fishydreams

Last weekend I drove up to Trujillo to spend some time fishing with Colin McLachlan. It was a hell of a drive and my wife thought I was crazy. The last time Colin and I crossed paths was also in Trujillo when Steven Lawler and I drove up in April 2016. On that occasion Colin was on a fishing trip with Dave Felce and Fred Carrie. This time round the other guys could not make it so it was just the two of us.

I have to say that Colin is excellent company. We sank a few pints each evening and spent  quite a few hours travelling around looking for promising water to fish. The fishing was a little patchy but we managed a few fish. Colin tells me that things really picked up as soon as I left and he had a great day the day after my departure catching seven barbel most of which were over 5 pounds.

Over a few beers at Hotel Peru Colin talked me through some of the fishing adventures he had enjoyed over the years and I must admit to feeling quite envious! He has travelled  widely and caught, amongst other things, arctic char and brown trout in Iceland, tarpon and permit in Florida, striped bass and bluefish off the Atlantic coast of North America, all but one species of Pacific salmon in Vancouver Island. He also caught the enormous sturgeon of the Fraser River which fatten themselves on the carcasses of spent salmon that die after spawning. But the adventure which I thought particularly interesting was fishing Lake Michigan for heavy common carp that move into the shallows in the early summer and can be tempted by crayfish imitations, or similar. He showed me a few photos of these carp. They were whoppers!

The last I saw of Colin was last Sunday as I was fooling around with a borrowed satnav and trying to persuade it to direct me home. Meanwhile Colin was heading away on foot to explore a fresh fishing spot. In the huge open spaces in Extremadura, under a cloudless sky, he walked alone. And even though he became an ever more diminishing figure as the landscape swallowed him, he really seemed as though he belonged there.

Colin has made a few trips to Spain now and I was delighted to be able to join him for a couple of days. I hope we can line up a few more adventures in the future.

Here´s Colin in his element – sight fishing for barbel in the margins.

Colin and I had an interesting encounter with a vulture which was described in a previous post.

Colin ties some lovely flies. He was very generous in allowing me to dip into his fly box. I hope to write a post about his flies soon.