I-Spy...........Smells

My father used to talk about Bloaters and, until now, I've never wondered what they were - and I've no idea whether he ever ate them! They sound disgusting  - and a pair of bloaters sound rather rude.
According to wikipedia :- Bloaters, bucklings, and kippers
All three are types of smoked herring. Bloaters are cold-smoked whole; bucklings are hot-smoked whole; kippers are split, gutted and then cold-smoked.

So kippers are the only ones that are gutted before smoking.
That's another thing I've learnt .

I learnt something too.   The insult of being called a bloater was implying you were 'two-faced with no guts' but it's obvious from your research that bloaters do have guts. Either way I never liked the look of bloaters, they have eyes.  It took me until adulthood to eat whitebait fritters because the eyes would peep out at me. Nowadays you don't see them very often in restaurants and I'm not about to stink the house out frying fishy stuff at home.