Category: Fishing reports


It just so happens that my camera is waterproof and pretty much bombproof too. I bought this particular model knowing that any camera I owned was destined to suffer physics abuse of the kind which, doled out on another human being, could well result in a lengthy prison sentence. What´s more it was only a matter of time before I dropped the damn thing in the river. If you are interested in this kind of thing, the model I chose was a Fujifilm finepix XP55 and it has served me very well.

Unfortunately I am so thick that it took me more than at a year to figure that I could use this camera to take underwater pictures of fish. It was only yesterday morning that the penny finally dropped and yesterday afternoon I went to the river looking for subjects to photograph. 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

We all went out for a late lunch today and afterwards nobody was up to much. Grandad was soon crashed out on the sofa and Trinny and Pippa settled down to watch something on the telly while Leo was plugged into youtube. With everybody else happily occupied, or fast asleep, it struck me that this might be a good time to tie up a couple of flies and sneak out to the river to see what the fish were up to. Continue reading

Yesterday I went off to Concepción reservoir with my son Leo to see if we might catch a black bass or two. The prospects were looking good and the level of the reservoir is as highs as I have seen it. When we arrived we saw a guy out on a float tube. He was out after bass too but fishing more conventionally with lures. Leo and I, of course, are purists and target bass only with flies. We are also, as it turned out, pretty crap fishermen having taken only one fish between us! Continue reading

Selfies

Everybody knows that cool people take millions of “selfies” and send them out to their flocks of admirers. You just need to look at the Daily Mail to see that the beautiful people out there are busy taking photos of themselves and that the images they capture, which usually portray them wearing little or nothing, become instant “news.”

Inspired by the success of the celebrities in the media, I thought I might boost my own profile by posting some selfies of my own (I could become another Kardashian!)

You will be pleased and relieved to hear that I will refrain from parading in my underwear.

Check out my selfies below: Continue reading

The way things work around our way is that if you don´t have internet you can´t watch the telly, or at least you can´t watch British telly. Most of the time this is no great loss but things are different during the spring when the six nations is underway and the best rugby teams in the northern hemisphere are slugging it out.

On Sunday the internet signal was on the blink and I had no way of watching the Ireland England game at home. What was more, the few guys who had been talking of meeting up to watch it over a pint called it off for one reason or another. Continue reading

An odd thing

An odd thing happened this afternoon. I spent a couple of hours on the Río Grande seeing if I could catch a barbel and did catch one in the end in a rather unexpected way. Continue reading

I used to work with this guy a long time ago and he told me an interesting little story one time. He had left home when he was only sixteen and his old man had a word with him as he was setting forth into the big wide world. His Dad said “Son, you´re going to be on your own now and it will be up to you decide how you live your life. The only thing that I would ask of you is that you steer well clear of incest and morris dancing!”

Fair enough! I just remembered that story today as I was driving to the river and I regretted having had no similar words of guidance to offer Leo when he headed off to university in October. Mind you “steer clear of incest and morris dancing” – who could improve on that? Continue reading

A couple of good things happened yesterday. First, I had a chance to meet up with Steven Lawler, another fishing nut living not a million miles away and, second, I had a chance to take a look at a new reservoir in Cadiz province. The reservoir is Zahara, a fine piece of water and sitting in very pretty countryside. In fact both events were related. Steven is familiar with Zahara and has taken a lot of bass here and he was kind enough to meet up to show me around. Interestingly, there are smallmouth as well as largemouth bass in Zahara and, according to Steven, the smallmouth make up the majority of captures.

At this time of year the bass are unwilling to play ball and we figured that pike might turn out to be our best bet. Unfortunately nobody told the pike that they had been scripted into the little drama we were hoping would unfold. The pike, it turned out, had other plans and only the sunken trees showed any interest in swallowing the pike flies we threw around. Continue reading

The weather people said that on Sunday the rain would appear. That´s good news. The reservoirs are low for this time of the year and need some winter rain now to top them up before the long summer arrives. So Saturday seemed like a good time to take a look at the river before the change in weather shakes things up. If the rains are sustained and heavy it can knock the river out of kilter for a while.

There is a very nice stretch of water that my friend Norman Smith introduced me to and I thought it might be nice to take a look at it again. The last time I was there it seemed that it had been recently polluted and I was told a goat herder had seen a lot of dead fish during the week between my visits. I was curious to see if things had improved. Continue reading