Only an idiot would go fishing on a Monday or, for that matter, on a Thursday. Where I am in Cantabria, if the guardia civil caught you in the act of trying to catch a trout in the local section of the Ebro on either of those days they would land you with a fine that would make your head spin.
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It´s a few weeks now since I started noticing the new generation of toads put in an appearance as the dogs and I walked the quite roads and tracks of the campo in the early morning. They were tiny – about the size of the nail of my little finger and, if they were inclined to stay still, they could be tricky to spot.
Continue readingIt turns out that there was a perfectly good explanation for why the cat we came across this morning looked decidedly odd. It was not a cat at all. It was a mongoose! The dogs and I came across this thing at dawn this morning as we ambled along a camino. We often to head out early, the three of us, and manage to avoid any cyclists or people or cars and we can enjoy the campo, sometimes in the moonlight, before the world begins to stir.
Continue readingI have just come back from the reservoir at El Chorro where my cunning plan had been to extract a carp from the margins. I´m afraid I have to report (once again!) that I had no success. The last time I fished there I brought a foolish young dog that proceeded to leap into the water and charge up and down the shallows, scaring the hell out of the carp and every other aquatic organism in possession of a nervous system and so my lack of success was not unexpected.
Continue readingThis article was published in Fly Fishing and Fly Tying Monthly, December 2024
Hey! I have some good news for you. You know how you don´t catch as many fish as anyone else? Come on, let´s face it. It´s true! The same is true of me and I understand that this can result in envy and a deep sense of personal worthlessness. You don´t think you´re that bad? Come on! Just look at the rest of the pages in this magazine. Check out the amazing flies everyone else is tying – way better than yours! And then there are the fish everyone else is hauling out – more than you ever catch, way bigger too.
Continue readingYesterday I spent about 15 minutes staring at a log having been hoodwinked into believing that somewhere, behind it, was a concealed Iberian lynx with only a single ear on show. I was not alone. There were a whole bunch of us, similarly deluded, and all on account of someone making the dubious claim that somewhere, behind this log, they saw an ear twitch.
Continue readingReinosa is the closest town to the source of the Ebro river and it is a short distance upstream of one of the largest reservoirs that the river passes through on journey eastwards to the Mediterranean. Right in the centre of the town you can see Ebro trout and I have spent quite a lot of time doing just that.
Continue readingSoon the iron bridge over the Guadalhorce river in the town of Estación de Cártama will be 100 years old. They started building the thing in 1927 and packed up their tools 4 years later. It seems like a pretty substantial bridge for what is, for the most part, a very modest river but there are times when the rains come and the river rises and the bridge needs to be robust enough to take everything that nature can throw at it.
Continue readingMy two dogs seem to be undergoing some kind of identity crisis. I am sensitive to the fact that, in this progressive day and age, we are encouraged to be more accepting and receptive to individuals identifying themselves in surprising and sometimes unexpected ways, but I must admit that transitioning to sheep, which is what the dogs seem to be doing, has caught me completely off guard!
As soon as the two dogs are let out of the gate on their leads for a walk, rather than pulling my arms out of their sockets and charging off down the road as they used to to, they trot across the path and start nibbling at thin stalks of the long grass that have sprung up everywhere following our recent rains. This goes on for a while before their brains eventually unfreeze and we can do our daily rounds of the quiet tracks in the campo that surround our house.
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