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A moment in Morocco

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October 25, 2015

On Tuesday I spent a little while playing with plastic building blocks with a delightful young lady in Tangiers. There were about eight of us sitting around a little table building all manner of temporary structures from colourful blocks, or, in our case dismantling them. As it happens we soon discovered that our own particular aptitude was for demolition. The young lady in question would pull apart the two block structure I had assembled and then make a spectacular facial expression to indicate wonder or awe or surprise. I would mirror the expression in turn and we both spent quite a while fully immersed in this little game: assembling, dismantling and then expressing complete astonishment.

The young lady in question has Down syndrome just like all the other children in her school and I was part of a visiting group from the school where I teach. There were 25 of us in all, two teachers and 23 of our sixth form students including my daughter, Pippa. View full article »

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Fishing Report of 10 October

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Fishing reports, Flies and fly tying — 2 Comments
October 11, 2015

My ancient car is acting up. On Monday morning it refused to start which was curious because the previous day it had taken me happily to the river and back. Maybe it was just drawing the line, as I am often tempted to do, at heading off for another week at work at some ungodly hour in the morning.

And then yesterday it failed, in spectacular fashion, its annual technical inspection. It often lets itself down on some little technical defect or other but yesterday it decided to pull out all the stops and fail with aplomb. The man with the torch who lives in a dark cave and inspects the underneath of the cars was so impressed by the defects that he surfaced into daylight and asked me to go down with him to look up. He said “look, see that broken bit?” and pointed to a broken bit and then he said “look, see that crack?” and pointed to a crack. I pretended to be surprised but knew perfectly well that the whole car was just more or less hanging together. View full article »

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A Simple Plan

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October 4, 2015

I had a simple plan for this afternoon. First I was going to head off to the Guadalhorce to see if I could fool a few fish with some simple nymphs I tied up yesterday afternoon. After that I was going to drop in to Café Europa for a cafe con leche.

There is nothing much to the little nymphs I use. I tie them on smallish (size 14) barbless grub hooks and they seem quite palatable to the barbel and carp. You could do a lot of fooling around trying different patterns but I tend not to. I have a lot of confidence in these things and stick to them out of a mixture of laziness and brand loyalty. View full article »

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The best of both worlds

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September 27, 2015

You can´t be in two places at once. This is a shame because this evening there were two places I desperately wanted to be. One was the river bank, which will come as no surprise, and the other was in front of some screen showing Ireland playing Romania in the rugby world cup.

In the end I managed a bit of each. I had planned on watching the whole rugby match but could only do so on a computer and was frustrated by the streaming. One minute the players were flat out running, or tackling, or trying to kill each other and then the next they would all just freeze in every imaginable contortion until they would suddenly come to life again. Despite the frustrations of seeing a match unfold in this way I stuck it out until Ireland had a healthy lead and I felt they were safe to continue in my absence without the instruction that I provide. View full article »

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The Fishing Party

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September 17, 2015

Last week I met up with three visiting fishermen and, on Sunday, we spent a few hours on the river before going to take a look at Concepción Reservoir. I had been lucky enough to meet Simon Thompson pretty recently at the CLA game fair in Leeds. Simon is another blogger and has a great blog which, if you have not seen it already, is well worth a visit. You can reach it (I hope) by clicking on this link: http://has2btheflyway.com

Though Simon and I were no strangers to this river (we had spent an afternoon on the Guadalhorce last year) it was the first visit for the other two members of the fishing party, Simon´s brother Stuart and Jonathon, who is Simon´s long-time fishing buddy.

The boys were all set up for a week´s fishing but they seem to have been plagued with bad luck from the outset. To start off with, the heavens opened up early in the week and, not to put too fine a point on it, it absolutely pissed down. At this time of year we might get a little rain, or more likely, none at all. The torrential rain made news headlines here and there are Youtube sequences showing cars and trucks pushed through towns by the muddy waters. View full article »

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Adventures in Thailand

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Fishing reports, Folks I know, Natural history, Other bits and bobs — Leave a comment
August 31, 2015

My friend Harry Abbott has fished all over the place but one of the most unusual fishing destinations has been the remote jungle rivers of Thailand. He has often told me how interesting his experiences there were, not just from a fishing point of view, but from the point of view of wildlife and culture.

He was digging around in his computer the other day and found a couple of entries from his Thailand diary and sent them over to me. They are fascinating, and  he was kind enough to let me reproduce them here together with some of the photographs he took at the same time.

Take it away Harry…… View full article »

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A nice carp

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Fishing reports, Flies and fly tying — 4 Comments
August 29, 2015

If I had had any brains I would not have gone fishing at all yesterday. There were only a couple of hours left before Catriona got home from work and the house needed tidying. But I went anyway, but mindful of the fact that my time on the river would have to be short.

All this has happened before, many times. A decent kind of guy would forego the pleasures of the riverbank and, instead, attend to the chores that accompany marriage, fatherhood and domestic servitude in general. Thankfully, I am made of lesser stuff and so it was off to the Guadalhorce for me while the washing remained in the washing machine and living room looked as though a tornado had passed through it. View full article »

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Fishing Report of 22 August

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Fishing reports, Natural history — 2 Comments
August 23, 2015

On the way to the river yesterday I noticed bee-eaters on the telegraph wires as soon as I turned off the A357 and onto the rough track that leads to the Guadalhorce, and when I saw them it occurred to me that I had not seen these beautiful birds for at least a couple of months. They have been further north and now they are heading to Africa. Today they are on the telegraph wires in southern Andalucía, soon they will have the Mediterranean under their wings and, shortly after, the Sahara.

It remains very hot but the sting of July´s oppressive heat and humidity seems to be easing. They say that July was the hottest month here that has ever been recorded here.

It is not obvious that the summer is drawing to a close but it is waning, almost imperceptibly slowly. Changes are on their way and the bee-eaters know this. View full article »

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A fine trout from Rutland

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August 19, 2015

If your meanderings through cyberspace lead you occasionally to this blog there is a good chance you will recognise the name of Harry Abbott.

Harry is one of these guys who has fly fished all over the place and caught many kinds of fish and one of his fish, an Arapaima he taken in Thailand, is one of the most strikingly beautiful fish I have ever seen. View full article »

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Jim Corbett´s Rifle

Filed under: Books and stuff, Natural history, Other bits and bobs — 2 Comments
August 16, 2015

When I was at the CLA gamefair in Leeds recently I had an opportunity to attend a presentation on Jim Corbett, the legendary hunter and conservationist who is remembered for killing a number of man-eating leopards and tigers in India in the early part of the last century.

This talk was given by a representative of the famous gun makers, John Rigby & Co. and, during the presentation, members of the audience were invited to hold one of the most famous sporting rifles in the world, a .275 bolt-action rifle which was presented to Corbett in 1907 for shooting the single most prolific individual man-eater in history, the Tigress of Champarat. View full article »

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