuting. They enjoy the commute home much more than the commute to work. Men enjoy it a bit more than women. (That’s because men are a bit like Sky Boxes—we’ve got a standby mode. We like a bit of staring. If you look at coarse fishing, 95% male. Why is that? Because coarse fishing is basically staring with equipment.)
I was so unfamiliar with the phrase “coarse fishing” that I thought maybe “coarse” was a typo for “course” (though I had no idea what “course fishing” might be either). But lo and behold: “Coarse fishing (Irish: garbhiascaireacht, Welsh: pysgota bras) is a phrase commonly used in Great Britain and Ireland. It refers to the angling for rough fish, which are fish species considered undesirable as food or game fish.” I presume my UK and Irish readers are familiar with the term; how about the rest of you? Is this one of those Gobsmacked! terms that’s started to percolate out into the wider world, or is it (like Marmite) largely confined to the home islands?
Yes, it’s very familiar here. (Though I’ve never felt any attraction to the actual practice.)
I’ve definitely heard the term, but I couldn’t have told you which fishing was coarse and which wasn’t – I think I vaguely thought it was salt- rather than freshwater.
Similar to Jen, but my ignorant guess would have been that it contrasted with fly fishing.
Is this one of those Gobsmacked! terms that’s started to percolate out into the wider world, or is it (like Marmite) largely confined to the home islands?
I live in a tiny hamlet that officially belongs to what styles itself as a “town” (pop. ~1750) in coastal Maine. Both local grocery stores stock Marmite. Masochism has spread beyond Blighty. They also carry HP Sauce, much to the delight of my East Midlands wife. And McVities, to assuage my craving for galletas María.
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Many consider that the plain flavour of Maries makes them, like rich tea biscuits, particularly suitable for dunking in tea. Other popular methods of consuming the biscuit include using two to make a sandwich with butter and Marmite or condensed milk spread in between; covering it with golden syrup; or crumbling it up in custard and jelly (gelatin dessert).
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“Spread” ? Even condensed milk is not sufficiently viscous for that. Is it stirred together with Marmite first ? Sounds pretty weird, all told.
Similar to Jen, but my ignorant guess would have been that it contrasted with fly fishing.
According to the Wikiparticle, it does, as flies are used for trout and salmon, and baits for “coarse fish”.
I knew the term only because I’d seen it, maybe in the NSOED (one of the most thoughtful gifts I’ve ever gotten), while looking up something else. I think that in North America, fly fishers can consider their kind of fishing superior, but seldom to the point of not calling pike, muskellunge, or bass “game fish”.
And I want to know whether “rough fishing” means fishing for coarse fish.
Whoever wrote that coarse fish – not trout or salmonids – are undesirable as food has never eaten perch, pike or zander. Or, by Polish or mediaeval monastic standards, carp.
Not to mention eel, stewed in red wine or smoked.
I gather that they’re “undesirable as food” according to the standards of the traditional English aristocracy, not the peoples of the world at large.
Re Stu’s confusion about spreadable milk, I refer him to the locus classicus from A.A. Milne: ‘“Honey or condensed milk with your bread?” [Pooh] was so excited that he said, “Both,” and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, “but don’t bother about the bread, please.”’
I have known this since childhood and never managed to reconcile it very well with the consistency of condensed milk with which I was personally familiar so have always assumed it was some mysterious British thing.
> I gather that they’re “undesirable as food” according to the standards of the traditional English aristocracy, not the peoples of the world at large.
Which may make “coarse” more transparent?
Much fishing in our pond* is catch and release, therefore not for food regardless of the fish. Would that qualify as coarse?
* The American one that Brits fish on the wrong side of.
@Stu / JWB: I guess what is meant is something like the treacly, sugared condensed milk the Russians call сгущёнка?