It started with a pub bet and ended with a sunstroke-induced hallucination involving a talking carp.
Summer of ’96. Maybe ’97. Back in Sunderland, we’d just had the wettest June since records began, and we were sick of dragging our gear through ankle-deep mud for a shot at a single sad tench. Then someone—I think it was Mick, could’ve been Daz—said:
“Spain. They’ve got lakes. Big ones. Sunshine, cold beer, and proper fish. Let’s go.”
We didn’t check maps. Didn’t book campsites. We just packed up a Ford Mondeo so full of rods, tins of beans, and dodgy travel adapters that the boot wouldn’t shut. Five of us. Well, four and Kev’s cousin Neil, who no one really liked and who once brought a hairdryer on a wild camping trip.
First stop? Somewhere south of Madrid. Embalse de Orellana, though at the time we just called it “that one with the big water and the scary goat.” The sun nearly killed us. The tent melted. We didn’t catch a thing for two days except sunburn and possibly an intestinal parasite from a dodgy roadside sandwich.
But on the third day—Christ. Mick pulls out a catfish the size of a toddler. And that was it. Something switched in me. I’d fished my whole life, but this… this was different. Bigger water. Bigger fights. Weird birds flying overhead. Wild, untouched places where you could sit in silence and feel something ancient rumbling beneath the surface.
And here’s the bit I never knew then, but I know now: lake fishing in Spain? It’s got history.
Not centuries-old folklore like the UK, maybe, but proper strategy. In the 1950s, after Franco’s government got it into their heads to dam every river in sight, they created hundreds of massive reservoirs—embalses, they call them. Some of the biggest in Europe. And they started stocking them. Carp, black bass, pike, zander, catfish. Sometimes legally. Sometimes not-so-legally, with blokes tipping buckets full of fingerlings into rivers behind the Guardia’s back.
Whole fishing cultures sprang up. Clubs. Competitions. The odd man in waders yelling at ducks.
The Spanish didn’t always get it—at least not at first. For a long time, fishing was for food, not fun. But it changed. Brits started coming over in droves. Dutch, French, Germans. Everyone wanted a crack at the monsters in Mequinenza or the bass in Cijara. It grew from there.
And now? It’s a scene. A real one. You’ve got lads from Lincoln booking guided trips to remote lakes in Extremadura. You’ve got Spanish teenagers hauling out 30lb carp and putting it straight on TikTok. You’ve got old boys like me, sitting in the shade with a flask of tea and a heart full of gratitude that this all exists.
But back then? It was just us. Four lads. One leaky tent. A catfish that changed my life. And Neil, who got heatstroke and tried to wade into the lake naked at midnight because he thought he heard Sting playing an acoustic set on the far shore.
True story. Might’ve been a heron.
