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Mark Bowler, the editor of Fly Fishing and Fly Tying, has published a good few articles that I penned over the years. These are located in the “Last Cast” feature at the end of the magazine and they tend to be a little quirky and whimsical in nature. (I don´t consider myself in any way enough of an expert to offer anything else!) He asks that I refrain from posting the articles he publishes here on the blog until a few months after they are printed in the magazine for copyright reasons and I am happy to comply. While rummaging on my computer, I spotted three articles that whose respective statutes of limitations have expired and so I thought I might post one of them now and the others will follow soon enough. These are the versions I sent to the magazine and they may have been subjected to further editing.

Here goes the first which was published in October 2022. I hope you enjoy it!

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Yesterday morning I took my little trio of newly-tied carp flies to the reservoir at El Chorro to see whether I might come across a carp to tell me whether or not they were up to scratch. As mentioned previously, the carp here may or may not put in an appearance. They´re kind of moody.

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I just went and tied up three ridiculous flies and have hatched a plan to catch a carp on one tomorrow morning before the rest of the household have stirred from their slumbers. I have a poor record in the reservoir I will visit which is only partly down to my own ineptitude. The carp themselves are not blameless in this unfortunate state of affairs since they truth is that they cannot be relied on to show up and, without them putting in an appearance, all will come to nothing.

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Yesterday we returned from the coast with some shopping in the back of the car and, as we normally do, went to and fro a couple of times between the car and the house carrying the bits and pieces we picked up. It was only as the last of these short errands were completed that I glanced over to a wall at the end of the house and noticed a mountain goat standing on it. It seems likely that it had been standing there all along.

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I caught a turtle on the fly yesterday which probably allows me to be considered among the world´s foremost authorities on fly fishing for reptiles. It has to be said that I had no intention of catching the thing and so I cannot pretend that this outcome was the result of focused effort or cunning strategy. What happened, as you can probably figure, is that I cast a fly out in the hope of catching a black bass when this dumb turtle showed up and decided it wanted to get in on the action.

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Sean and I spent a few hours fishing Lough Guitane in County Kerry on our last fishing day together last week. Guitane is about 10 km from Killarney and, at over a mile in length, it is a reasonably big lough, though it will raise few eyebrows in the west of Ireland. 

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I had a chance to meet up last week in Ireland with my brother Sean and our old fishing buddy Mark for a long anticipated fishing trip. This was to have been a multi-day adventure but Mark announced that he would have to cut things short due to work commitments and, naturally, he was berated by Sean and me for getting his life priorities arseways. 

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A weird thing happened today. There was this dead rabbit lying on the ground next to the fence of our property. I noticed it as Catriona and I were walking by. And then later on, the next time I went there, it was gone.

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Man cave

I don´t know how long Catriona had been asking me to clear all the crap out of the loft. It was obviously a job that needed doing but, largely out of laziness, I slipped into the old “out of sight out of mind” mindset and kicked the idea into the long grass.

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My brother Sean informed me about a fish farm proposal on the south west coast of Ireland which is going to have horrible effects locally if it is allowed to go ahead. He asked that I, and any others who might have similar views, send a message of objection before a deadline for such public consultation expires on Feb 12.

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