fishydreams

It´s funny how, even if you catch several fish during the course of a day, the capture of one might stick in the mind far more than the others. On Saturday, when I was joined on the river by Steven Lawler, it was the first fish of the day.

This was the first fish I cast to and it was holding in the water which was just accelerating out of a broad pool and into a narrow stream. The fish was swimming strongly just to hold position and, every now and then, it would slice the surface with the tip of its tail. Continue reading →

Things have been pretty busy recently and it has proved difficult to squeeze in a little time on the river. But I did manage a trip last Saturday and again today and am very glad that I did.

We have had a sprinkling of rain recently and the river is just looking just lovely. I had the river to myself on both of my recent visits but for the black winged stilts and little egrets. I noticed I was walking on boar tracks today and can imagine these animals moving through the rushes at dusk and into the night. Continue reading →

On Friday after work I took a little trip to Concepción Reservoir to see if there were any black bass knocking around. It had been a busy week and it just seemed to me that a couple of hours floating around a reservoir might well be the perfect antidote for the accumulated stresses of the week. The reservoir sits in what was once the river valley of the Río Verde and the surrounding terrain is very steep-sided. It is a mountain goat country here and it is not unusual to see these animals working their way among the scrub high above. Continue reading →

One of the benefits of living so close to a decent fishing river is that you don´t need to plan a fishing trip long in advance. Sometimes, if you have a bit of time on your hands and nobody has any plans for you, it may be possible to leap in the car and just head out on spec. That´s pretty much the way things panned out yesterday. There was a break in the weather. The grey clouds parted a little and the sun started to break through. I took one look at the sky outside and said “Yeah! why the hell not!”

The river is just beautiful at the moment – cool and clear as a chalk stream. It is also brimming with life. Even so, large stretches of “pristine” water have been vacated by the fish and you may have to do quite a bit of foot work to come across them. I “surveyed” about a kilometre of lovely-looking water in a rather crude way by simply wading upstream pretty noisily watching for the fish that I would spook in the process. In shallow stretches an unseen fish will often give its location away when it bolts. I saw three fish in that section, all in weed cover, and there were some lovely runs which were unoccupied. Continue reading →

Yesterday was the first day of my Easter break and the weather was beautiful. As usual there were quite a few chores to attend to. The outside metal stairs needed painting and the wooden structure which provided shade on the terrace had to be treated against the sun and the fence needs fixing in the places where the dogs get out and make a nuisance of themselves. Continue reading →