Warwickshire Avon - Doom Mongers and Dontopedalogy

What can be more satisfying or enjoyable than the rearing of maggots at home?

How about that for a bloody silly question? Having got rid of it, we can get down to the nitty gritty. Or, as we say in the trade, the squirmy wormy. Maggot breeding has a special appeal for anyone who has a yen for the solitary life. (After a little while the neighbours move away. Followed, shortly after, by the wife and kids.)

Materials are few and equipment is simple. First you need a corpse, preferably in an advanced state of decomposition, the choice of which can be determined by the number of maggots you intend to produce.

You could use, depending on quantity, taste and availability, a horse, a sheep, a cat, a politician or the mother-in-law. The choice of the last, apart from removing one of life's major drawbacks, has the added appeal of keeping the whole thing in the family.

All maggots are not equal. This is important to know from the start, if you are not going to breed an inferior product. There are four main kinds. The little squats are the offspring of the common housefly; specials come from a bigger kind of housefly; big liver maggots come from the bluebottle, and pinkies from the greenbottle.

Why a greenbottle should have pinkies is one of the more boring mysteries of modern science. To avoid having the breeding ground populated by squats to the disadvantage of the bigger maggots, some form of selective birth control has to be applied.

Simply standing there and saying, 'Shoo!' has little or no effect. Years of research has shown that simply standing (This has led many eminent scientists to conclude that houseflies are stone deaf.) Nor can the squirting with insecticide of houseflies in labour be recommended: the overkill is such that many breeding bottles cop for it as well.

The overkill disadvantage applies also to the spraying of flies on the wing with instant aerosol starch. Besides which, the noise of the stiff little bodies screaming down out of control and crashing on to the patio can be quite upsetting to anyone with a sensitive nature.

Now sex is another problem. For every female bluebottle, looking for somewhere to drop one of her 20 batches of 130 eggs, there is a male bottle whose only interest is in a free meal. As a corpse conservation measure, every male bottle should be dealt a swift clout before he can get his teeth into the meat.

Sexing bluebottles with any degree of accuracy, however, is very difficult. 

Their size makes a close examination absolutely essential and it is practically impossible to get them to stay still long enough for that. 

More than one breeder, unwise enough to attempt this selective culling, has been carried away suffering from severe eyestrain and the gibbering heebies.

Within two or three days the corpse should be pullulating with infant gentles, happily slurping their way through the golden, innocent days of childhood. 

By listening closely, having first taken your nose between forefinger and thumb, it is possible actually to hear the little chaps wriggling and chomping in an ecstasy of exploration and discovery.

After a week or ten days they are fully grown and ready to face the perils of the outside world. They drop off into the tub of bran, and from here they can be transferred into airholed cans for storage. Whilst in the can they will need further feeding. Otherwise they will eat each other and even in moments of  mental aberration, themselves.

Now talking of mental aberration I needed an escape from the climate countdown clock from hypocrites King Charles and the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and anyway, with the world beyond the tipping point in 6 years according to the doom mongers, better get as much fishing in as I can before the world implodes.  

Look on the bright side however, as at least those that will see >6 years time at least they will have plenty of corpses for their maggot breeding, there has to be some plus points in before the impending armageddon. Anyway to the fishing, for this session down at the syndicate stretch, it was a maggot approach initially and then an all out boilie and feeder rod out for something a little bigger in to dusk and beyond. 

I decided to fish a small feeder with groundbait on maggot on the hook to start with and that was a good choice because after some tiny plucks and pulls a proper bite when a fish hooked itself and a nice plump dace was on.

Many of these followed and there were plenty of fish around especially at dusk. A hard fighting chub as well come in to the mix and the size 16 hook perfectly in its top lip. A pike launched itself out of the water right by my feet but thankfully the dace got to see another day. The big rod went out half an hour before dusk because the maggots got wet from my landing net, and oddly that's where the action stopped. 

After one big pluck on the bait I fully expected to catch a fish but not, oddly it was very quiet indeed and by 11.00pm after being attacked by every insect under the sun I decided to make my way home and come back again. (Well I have to because I think I left my camera !!!)