It´s a long time since I caught a carp on a dry fly but the chance presented itself a couple of weeks back on Concepción. The fishing for black bass seemed pretty dead and so I paddled my float tube over to the river mouth of the Río Verde. There are usually a few barbel and carp hanging around there and I thought I might be able to sneak up on one or two. Continue reading
Category: Fish and fishing
I guess there are a lot of reasons you might have for heading off to the river for a few hours. Maybe you want a bit of peace and quiet, maybe you need a blast of fresh air, or to stretch your legs and get some useful exercise without working up a sweat. Yesterday I went to the river to shake words out of my head.
The previous night I performed a couple of stints of standup at a school fund raising show, each of about 20 minutes duration and had managed to finally deliver scripts that had been floating around in my head for ages. Prior to this I had been performing these only to Brutus, our ancient dog, as we took our daily walk around the campo (the other three dogs tend to run around like crazy and don´t listen to anything). Continue reading
You can do worse than spend a day afloat with a few fellow fishing nuts. I have done this many times on the big limestone loughs in Ireland with my brother Sean and our friend Mark McCann. When the fishing has been slow, as it often is, we have enjoyed the kind of verbal exchanges that only a bunch of inveterate bullshitters can provide. Continue reading
Every now and then the fish on my local river are prepared to cut you some slack. Maybe they feel a little collective guilt for the times in the past when they have spurned all your offerings and sent you home scratching your head. Luckily for me yesterday was one of those days. Continue reading
On the first day of October I was fortunate enough to spend a few hours fishing the upper Guadalquivir with Steven Lawler and Keith Baxter under the expert tutelage of Antonio Lloreda. The fish here will rise to dries but the most consistent way to catch them, particularly in the earlier part of the day, is on little nymphs and it was a real eye opener to see how effective this approach can be. Continue reading
The other day an email arrived from my brother Sean. He was not full of news but a means of sharing with myself and our old fishing buddy Mark McCann, a photograph of a particularly beautiful trout caught on Lough Sheelin. Continue reading
I remember reading some time about scientific research had shown that an absolutely perfectly symmetrical face appears odd and unattractive and that punters shown “doctored” images producing this effect did not find them appealing. Continue reading
My son Leo has been at home for the summer but he is soon off to London for a work placement with PWC as part of his degree course at York. Despite having been here for several weeks we never managed to organize a fishing trip. This evening we put this right. Continue reading
