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Europa Man

Filed under: Other bits and bobs — 4 Comments
May 19, 2015

There´s not a whole lot of shade if you fish my river at this time of year so if you are going to do anything more than a few hours you might want to plan for a pit stop to grab a bit of shade and maybe a cold drink.

On the A357 which runs along the Guadalhorce river valley you can choose from a couple of places. One of these is the Cepsa service station and the other, right on the opposite side of the road, is the Cafetería E.S. Europa. This leaves you with a decision to make: Cepsa or Europa? View full article »

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Sean´s Fishing Report

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Fishing reports, Folks I know — 2 Comments

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…..

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The Night Heron and the Fish

Filed under: Natural history — 4 Comments
May 17, 2015

I came across an interesting piece of drama at the river on Saturday. It involved a night heron and some fish.

The heron was standing in water which was only a couple of inches deep, a shallow sill between one sprawling turbulent pool and another. Any fish moving upstream from one pool to the other needed to swim across this shallow ridge in water that barely covered its back and the chosen route was just where the heron was standing. When the bird became aware of my presence it took a few steps further away but resisted the urge to take flight. Presumably the heron, in the moments before I disturbed it, had been waiting for a fish of the right size to run the gauntlet before seizing it. View full article »

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“Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?”

Filed under: Natural history — Leave a comment
May 15, 2015

Remember Indiana Jones? This guy was as tough as nails and he never backed out of a fight even when seriously outgunned. His chin was chiselled out of granite. If you knocked him down he just got back up again, madder than he was before. He was scared of absolutely nothing.

Except snakes. View full article »

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First carp of the season

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Fishing reports — 2 Comments
May 12, 2015

If I could be in any one place at any one time I would be hard pressed to suggest anything that would trump an evening like this one on the Guadalhorce river. In many ways I can appreciate it more for having been a spur of the moment decision. The weather looked good, I didn´t have much work to do and so I just said to myself “why not?”

The fishing was good too. I picked up a three barbel in pretty short order. The first of these was wounded in the middle of its back around the dorsal fin. The wound looked like the kind made from above, by a heron perhaps. View full article »

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Being a man

Filed under: Other bits and bobs — Leave a comment

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

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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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