My brother Sean and our old fishing buddy Mark McCann have just done a stint fishing the mayfly in Ireland. They fished Lough Arrow in County Sligo where Sean and I used to live many years ago in an building which had previously been a school house. I asked Sean to report back on his adventure and he sent me an email today. I will stick photos on some time if I can extract any out of Mark.
That´s enough of a preamble from me. Nobody writes a better fishing report than Sean so here we go…..
On Saturday I spent a day fishing with Steven Lawler on my local river. Steven is a very experienced and accomplished fisherman and has fished many exotic locations. He has also fished several of exulted chalk streams of England, the “Holy Grail” for lowly heathens like me. He has also enjoyed wonderful trout fishing in Eastern Europe. On the banks of the Guadalhorce he told me an intriguing story about a fishing adventure in Slovenia.
I don´t know a whole lot about Slovenia, to be truthful, but it turns out that it is very beautiful and has remarkable fishing; pristine rivers, free-rising trout. It also turns out, as it happens, that the natives of that country are pretty uninhibited sorts who think nothing stripping off of sun bathing along river banks in the nude. Continue reading
My friend Harry Abbott has this habit of wondering off to far away places and catching large fish. Then he goes and sends me photos with messages like “look at these lovely trout I have been catching!”
Well, he´s at it again. In the past I have had pictures of arapaima, blue and golden mahseer, and catfish from Thailand. Now he´s in the South Island of New Zealand helping himself to some fine brown trout. He took a few just recently from the Mataura, the river I used to fish in a former life, when we lived in New Zealand. 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
Yesterday was the last day of October, Halloween, and in the morning I found myself sitting on a hotel balcony in Marbella reading Fly Fishing and Fly Tying Monthly. And then the thought dawned on me that there were going to be a few hours before I was needed by anybody and if I had any brains I could get out to the river fool around fly fishing myself rather than just read about it.
I rang Mark McCann to see if he fancied a stint on the river but, in an appalling lapse of judgement, he said he would spend some quality time with his wife rather than take a spontaneous fishing trip. Of course the fishing gods were pretty pissed off with him and pulled a few strings to make sure he would regret his decision. Imagine wanting to spend time with your wife! Whatever was he thinking of? So the gods tinkered with the fundamental laws of nature, pulled a few strings here and there and, more or less, rigged things so that the river would fish exceptionally well. Continue reading
It is now a little year since Norman Smith showed me a nice stretch of the Guadalhorce. He asked me not to publicise it and, out of respect for his wishes, I will say little beyond the fact that it is a little way off the beaten track. It was November when we visited this particular stretch and there were fish in the margins. We saw a few carp, some nice ones too, and even managed to catch a couple.
I visited this part of the river again yesterday evening and it seemed well out of sorts. Some guy I met on here earlier in the summer told me that the river had been polluted some way upstream and a local goat herder had seen a lot of dead barbel and carp on the surface a few days previously. It certainly seemed yesterday as though many of the fish were gone. Continue reading
Yesterday evening my son Leo and I went off to the river to see if we might be able to catch a carp. Leo has accepted an offer to study Management at the University of York and will be off within a month. He may well join a fly fishing club if the university has one. If not there is always squash, the gym, or the swimming club (he is eyeing up the University´s 50m breast stroke record and is our school´s record holder for this distance.) Personally, I would advise him to sing in a band. He has a great voice. Girls always seem to have the hots for the lead singers of bands. If I were young and single and was not the owner of a voice box like that of a frog in a swamp I know what I would do!
Murray Thompson owns a fishing hut up in the high tussock country of central Otago in New Zealand. I have stayed there on a few occasions and, if I could afford either option, which I can not, I would sooner stay in Murray´s fishing hut than in the honeymoon suite at the Ritz. Continue reading
On Saturday morning I had a chance to spend some time on the river with Simon Thompson. Simon is a keen fly fisherman who normally fishes for sea trout and salmon and his home waters in the UK include the Eden, and the Ribble. He was staying in Fuengirola and keen to see a bit more of the Guadalhorce River.
The fishing was a little slow to be honest, and we caught only a few smallish fish before finally trying a new pool. Then our luck changed and Simon caught a lovely fish, the best of the day, just in the shallows where the current spilled into the pool. This was his biggest gipsy so far and I was delighted for him. I was lucky to get a decent fish myself shortly after. Both fish took smallish nymphs. Continue reading
This blog thing has become something of a diary for me. It records not only my successes and failures on the river bank which, frankly, matter little to anyone else, but it also records other, more significant events.
One such event is the graduation of our son Leo from the English International College, the only school he has ever attended. This event, which took place last Friday, was the fifteenth “Speech Day” I have attended as a teacher but, of course, it was particularly significant not just for me but for his long-suffering mum, Catriona and his sister, Pippa.
The highlight was when he was presented with a book, the complete works of Shakespeare, which was signed by his teachers. The presentation was made by Robin Cousins OBE, the Olympic gold medallist ice skater and Dancing on Ice TV judge. I had a pretty good chat with Robin before the ceremony. He is a very nice guy. He brought his Olympic medal with him and doesn´t mind other people wearing it although he said he would never himself do this because he wants to recall that particular sensation as a unique memory. Fair enough. When the Director got his hands on the medal and put it around his neck we all figured that Cousins would never get the thing back again! Continue reading
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