fishydreams

There is a brown trout in Gore, on Southland´s famous Mataura river, that must be fifteen feet long at the very least. Maybe more. I have often stood in awe beside it. If you don´t believe me you just need to look at the photo Harry sent me. I´m hardly going to make up something like that! Continue reading →

Murray Thompson was kind enough to send me some pictures of Lake Onslow, and of his fishing hut where I had the pleasure of staying with friends on several occasions many years ago. Onslow is a wonderful lake and it is full of fine trout. I know I have a tendency to bang on about things and so I will shut up and let the pictures speak for themselves. Continue reading →

On Wednesday a photograph of the long drop at Lake Onslow was sent to me and I have never been so excited to see a picture of a toilet. Continue reading →

I´ve got to be honest. I am really not sure about Santa Claus. Doubts have been brewing in my mind for some time and I have developed two different hypotheses.

 The first is that he simply does not exist at all, unbelievable as that may sound. A lot of people seem to say this, mainly children.

 The second is that he does exist but he is a mean-spirited sod. This may seem like a harsh thing to say but there is some evidence to support it. For a start, at the sixth form Christmas bash “Secret Santa” got a present for all of the people in the room except one. Guess who?

And another thing, have you noticed how Santa gets really cool and expensive toys for the kids of rich families and the kids from the wrong side of the tracks get worthless crap or nothing at all? What the hell is on his mind? Surely he should give the poor kids a break, after all the parents of the rich kids can make sure they don´t want for anything.

No, Santa seems to like to preserve the status quo and I´m pretty pissed off that he hasn´t given me a damn thing since I was a kid.

 If hypothesis number two is correct and he does actually exist, I thought I might ingratiate myself to him by forging a letter and send it off to the North Pole. I pretended it came from my own kids and bank on him not realising they are now both teenagers and no longer in the business of writing to Santa. I have reproduced a copy of the letter below which will appear if you double click on it.

 Who knows? It might be a long shot.

Santa letter

23.4 ° turns out to be a pretty significant measurement for all fly fishermen. It is not, as you might first imagine, a measurement of the temperature at which something meaningful happens. It is, in fact, an angle. It is the angle of the earth´s tilt. To an astronomer this angle is also known as the “obliquity of the ecliptic,” a term which has no meaning whatsoever to me but, in the interest of appearing well-educated, I shall also adopt.

Why is this angle such a big deal?

Well, the result of this angle is that most of the world´s fly fishermen are sitting at home with a whiskey in their hands dreaming of the next fishing season, or reminiscing over the events of the last one. Many of them will have turned their attention to reading books or tying flies.

For them, today is the shortest day of the year. Many of the rivers which they remember the adventures of the summer are cold and dark, maybe even frozen over. The musical rivulets of the spring are frozen fingers of ice. Trout are close to the time they will spawn on many rivers, a drama unseen by most of us.

Meanwhile, down in the southern hemisphere things are on the up and up. The Mataura river in New Zealand, where I fished during my couple of seasons living in the South Island, will now be coming into its own. My friend Harry Abbot will now be on the New Zealand leg of his trip and I hope he enjoys good sport with the famous rainbows and browns.

Here, in southern Spain, we avoid the worst of the winter blues which descend on northern Europe. My local river, the Guadalhorce, has been fishing well, even into December. I had never tried the river in the winter before and look forward to revisiting it in January and February.

For the gloomy fly fishermen of the North I would like to offer a picture or two to cheer you up. Spring and summer may seem a long way off but the “obliquity of the ecliptic” which robbed you of daylight and warmth today, will repay you in June.

We have no reindeer in Spain but I have used some state of the art graphics to convert Tony, our resident pony, and one of our two puppies in reindeers of sorts.

If you have a whiskey in your hands, enjoy it.

Boris, the little reindeer

I believe today is the first day I have fished on the river in December. It was a beautiful day and, as usual, I had the river to myself. There were quite a few mullet active in the shallows but they were  skittish and the disturbance of a nymph landing on the water was enough to see them off.

I was hoping that a weighted nymph might be interest a fish or two even if there were no fish showing and I was fortunate to take a nice barbel. I would have done well had fish I managed to hook not thrown the hook. This happened with another couple of barbel and a pretty decent carp. Never mind. Such is life!

I used an indicator about three feet from the nymph. Unfortunately I couldn´t lay my hands on the yarn indicator I have used in the past and made do with a little piece from a wine cork with the leader threaded through it using a needle. It seemed to work fine.

I don´t know if I will ever figure out the fish in this river. Just as I was about to leave and it was getting dark the odd barbel began to rise to dry flies. Needless to say, they ignored the little dry sedge I floated over them!

The only fish I managed to land