In my fanatical carp days when nothing else seemed to matter cooking was my pet hate. It wasn't so much the cooking but the blo*dy washing up afterwards.
Then I discovered boil in the bag kippers, oh joy, loaf of bread and kippers was all I existed on for years and importantly no more washing up.
Kippers for breakfast, lunch, tea (northern for dinner) and supper.
If I wanted a bit more variety then throw a couple a eggs in.
A three day session would require one or two trade packs of kippers and 2 or 3 loaves sliced of course and half a dozen eggs.
Looking back cooking was simply a distraction which took up valuable concentration of fishing time and the less it took to cook the better.
I recognise and applaud those who take the time and trouble to cook and some of the stuff I have seen cooked on the bankside would not be out of place on MasterChef.
Then I have seen the opposite end of the scale with Spiders attempts of what he loosley describes as food.
If you think my kipper diet was nutritionally poor then let me take you back 30 years ago when I and a few friends spent a week on the hampshire Avon. We were camping only yards away from the river just below Ringwood on the Severals stretch.
For the full seven days Spiders existed on nothing but tins of Heinz vegetable salad straight out of the tin. No washing up, no cooking just a fork.
I think that the effects of the endless tins of vegetable salad eventually started take its toll and effect him.
As I tucked into yet another pack of boil in the bag kippers and George was munching on his sausage butties Spiders developed a strange gleam in his eye.
It reminded me of the old Charlie Chaplin classic 'The Gold Rush' where two starving prospectors were snowbound in a log cabin with nothing to eat. Due to lack of food the big guy who was absolutey ravenous started to hallucinate and saw poor Charlie as a huge cooked turkey chasing him around with a huge meat cleaver in his hand.
Spiders culinary skills are legendary, if you do ever fish with him then I would advise you to ignore his offer of " Leave it to me I'll knock something up" or at least stash some stuff away..... I assure you, you won't be sorry.