A little over a week ago I began three days of filming on the Río Grande and Río Guadalhorce for Spanish national television. I was joined on the rivers by my friend John Langridge who is a great character and a hugely experienced fisherman. He is also a veteran of several films on fishing and an author of a dozen or so books on fishing. The TV people got in touch with John and he in turn asked me if I wanted to be involved. As if he needed to ask! Fishing is always fun on these rivers but in the company of a fisherman like John I knew I was going to be in for a real blast.

The plan was to fly fish for gipsy barbel and the producers aimed to stitch the footage together into a kind of narrative. The program itself will be part of a series called Jara y Sedal. The story is simply the adventures of a couple of “Englishmen” wetting their lines out on the river. It starts with me, the local boy, greeting John at the airport. The sudden appearance of TV cameras in the arrivals hall at Málaga airport convinced many onlookers that the arrival of a major celebrity was imminent. We were both fitted up with microphones and instructed to talk to one another in Spanish so that no annoying dubbing or subtitles would be needed. We travelled down an escalator together several times before the producer reckoned we had done it properly! And then, as soon as we had both been filmed leaving the airport, I was filmed walking in alone to collect John. A bit of clever editing and nobody will be any the wiser!

When we got to the river in the late morning we found that the Guadalhorce was running dirty and, though we both took a few smallish fish almost straight away, we could not sight fish. So we quickly abandoned the Guadalhorce and switched our attention to her major tributary, the Río Grande, which was gin clear. This river was particularly lovely and had flows bolstered by the rains that fell the previous Sunday and Monday. Thankfully a couple of decent fish came our way and a little footage of these fighting in the clear river helped to settle our nerves a little.

 

Here is John getting ready to head out onto the river for our first bit of filming

Here is John getting ready to head out onto the river for our first bit of filming

This is the Río Grande which, thankfully wasrunning clear

This is the Río Grande which, thankfully was running clear

John Langridge with a lovely gipsy barbel

John with a lovely gipsy barbel