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Being a man

Filed under: Other bits and bobs — Leave a comment
May 12, 2015

I have been a man for as long as I can remember and it strikes me that being a man works out pretty well most of the time. Being a man lets you get away with all kinds of stuff. You can shout at the telly, use bad language from time to time, and get away with wearing the same trousers for ages before anyone notices. It gets even better as you get older. People just put up with your little quirks and eccentricities. If you don´t seem to know what day of the week it is, never mind. What do you expect? To the kids I teach I am just a bloke of a certain age. If any of them had ever heard of the palaeolithic they might just imagine that that was the era in which I was born.

Things were better for men in the 50´s which was just a few years before I put in an appearance on this planet. View full article »

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Close encounter with a snake

Filed under: Natural history — 3 Comments
May 11, 2015

I have just come back from walking the dogs and we came across snake on the path. The dogs had just trotted on and the snake was making its way from one side of the path to the other. It was a pretty little thing, maybe 40 cm long and when it rested against a wall I had a pretty good look at it. I am pretty sure it was a false smooth snake (Macroprotodon brevis). If this is what it was it is really nothing to worry about. We only have a couple of venomous species around here, the lataste´s viper and the montpelier snake.

My encounter with that little snake brought to mind a closer encounter that Steve Lawler had on Saturday evening. View full article »

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Barbel leaping like salmon

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May 8, 2015

A week ago today Steven Lawler and I witnessed some remarkable behaviour on the Guadalhorce – the gypsy barbel were leaping up a weir and falling back into the river. They looked for all the world like salmon.

We noticed that they never cleared the wall, despite coming pretty close at times. Steve took a close look at them and suggested that they were not trying to clear this obstacle, as we had first thought, but were feeding in the silkweed on the weir itself.  View full article »

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Nearly pissing on a partridge

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Fishing reports, Natural history, Other bits and bobs — Leave a comment
May 4, 2015

If you fish from a float tube, and are sitting in chest waders for hour on end, you will be aware that it is a good idea to go for a wee before you set sail. Very often the margins are sheer and rocky and so it becomes impractical to haul up and answer the call of nature. This is particularly true of Concepción where Steven Lawler and I set out on Saturday to do battle with black bass.

Mindful of the hard-won lesson about the need to powder one´s nose before setting out, I trotted off into the long grass this morning just as soon as I had tackled up. View full article »

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The first of the day

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Fishing reports — Leave a comment
May 3, 2015

It´s funny how, even if you catch several fish during the course of a day, the capture of one might stick in the mind far more than the others. On Saturday, when I was joined on the river by Steven Lawler, it was the first fish of the day.

This was the first fish I cast to and it was holding in the water which was just accelerating out of a broad pool and into a narrow stream. The fish was swimming strongly just to hold position and, every now and then, it would slice the surface with the tip of its tail. View full article »

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Naked Slovenian Woman

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Folks I know, Other bits and bobs — Leave a comment
May 2, 2015

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. View full article »

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Red-legged partridge

Filed under: Natural history, Other bits and bobs — Leave a comment
April 30, 2015

Last Tuesday I came across a red-legged partridge on the way to play squash with Nick Edwards.

I suppose I should point out, for the sake of clarity, that it was me going to play squash with Nick and not the partridge. Having said that, Nick wiped the floor with me, as he does most weeks, and I imagine the partridge would have had about the same success had it decided step in for me.

It is not at all unusual to come across these birds in the kind of open country and scrub that they favour but I was pretty surprised to come across one on the path at the Club del Sol Tennis Club! View full article »

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Fishing Report of 25 April

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Fishing reports — 2 Comments
April 25, 2015

Things have been pretty busy recently and it has proved difficult to squeeze in a little time on the river. But I did manage a trip last Saturday and again today and am very glad that I did.

We have had a sprinkling of rain recently and the river is just looking just lovely. I had the river to myself on both of my recent visits but for the black winged stilts and little egrets. I noticed I was walking on boar tracks today and can imagine these animals moving through the rushes at dusk and into the night. View full article »

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Just what the doctor ordered

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April 20, 2015

On Friday after work I took a little trip to Concepción Reservoir to see if there were any black bass knocking around. It had been a busy week and it just seemed to me that a couple of hours floating around a reservoir might well be the perfect antidote for the accumulated stresses of the week. The reservoir sits in what was once the river valley of the Río Verde and the surrounding terrain is very steep-sided. It is a mountain goat country here and it is not unusual to see these animals working their way among the scrub high above. View full article »

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Out with the camera

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April 19, 2015

Pip and I were out walking with the dogs this afternoon and we decided, just for the hell of it, to have a photography competition. The idea was simple enough. Each of us would take as many photos as we like and then whittle them down to a shortlist of 5. Mum would be the judge and score our photos out of 10. Mum´s words are final. Everybody knows that.

The campo is just crazy with flowers at the moment. It is just lovely out there. It seems, in places, as though clouds passed overhead and rained paint – purple clouds, yellow clouds. The verges of the paths are overgrown and heaving with colour. sometimes the dogs, straying off the track would just disappear into the plants as though they had been swallowed by the campo. View full article »

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