IT'S BEEN A WHILE .........

Firstly apologies to all our followers for being a little neglectful regarding new posts,it's been a rather hectic couple of months but, this time in the best of ways, as we have had family here from the UK, which was, of course, lovely and also the Festas have kicked in with our village's Cherry Festival being one of the first and then they go on and on.
The weather has been fantastic this year with cloudless hot sunny days from the beginning of March with perhaps maybe only a week's worth of dodgy weather in the last twelve weeks.
Anyway, now on to the topic of this post which is all about fishing - sorry folks!!!
I have started to fish the competitions here in Portugal now as I was a very keen match angler in the UK for well over 25 years, and the returns have been excellent so far.
I have fished 8 competitions up to date and have won money on six of them with 2 first places 2 second places a third and a fourth place winning between 40 and 80 euros per match, around 250 euros so far, which considering it's my first full season of fishing here, to say I am over the moon, is a big understatement!!!!
My best weight so far was 51 lbs but as the weather keeps getting hotter the weights will get bigger as the carp here eat copious amounts of bait mainly trigo and sweetcorn, but I am having successes with luncheon meat too.
The match anglers in my club at Castelo Branco are amongst the the friendliest I have come across, and Antonio who runs the matches is a very accomplished angler having represented both Benfica and Portugal in the fishing world, so there is always more I can learn, never one to rest on my laurels, you can never know enough information regarding competitive fishing and local knowledge is a must. I am always picking their brains, but alas they, like me, will never reveal winning methods!!!!
We are getting good average attendances with around 22 anglers per match, so you need to be on the ball in regards to competing.
Finally, now I have bored you all to death, well those of you who have no interest in fishing, here are few pics of the last few encounters:-

Rob and his friend "Bob"

Enjoying the BBQ lunch after the match !!!!