PORTUGAL FISHING

A brief glance at the match fishing over the last two seasons.
My first season was 2014. I just fished the one venue at a place called Retaxo with excellent results, very rarely finishing out of the top two, luckily it was a venue that suited my fishing style. The main species of fish are carp and crucians and in the early days lots of catfish but thankfully these have thinned out now.
In my second season 2015 I wanted to try some new venues and by joining a new angling club Albipesca, have been fishing their local venue at Talaguira, which I have to say has brought me mixed results. Many of the club members have been fishing here on a weekly competition basis for almost twenty years so i am up against it from the start, had a few top three finishes, but it is my first season back on natural waters rather than man made commercials, so i have had to go back to basics as the feeding patterns and tactics on the pole have had to be drastically altered. The carp here seem to average 1 to around 4 kilos but because they are wild fish and not farm reared they go absolutely insane when you hook them so all my elastics have now had to be changed to hollows with pulla kits as I was suffering way too many breakages in the early season. With that now sorted i am finally coming to grips with the fishing.
Usually anything up to 45 kilos is needed to win in four hours in the summer and up to about 25 kilos in the winter. Baits are very simple here mainly corn, worms, maggot and wheat. I have tried meat, bread and pellets but the carp are not that interested, but I do aim to keep trying alternative baits in my practice sessions through the week.
A few pics to whet your appetites.

Door fitted and steps built to rear entrance and curtains for summerhouse

It's been a while since our last post as we have been very busy enjoying the summer with family and friends visiting and holidays and so now the autumn days are with us it is now time to put our working hats firmly back on and get busy! Now that we have achieved our "major jobs" we can catch up on smaller jobs which need doing.


Our last project was the summerhouse and what a bonus that has been ..... a very nice little place to hide-away from the sun in an afternoon with a good book or the internet!!!! I made some curtains, not just for aesthetics but to keep out the flies when we are eating but still need to make some netted curtains for the sides. As soon as the BBQ is lit in the flies come buzzing about ...... so annoying ......we can't think for the life of me why we need flies on the planet!!!

Entrance to the loft renovation



Back in May this year we had some local builders round to take out the existing window and knock the wall out ready for a door to be fitted which would then become the external entrance to the loft renovation. The job was a little too difficult for us as we don't have powerful enough tools and scaffolding!

We then used a local window/door fitting company to have a door made and fit it for us.
We then looked into how we could make a staircase upto the door but to have a metal staircase structure made stretched out pockets a bit so Rob had to come up with another way to make the job cheaper. He decided the most cost effective way would be to build the steps himself out of blocks and cement, then render and tile and paint. A much longer drawn out procedure but it was something he could be do on and off when he felt a surge of motivation during the hot weather!!!

Unfortunately we forgot to take any pictures during the building of the steps but here are pics of the end result. Rob made the metal railings but we did have to get a local welder on site to weld on the hand rail.