29 September 2019 News/Editorial
The scores for last week of 78 salmon and 16 sea trout were compromised for the exact opposite reason than the week before. We have switched from cloudless skies and 23c, to rain and yet more rain, distinctly autumnal, all within the blinking of an eye. There was barely a day, or even a few hours, when the river was in good order, such was the consistency of the deluges.
Will there be anything left to catch when the river settles next week, assuming that it does?
What has been remarkable so far is not that there have been a few very small fresh grilse, but the almost total absence of bigger salmon over 20lbs.
We will know more soon enough, if our anglers are allowed to get in amongst what fish there are. But with more rain forecast, it could well be another frustrating week.
--00--
In case you are wondering, our Portuguese weather has been perfect, unbroken sunshine for eight days since the (cloudy and wet) day when we arrived. It is an amazing climate, over 300 days of sunshine every year, certainly never too hot in September/October but with warm, breezy, sunny days and cool nights. It makes you wonder why we all live so far north?
But then, the Algarve has no salmon rivers, and maybe we would be bored if the sun always shone?
--00--
We used to keep half term week, the third in October, for my children to see if they could catch something. They hardly ever did, as the third week in October became known as “flood week”, so often was it flooded out . Of the ten years we kept that week, perhaps one or two worked, all the rest were spent watching a big brown river. It was incredibly frustrating.
And yet, our American tenants who came the week before ours, almost never lost days to flooding, and consistently had good fishing weeks. In a way that was perfect as they had travelled so far, but it was difficult not develop some form of persecution complex, that the God of weather had it in for us.
Not only that, but ever since we gave it up, the third week in October has been no worse for flooding than any others.
It is a risky business both for those who had such a frustrating time last week, and for those may be nervously watching the rain clouds now.
our twitter feed