Category: Fish and fishing


A couple of weeks ago I had a day off and my wife Catriona was away for her work. So it occurred to me that I could do a lot worse than head off fishing in the Conde del Guadalhorce reservoir at El Chorro and have a crack at the carp that occasionally venture into the shallow margins.

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Yesterday morning I took my little trio of newly-tied carp flies to the reservoir at El Chorro to see whether I might come across a carp to tell me whether or not they were up to scratch. As mentioned previously, the carp here may or may not put in an appearance. They´re kind of moody.

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I just went and tied up three ridiculous flies and have hatched a plan to catch a carp on one tomorrow morning before the rest of the household have stirred from their slumbers. I have a poor record in the reservoir I will visit which is only partly down to my own ineptitude. The carp themselves are not blameless in this unfortunate state of affairs since they truth is that they cannot be relied on to show up and, without them putting in an appearance, all will come to nothing.

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I caught a turtle on the fly yesterday which probably allows me to be considered among the world´s foremost authorities on fly fishing for reptiles. It has to be said that I had no intention of catching the thing and so I cannot pretend that this outcome was the result of focused effort or cunning strategy. What happened, as you can probably figure, is that I cast a fly out in the hope of catching a black bass when this dumb turtle showed up and decided it wanted to get in on the action.

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Sean and I spent a few hours fishing Lough Guitane in County Kerry on our last fishing day together last week. Guitane is about 10 km from Killarney and, at over a mile in length, it is a reasonably big lough, though it will raise few eyebrows in the west of Ireland. 

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I had a chance to meet up last week in Ireland with my brother Sean and our old fishing buddy Mark for a long anticipated fishing trip. This was to have been a multi-day adventure but Mark announced that he would have to cut things short due to work commitments and, naturally, he was berated by Sean and me for getting his life priorities arseways. 

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My brother Sean informed me about a fish farm proposal on the south west coast of Ireland which is going to have horrible effects locally if it is allowed to go ahead. He asked that I, and any others who might have similar views, send a message of objection before a deadline for such public consultation expires on Feb 12.

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My local stretch of the Guadalhorce river is now reduced to a thread and you can step right across it in places. Even where it is too wide to do this, you may be able to walk across the tops of medium size stones and get from side to side without even getting your feet wet. It is difficult to imagine, during the heat of summer, that the lower branches of bank side trees capture the debris flushed down when the river is in flood. It is now as low as I have seen it for many years.

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More often than not Sean and I will fish together but on a couple of evenings we were joined by Sean’s son, Dan, who is serving a kind of sporadic fly fishing apprenticeship. We began each session with what has become something of a tradition – the group photograph. We fished twice and so there are two of these. Sean is unable to have a serious face and so he is the one with the strange grin. I am the one holding the camera and am usually looking a bit perplexed. Dan, posing alongside his old man and his uncle, is the only one who looks even remotely normal.

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My brother Sean lives in Ireland just a short hop form Cork City. The city centre is situated on an Island between two channels of the River Lee and is on the doorstep of one of the largest natural harbours in the world. On an another island, this one in Cork City´s harbour, is the town of Cobh from which the ill-fated Titanic set sail in April 1912 as well as, in earlier times, many ships carrying emigrants. The locals dub the departure point for these journeys, evocatively, Heartbreak Pier.

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