What the heck is chum? And whats a chumbucket?
A. Chum is fish bait, usually blood, fish guts and skin chopped up and poured on the water to draw bigger fish. In his book, “Shark Trouble,” Peter Benchley refers to an old salt from Australia who used quartered horse carcasses to attract Great Whites. A chumbucket is the bucket which would hold the chum. No, people do not usually, willingly, knowingly consume chum. Such references in his column are one of Cap’n Slappy’s little jokes.Why is Ol’ Chumbucket the nom de pirate of one of the Pirate Guys? John, who gave himself the nickname, likes to imagine his pirate alter ego as a failed ship’s cook who was given the sobriquet by a crew unhappy with the choice of entreés from the ship’s galley. Sometimes John wishes he’d given himself a more fierce pirate name, but most of the time he realizes this is about right.
