It´s that time of the year now when most of us abandon any thoughts of fishing. The rods are stowed away somewhere. Maybe there is a decent fishing book on the go, or a few flies to tie up, but otherwise things have gone quiet.
Personally, I have my feet up on the coffee table and am eyeing up a box of biscuits doing the rounds of the living room. After that I might send my son Leo into the kitchen to procure a beer for me. Continue reading
If you know the Río Grande at all you may well know about a stretch of water I call the “Goat” pool. It is a relatively deep pool and fish remain there throughout the year, even in high summer when much of the rest of the river pretty much dries out. If you are looking upstream the left bank gives easy access but if you go stomping up to the river you will put everything down. The opposite bank is quite elevated and leads up to a goat farm. You can sit on an enormous rock here and look down. The water is deep there and, chances are, there will be fish swimming around right below you. Continue reading
You can do worse than spend a day afloat with a few fellow fishing nuts. I have done this many times on the big limestone loughs in Ireland with my brother Sean and our friend Mark McCann. When the fishing has been slow, as it often is, we have enjoyed the kind of verbal exchanges that only a bunch of inveterate bullshitters can provide. Continue reading
On the first day of October I was fortunate enough to spend a few hours fishing the upper Guadalquivir with Steven Lawler and Keith Baxter under the expert tutelage of Antonio Lloreda. The fish here will rise to dries but the most consistent way to catch them, particularly in the earlier part of the day, is on little nymphs and it was a real eye opener to see how effective this approach can be. Continue reading
I came back from the river on Saturday night and realised nobody else was home. Faced with the prospect of an evening in my own company (believe me, there is nothing worse) I decided it would be a good move to get in touch with my neighbour Pete and see if I could tag along with him when he headed out, as he does most evenings, to have a couple of drinks at the local watering hole.
Pete is good company. He has good stories to tell and on Saturday he told me about a time he came face to face with a monkey in India.
It so happens that, back in the sixties Pete used to run overland trips from Liverpool to India. They loaded up a couple of Land Rovers and a camper van kind of thing with provisions and a dozen or so adventurous spirits hopped aboard. Their journey took them down through southern Europe, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, along the Khyber Pass into Pakistan and then into India.
It goes without saying that you would have no chance today of repeating this epic journey. For one thing it would be too dangerous but, back in the sixties when Pete was in his mid 20´s things were a little easier. It was still risky though and so, as a precaution, they brought along a pump action shot gun and a .38 pistol.
Anyway, back to the monkey. Their littles convoy arrived in the Taj Mahal which, in those days, was far more accessible and less of the tourist draw than it has since become. They drove right inside and made camp there, amazing as that may now seem. In the cool dawn, with everything shrouded by a heavy mist, Pete unzips his mosquito net and pops his head out of his tent only to discover, a big male monkey staring him right in the eye. It was about 15 feet away.
By the time I heard this part of the story I had downed a couple of pints and Pete, with a couple vino tintos inside him, had travelled through time and was right back inside the Taj Mahal during that brief moment when only two things existed; Pete and this monkey. Each was staring into the eyes of the other with unrelenting intensity and, while this was going on, time simply stopped.
The monkey was clearly top dog in those parts and showed the self-assurance of one who will simply not back away. Pete, for his part, remained unfazed. He had the confidence of a man who sleeps with a loaded shotgun in his tent and who had it close to hand.
For what may have seemed like an eternity but was probably only a short moment, the standoff between these two continued. And then, emerging from the mist, came a whole troop of monkeys. There were young and old, babies suspended beneath their mothers´ tummies, others bareback riding on their mothers´ backs. The adult male locked into a visual dual with Pete was simply the escort and protector of this group. It is probably fair to say that that he was overseeing their safe passage of his relatives in much the same way as Pete himself oversaw the safe overland passage of the band of adventurers he led from Liverpool.
In a matter of a few moments the troop was gone, then the dominant male withdrew without a sound and vanished also.
Pete spoke about this as if it had happened only yesterday.
In the original telling of this tale, Pete suggested he had come face to face with a baboon but baboons seem to be restricted in their distribution to Africa and Arabia. I would suggest that he might have instead come across a rhesus monkey which are commonly encountered in this region. This photograph was pinched from a story in the telegraph which is well worth reading. Here is the link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/11386681/Indian-brides-wanting-perfect-wedding-day-hiring-large-monkeys-to-scare-off-smaller-ones.html
My son Leo has been at home for the summer but he is soon off to London for a work placement with PWC as part of his degree course at York. Despite having been here for several weeks we never managed to organize a fishing trip. This evening we put this right. Continue reading
One time my friend Harry Abbott got himself badly stuck in mud in a tidal section of the Clutha River in New Zealand. He realized that the incoming tide would drown him if he couldn´t free himself. In desperation he hollered like hell and was eventually rescued by his fishing buddy, David Blair. This is a story he Harry has kept from his wife for fear of having further adventures curtailed although I did let the cat out of the bag in my book Dry River. Continue reading
An odd thing happened a couple of weeks ago. We put our names down for a friendly padel event at our local padel courts. This was a competition of sorts (winners were promoted, losers demoted and their was a lot of swapping around of players). The most interesting thing was not the tournament, though, or any of the players. It was the birds.
When we arrived at the courts there was a Harris hawk sitting on a post and a barn owl on the ground. Another hawk was also nearby. As it happens all three birds belonged to a local falconer who was competing in the padel tournament with us, and the three birds were tethered while their owner was out on court working up a sweat. Continue reading
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