I always forget how optimistic the sea makes you in March. You stand there in a fleece that isn’t quite warm enough, watching a perfectly calm bit of Mediterranean that looks like it was laid out by an estate agent, and you think: this is it. This is the session where everything works. No tangles. …
A Beginner’s Guide to Sea Fishing in Spain I’ll be honest. For years, I looked at the sea like it was a different sport altogether. Too big, too salty, too many unknowns. Give me a reservoir, a chair, a flask, and a set of alarms and I know where I stand. The sea, on the …
I was at the lake by seven. Too early for anyone sane, but the light looked good and the air had that cool stillness before the insects wake up. Coffee from the flask, bread already drying at the edges. The float sat clean in the water, just a faint ripple. Nothing for the first hour. …
Lake looked fine at seven. Flat as a plate. I set two rods off the shallow spit opposite the pines. Method on one, simple inline on the other. 12ft 3.25s, 0.35 mono, fluoro links because this water is usually too clean for my liking. Washed-out yellow wafters, cage stuffed tight with crushed maize and pellet. …
Trevor turned up wearing a sunhat big enough to shade a caravan and holding a rod tube that looked like it had been nicked from a skip. Hadn’t seen him in years. He used to come out every now and then with the lads, but life happened — dodgy hip, some drama with his daughter, …
Let me say this first: if your bait alarm costs less than your last takeaway, you’re fishing with a lie. You can’t trust a shrill little beep from a knock-off unit you bought off a bloke called Kiko behind a petrol station. I learned that the hard way. Middle of the night, two summers ago, …
You ever gone fishing for a quick afternoon and ended up sleeping in your car because your mate left the radio on for six hours? We didn’t mean to. Honest. It was supposed to be a short one—pop down to Embalse de Mequinenza, chuck a few lures, maybe spot a zander if the water was …
I still dream about it sometimes. Not the fish, though that catfish bent my rod like it owed him money. No—I dream about the silence. That heavy, Spanish kind of silence that wraps around you like an old jumper soaked in olive oil and sun. Orellana. Embalse de Orellana, to give it the full church …
It’s always the big one that gets away. Never the daft little roach or the suicidal perch that hooks itself before you’ve even settled into your chair. No. It’s the one you felt. Proper weight. Head shakes like a washing machine on full spin. The one that pulls line and your soul out in the …
I once drove five hours for a fish and ended up staring at mud. Just mud. No lake. No shimmer. No waterline. No frogs croaking in the reeds. Just a bleached-out landscape and one dog chewing something it definitely shouldn’t have found in the heat. Thing is, I’d been there before. Same spot. Zahara-El Gastor. …