Last night it rained heavily on the Guadalhorce river valley. This was the first rain in several months and marks the beginning of a seasonal change which will transform the river. Over the next few months its level will rise and it will sculpt new features into the landscape, as it does each year. I wanted to get out today to see how the fish would respond to the cooler, overcast conditions and spend a few hours at the river bank taking in the changes that were beginning to unfold.
There was little change in the river itself. This was not surprising. The campo is so parched now at the tail end of a dry summer that most of the water that fell as rain will be absorbed into the dry soil rather than run off into the river. It reminded me of one of my Uncles who drank each evening three pints of Guinness. The first, he said, was for his thirst and the others were for enjoyment. In the campo, last night´s rains were for thirst.
The rains will be of interest to the locals who grow crops of olives and harvest them in the autumn. I am told that the amount of rain falling in the autumn is critical to the success of the crop. If too little falls the olives will not swell adequately and if too much falls, or it falls at the wring time, the harvest can be compromised and the olives rot in the mud.
Signs of feeding fish -The backs of carp can be seen here breaking the surface of the shallows and clouds of disturbed sediment suggest others are busy too!
I explored a lovely stretch of the Guadalhorce river just upstream of my regular haunt and, as is often true, I had the river to myself. The fish were active and the carp broke the surface with their backs as they navigated the shallows and created drifting clouds of sediment as they fed.
The foreground will all be underwater when the rains return this winter.
A handsome carp about to go back
fishydreams 