fishydreams

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 →

I got in trouble with the law the other evening as I was about to launch my float tube in a reservoir close to one of Málaga´s satellite towns called Santa Rosalía. Just as I was about to slip my moorings some security guy comes up to me on his moped and asks if I am aware that I am breaking every law in the country. For one thing I am about to go afloat on the reservoir where being afloat is verboten, where swimming is verboten, and I was planning to fish within 50 metres of the dam wall which is also verboten. He was unclear about whether fishing beyond the 50 metre zone was okay but that was probably verboten too.

He was actually a nice guy and was being helpfully informative. The guardia civil would have fined me if they came across me showing such blatant contempt for the law or maybe thrown me in a dark cell never to be seen again. Continue reading →

There are a few places, Florida among them, where fly fishermen may, on rare occasions succeed in catching, on the same day, at least one specimen of three different species; bonefish, tarpon and permit. This is a feat for celebration and entitles the successful angler to wear a smug grin that seems almost painted on his face. His mates slap him on the back. People buy him drinks. For a while he considers himself an equal among the supernatural forces of the universe. And he pulls up a stool next to a bowl of peanuts at the pantheon of the gods. Continue reading →