Category: Fish and fishing


I don´t know about how high the cotton is but fish are certainly jumping, or at least they were last Saturday. The Guadalhorce was looking good after having been shaken up a little by recent rains. The fish were in the fast water and I managed to catch some barbel, 10 I think, in the faster stretches.

Heading back home I stopped to take in the view of the fish milling around in the water at the foot of a weir. There were mullet, gypsy barbel and carp all packed together just behind the white water. Continue reading →

Up in the Ebro you can catch catfish that weigh a couple of hundred pounds and must be the best part of 10 feet long. They have mouths that could swallow a football.

The prospect of catching these great lumps draws people from all over Europe and, for many freshwater fisherman, they represent the ultimate catch – the ultimate catch, that is, if you want to catch something bigger than you are, or if you want to brag to your mates. Continue reading →

Good question. Like many good questions the answer is not straightforward. In fact it doesn´t have an answer at all. The truth is carp are very adaptable and they do what fish do best, which is to feed on whatever is available and, given the choice, the source of food that provides the most nutrition for the effort required to obtain it. Carp, just like the rest of us, want the most bang for their buck.

If you asked a seasoned trout fisherman what the best fly for trout is you will get a deluge of answers. You will get suggested patterns ranging from diminutive midges through to large streamers and Chernobyl Ants that look like the Titanic but have greater inherent buoyancy. The real answer to the question, unsatisfactory as it may be, is “it depends.” And it is the things that it depends on that make fly fishing so absorbing. Continue reading →

A couple of weeks back Steve Lawler and I headed off to Extremadura to see if there were any fish swimming around up there and to meet up with some fly fishermen who had been up there for a few days. These guys had abandoned the grim weather in Scotland to find equally grim weather in Extremadura. But these were hardy types and not given to complaining. Fishing, if it teaches you nothing else, will help you to be philosophical and reminds us to keep our expectations in check. Continue reading →

Perhaps it never occurred to you to ask this question but the answer, to the best of my knowledge, is no. Fish do not play golf. The question arose yesterday in my Science lesson with Year 7 and was in response to some interesting commotion taking place in the fish tank at the back of the lab.

First, let me tell you a little about the fish tank. It is about four feet long and has one pretty sizeable fish in there, a species of pleco. The pleco is one of a small number of common aquarium fish and I understand that our one is Hypostomus plecostomus, a nocturnal catfish which is native to South America but has been widely introduced elsewhere.There is also a bunch of goldfish which found a refuge in my tank when the school pond was drained for refurbishment. The pleco must be about a foot long and a lot of people have questioned whether it is a good idea to have such a big fish in a relatively small tank.  Continue reading →

If the world were a simple place you would get a fishing license by going somewhere where these things are sold and saying “can I have a fishing license please?” And then having handed over the necessary fees you might expect to be able to walk out with the thing in your hand.

But things are not so simple here. This is Spain and, of course, Spain has elevated bureaucracy into an art form. Continue reading →

I spent the morning digging out a septic tank and the early afternoon in a tussle with Spanish bureaucracy and so the few hours on the river were appreciated more and usual. There were a few barbel around but they they can sometimes be pretty jittery and today they were easily spooked. In the end I had to work quite hard for the three I eventually managed to bank. Continue reading →

There is a lot to be said for goats. They wander round in flocks ringing their little bells. I bump into them on the river all the time and yesterday after I was done fishing I followed a herd back to the car where we parted company. I don´t know how many there were and, frankly, I had better things to do than count the damn things. This is not an easy job anyway. They move around a lot and so you could end up counting the same goat twice or maybe miss one completely. This is a job best left to specialists, in my opinion, or to insomniacs who find the counting of ruminants helpful in ameliorating the stresses caused by sleeplessness. Continue reading →

I heard from Dave Felce a little earlier today and he told me about a fine pike he caught. His words describe the circumstances better than mine and he was kind enough to allow me to reproduce his account below, together with a photo of the fish and its captor…… Continue reading →

I had no time to go fishing yesterday but went anyway. I figured I needed to be home within an hour and that the journey to the river would take 10 minutes, then another 5 minutes to tackle up, and then another 5 to reach a broad shallow where you can find the odd carp. And of course the return leg would take just as long. All of this mental arithmetic was carried out on my way to the river and the upshot of it all was that I would have only a few minutes to try to catch anything. It didn´t matter a jot though. I was going fishing anyway. Continue reading →