fishydreams

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 →

Fishing is an odd business. Nearly every time I head out to the river I witness something curious and yesterday was no exception. As I was making my way downstream to ford the river I came across a suitcase and a couple of bags on the side of the river on the edge of a dirt track. And then I looked across to the other side where a man was walking across the shallows carrying a woman. Seeing no good reason not to wade across myself we met in mid river in water shin-deep and greeted one another before I went my way and they went theirs. Continue reading →

I suppose there is a good number of reasons to go fishing but one, which comes close to the top of many of our lists, is that fishing allows you to get away from other people for a little while and this is probably something we all need to do from time to time.

So few people fish my local river that seeing another fisherman, let alone another fly fisherman, is pretty unusual. So yesterday I was rather surprised to see someone fly fishing the river at the point I first join it after a little trek through the citrus groves of the Guadalhorce Valley. This fella was accompanied by a young lady and seemed pretty focused on what he was doing and so I did not draw attention to myself and wandered off downstream. Continue reading →

Every now and then you catch a fish that you know will lodge in the memory. It may not necessarily be a monster, but something in the circumstances of its capture will make it stand out. I had one of those fish yesterday evening just as the light was going and I thought all chances of a fish had passed me by.

I have often failed to catch anything and sometimes you get that feeling that this is just not going to be your day. That was certainly the way things felt yesterday. The fish were few and far between, and when I did finally manage to locate a few, they showed no interest in my nymph. Continue reading →