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
Category: Fishing reports
I guess I could go blaming the horses for my unsuccessful stint on the river yesterday afternoon. There were horses everywhere and often they were being ridden right down the middle of the river which does´t make life any easier for a fly fisherman trying to sneak up on a fish. There was at least one occasion when I got myself into a promising situation or began to work some nice looking water when, all of a sudden the four or more horsemen of the apocalypse would come galloping over and scare the síit out of everything in the river including me! 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
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
The fish had the last laugh on the river this afternoon. The only one I did manage to hook flew off as though he had been fired from a cannon and then buried himself in a pile of weeds. When I finally caught up with him and waded into the river to extract my leader from the weeds he got away. Good luck to him. You can´t beat a bit of initiative. Continue reading
An odd thing happened this afternoon as I was exploring a little section of the Río Grande. I looked down on the arm of my short-sleeve shirt and realised I had snagged a some little twigs, probably as I had been pushing through some brush, and it was only as I was set to brush them off that I realised it was a praying mantis. 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
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