fishydreams

Last night it rained heavily on the Guadalhorce river valley. This was the first rain in several months and marks the beginning of a seasonal change which will transform the river. Over the next few months its level will rise and it will sculpt new features into the landscape, as it does each year. I wanted to get out today to see how the fish would respond to the cooler, overcast conditions and spend a few hours at the river bank taking in the changes that were beginning to unfold.

There was little change in the river itself. This was not surprising. The campo is so parched now at the tail end of a dry summer that most of the water that fell as rain will be  absorbed into the dry soil rather than run off into the river. It reminded me of one of my Uncles who drank each evening three pints of Guinness. The first, he said, was for his thirst and the others were for enjoyment. In the campo, last night´s rains were for thirst.

The rains will be of interest to the locals who grow crops of olives and harvest them in the autumn. I am told that the amount of rain falling in the autumn is critical to the success of the crop. If too little falls the olives will not swell adequately and if too much falls, or it falls at the wring time, the harvest can be compromised and the olives rot in the mud.

Signs of feeding fish -The backs of carp can be seen here breaking the surface of the shallows and clouds of disturbed sediment suggest others are busy too!

I explored a lovely stretch of the Guadalhorce river just upstream of my regular haunt and, as is often true, I had the river to myself. The fish were active  and the carp broke the surface with their backs as they navigated the shallows and created drifting clouds of sediment as they fed.

The foreground will all be underwater when the rains return this winter.

A handsome carp about to go back

A new mid section arrived on Thursday to replace a broken section on my 9 foot # 5/6 Spring Creek fly rod. This is a good little rod and the ebay people “tacklediscounts” have always treated me well. This is an inexpensive fishing rod but it casts well and certainly meets my needs quite adequately. I don´t have the casting skills to particularly benefit from a “decent” rod and nor do I have the budget. My wife tells me that putting food on the table and diesel in the car is a higher priority than spending dosh on expensive fishing tackle. If I had known at the time that she had such a warped sense of priority I would never have married her!

This rod puts me back in action again after losing a similar rod in an appalling maritime disaster a couple of weeks ago. This sad event was the subject of an earlier blog entry and I have no wish to revisit it now.

I took my new wand to the Guadalhorce yesterday evening to see if my new middle section was a fish catcher. Thankfully it lived up to its billing and put me in touch with three gipsy barbel, one of which I photographed. Each took a little pink nymph which is a pretty crude tying from the thin plastic of a plastic bag from the supermarket. This fly is pretty much all I use now. The carp and barbel have a soft spot for it and my failure to catch fish seems to be much likely to result from a clumsy cast or noisy approach than the chosen fly.

All was well on the river. It is thinning now, as expected at the tail end of a dry summer and while we wait for the autumn rains. The evening can be a tricky time to fish since the sunlight strikes the surface at a low angle and it is difficult to spot fish unless you are quite close to them. As the evening developed some carp were feeding in the shallow water of the river´s margin but they could not be seen without having to be approached very closely. And, of course, they would have none of it.

On the drive home I kept an eye out for the red necked nightjars which crouch over the gravel road. In the summer I would expect to see a few, even just on the few hundred metres travelled before joining the busy A357. A couple of promising forms were seen in the distance but, on closer inspection, they turned out to be horse shit!

Finally, when I had all but given up hope and was approaching the roundabout which links to the main road, a hawk-like bird took to the air and identified itself with the conspicuous white bars on its wings. It occurred to me, as it swept from the full beams of the approaching car, that this would likely be the last I would see this year and that this bird would soon leave Europe and make its way to overwinter in Africa.

Removing the nymph from the beached fish

About to go back

Jake has been chasing around after sea trout recently. I have added a few fishing reports he has sen over the last month or so.

3 September

Tried the Lee last night for an elusive white trout – yet to catch one there. Hooked one on my first cast – about 1.5lbs but he came off. And that was that apart from a half dozen brownies.

29 August

Had three sea trout last night £ 1 lb. All on a small shop bought Kingsmill on the dropper. They steadfastly ignored my new tyings. This proves that sea trout, like so many of their human counterparts, also succumb to the evils of commercialisation. My own flies were size 10 – maybe they wanted something small. Naturally I was too stubborn to put another smaller lad on the point.

The takes from sea trout are reassuringly violent. You can be fishing away, barely concentrating when you get hammered. After the take and the first few moments I thought the 1lb fish was between 2 and 3 lbs. It got smaller by the time I landed it. This proves that catching sea trout allows them to go back in time and become younger. The other two were about half a pound. Or juniors as us sea trout men call them.

This evening I will probably tie a few clouser type things in preparation for tomorrow evening.

21 August

Spent ten hours on a boat on Lough Currane yesterday in the hope of a decent sea trout or grilse. Didn’t touch dry land once and only managed a single brown trout of a pound. Enjoyable day none the less. Moody like most of the big loughs and in a sullen mood like most of the time I fish them. August isn’t the best month for Currane anyway and the boatman I hired the boat from said ’twas hard going so i figured i’b be lucky. I had quite a few half-arsed rises – fish that only showed once. Apparently the lough is a few degrees above normal so maybe that was it. Who knows?  I saw an article today about a competition there last week – the winner had two of the same flies on his cast as I used for a good chunk of the day – a red arsed peter (that most beloved fly) and a fiery brown, a wet I  hold in high regard. I’d like to get back when the lough is fishing well – one of those places where you could get the fish of a life time. at this rate though I’ll need a few lifetimes. 

Today is likely to be my last chance to visit the river before work resumes next week. The fishing continues to be good and there are plenty of fish around although getting them to take a fly can be tricky. They seemed to feed best in the late morning and in the early afternoon the carp decided to take it easy and bask in the sunshine. Who can blame them?

The carp here are really lovely fish with very distinct pattern to their scales. I was fortunate also to catch a couple of gipsy barbel which have beautiful yellow bellies.This is particularly noticeable in larger fish.

Just before arriving at the Guadlhorce river I passed alongside some citrus groves and had the good fortune to see a booted eagle circling low overhead. There is just so much wilderness within a stone´s throw of where we live. How lucky we are!

The first carp finally surrenders

I managed to sneak out to the river this morning and took a couple of carp on a little pink nymph. The fish were very pretty and I took a few photographs which, I hope, will help me to make some watercolour paintings. Both fish were taken around 10 in the morning. Once they had been recorded for posterity the fish were gently returned and swam off strongly.  The carp seem to be locally abundant and there were plenty of fish in this stretch but almost nothing in the long stretch of similar water upstream. It is well worth being prepared to walk!