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Julio, the King and I

Filed under: Other bits and bobs — Leave a comment
April 16, 2015

As you may be aware I walked the Caminito del Rey recently with my friend Julio and we were both hugely impressed by the place. The walkway is half way some way up vertical cliff faces and a question that inevitably pops into your mind is this: “why would anyone build a walkway in a place like this?”

It turns out that to understand the walkway you need to think about something about which I was previously unaware – a canal. Extraordinary as it might seem, and it is at least as extraordinary as the Caminito itself, there is a canal which was built through this inhospitable terrain. View full article »

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El Caminito del Rey

Filed under: Other bits and bobs — 4 Comments
April 13, 2015

On Thursday I had a chance to walk through a stunning gorge along a famous walking path called “El Camino del Rey” or “Caminito del Rey.” The walk is named after King Alfonso XIII who walked this path, or more correctly the “old” Camino del Rey path, almost 100 years ago. It is a quite remarkable experience to complete this walk and I was lucky enough to walk it in the company of a good friend, Julio Rodriguez.

The walk is fascinating for all kinds of reasons. In addition to the jaw-dropping scenery, the history of the walk is fascinating as is the natural history. I am planning to consider the history and natural history in future posts on this blog, together with a sad story we heard from a walking guide. View full article »

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Chance encounter

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Fishing reports — 2 Comments
April 11, 2015

One of the benefits of living so close to a decent fishing river is that you don´t need to plan a fishing trip long in advance. Sometimes, if you have a bit of time on your hands and nobody has any plans for you, it may be possible to leap in the car and just head out on spec. That´s pretty much the way things panned out yesterday. There was a break in the weather. The grey clouds parted a little and the sun started to break through. I took one look at the sky outside and said “Yeah! why the hell not!”

The river is just beautiful at the moment – cool and clear as a chalk stream. It is also brimming with life. Even so, large stretches of “pristine” water have been vacated by the fish and you may have to do quite a bit of foot work to come across them. I “surveyed” about a kilometre of lovely-looking water in a rather crude way by simply wading upstream pretty noisily watching for the fish that I would spook in the process. In shallow stretches an unseen fish will often give its location away when it bolts. I saw three fish in that section, all in weed cover, and there were some lovely runs which were unoccupied. View full article »

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Hooking Up

Filed under: Published fishing writing — 2 Comments
April 10, 2015

One afternoon, on the Mataura river, I spent a half hour or so carefully stalking a rock. Seen through the drifting film of water, it had disguised itself cleverly as a trout and its dark streamlined form faced expectantly into the current. Its broad back suggested it was a good one too. I figured it would go two and half pounds certainly, maybe even three. This is a good trout in any river and quite exceptional in many. In retrospect, it is good that I didn’t know its true weight. Had I then known that it was at least twice my estimate I would have been reduced to a quivering bundle of nerves and my casting technique, shaky enough at the best of times, would have completely fallen apart. View full article »

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The benefits of being a duck

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Other bits and bobs — 2 Comments
April 7, 2015

Imagine sitting on an armchair in the middle of a reservoir. The armchair should be as comfortable as the one in your living room. You should be able to rest your arms on the sides and the back should be soft and supportive.

As it happens I have an armchair just like that. It floats, which is just as well since the bottom of the reservoir may be far beneath you! Okay, it´s not really an armchair, not technically, but for all intents and purposes it might as well be. It is certainly just as comfortable. It is a float tube. View full article »

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Harry´s Clutha Trout

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Fishing reports, Folks I know — Leave a comment
April 6, 2015

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. View full article »

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Another way of looking at things

Filed under: Fish and fishing, Fishing reports, Natural history — Leave a comment
April 5, 2015

It just so happens that my camera is waterproof and pretty much bombproof too. I bought this particular model knowing that any camera I owned was destined to suffer physics abuse of the kind which, doled out on another human being, could well result in a lengthy prison sentence. What´s more it was only a matter of time before I dropped the damn thing in the river. If you are interested in this kind of thing, the model I chose was a Fujifilm finepix XP55 and it has served me very well.

Unfortunately I am so thick that it took me more than at a year to figure that I could use this camera to take underwater pictures of fish. It was only yesterday morning that the penny finally dropped and yesterday afternoon I went to the river looking for subjects to photograph. View full article »

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Better than chores

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March 31, 2015

Yesterday was the first day of my Easter break and the weather was beautiful. As usual there were quite a few chores to attend to. The outside metal stairs needed painting and the wooden structure which provided shade on the terrace had to be treated against the sun and the fence needs fixing in the places where the dogs get out and make a nuisance of themselves. View full article »

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Better than watching the telly

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March 29, 2015

We all went out for a late lunch today and afterwards nobody was up to much. Grandad was soon crashed out on the sofa and Trinny and Pippa settled down to watch something on the telly while Leo was plugged into youtube. With everybody else happily occupied, or fast asleep, it struck me that this might be a good time to tie up a couple of flies and sneak out to the river to see what the fish were up to. View full article »

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Black Bass fishing at Concepción

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Yesterday I went off to Concepción reservoir with my son Leo to see if we might catch a black bass or two. The prospects were looking good and the level of the reservoir is as highs as I have seen it. When we arrived we saw a guy out on a float tube. He was out after bass too but fishing more conventionally with lures. Leo and I, of course, are purists and target bass only with flies. We are also, as it turned out, pretty crap fishermen having taken only one fish between us! View full article »

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