If you are desperate enough to visit this blog from time to time you will be familiar with the broad range of topics under discussion. Keith Baxter who recently joined Steven Lawler and me on a fishing trip to Jaen told me that he had enjoyed my book Dry River. He described it as “eclectic” which is fair enough and, I suppose, the same can be said about this blog.
So let´s get down to business and talk about mice.
You may recall that I have recently been trying to capture and remove a mouse from the house and that I went and bought a mouse trap which allowed me to trap the critter so that it could be released elsewhere. I did promise to report on my progress and, to spare you another sleepless night of anticipation, let me say that I did indeed catch and release a mouse.
As it happens I didn´t catch the thing in the humane trap at all. The little bugger actually walked into this thing and left a couple of little bits of poo inside it just to let me know what he had been up to. I don´t know whether he ate any of the cheese (the ants certainly did) but I imagine he had a nibble, the cheeky little bastard.
I caught him in the end after chasing him around the bathroom for about 20 minutes. He was too fat to fit under the door and so he couldn´t get out and, after outmanoeuvring me for an eternity he made the mistake of climbing into Pippa´s makeup bag which has a zip up lid. I sneaked up to it and zipped up the lid. Checkmate.
Out on the Embalse de Encinarejo reservoir recently, towards the end of a very fine day chasing black bass, Steve Lawler decided to tie on a mouse “fly” tied from spun deer hair and that was about the size of a cocker spaniel. It was the kind of fly that you might just buy for the hell of it just because it would be fun to use.
To be honest, Steve was intrigued by this crazy fly. When it hit the water it floated as proud as the Dover to Dunkirk ferry and had a really nice tail that seemed to have a life of its own. Even when the rest of the fly was just sitting there, that tail just seemed to twitch just like my feet tend to do when, as right now, I have Dire Straits playing in the background.
So Steve hurls out this ridiculous fly just as we were thinking of heading back to base and sure enough, he took a couple of fish on it in pretty short order. From where I was sitting the fish seemed to be about the same size as the fly.
He was over the moon.
Bass on the mouse fly, whatever next?
Here´s the first of a couple mouse munching bass.
Steve avec poisson
This is one of Antonio´s more conventional poppers. The white colour is unusual but he tells me it works just fine. To me this looks like the kind of thing you might expect to see walking down the aisle at a wedding.
Antonio suggested I replace my own popper with this one. He reckons big fish like big flies. I caught loads of bass on this popper – all of them pretty small!
fishydreams 