jolyon patten
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David — for me it’s because New Zealand isn’t a couple of hours away!!
Our idea of wild is the Lake District, which is undoubtedly pleasant, but it doesn’t really have ^^^mountains^^^.
Jolyon
Swatch Original, as for example here:
http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000710.phpGear is gear, man. Gear does not make you a better fisherman, ever, period. At best, gear can be a crutch to help you overcome your own inadequacies. At worst, gear is the cause of your inadequacy!
Trust me, hours spent on the lawn practicing with a $30 Wal-Mart bubble pack will do more for your fishing than all the $750 rods in the world. I speak from experience.
Couldn’t agree more. This is something I wrote elsewhere a while back:
“This is still only my fourth season of fly-fishing, so I count myself just out of the novice stage, but still something less than fully proficient. I have bought one or two fairly nice [read: expensive] rods and can crack on with them OK.
However, I decided I would like to go after sea trout this year, so bought myself a cheap £99 rod, a Fulling Mill Gold something or other, 10ft 7 weight (apparently a re-badged TFO). It’s a cracker. Oddly, and perhaps sadly, I cast much better with this than some much more expensive kit.
Now I put this down to the fact that I don’t really care about “living up to the rod”. I’m sure the rod is good, but it is unlikely to be better (whatever that means, and however you judge it) than some of the more expensive kit I own.
In a slightly similar vein, my most successful fishing day last season came when I consciously thought at the start of the day, “Don’t try and do everything ‘right’–just relax and have some fun.” And I did.
I’ve found this with all sorts of things in life–cameras (you have to take the perfect picture, until you ding the camera; motorbikes–you don’t ride it hard enough while it’s still shiny; etc etc.)”
Just my 2p worth.
Jolyon
Nice story. Umbria is such a beautiful place. We had a wonderful time there a couple of years ago (that is, when we were not driving around lost).
Bob–you’re right about the getting lost. The Italians have a great trick of having signs that lead you along and then disappear at the critical moment. I usually end up relying on the position of the sun and dead reckoning. Two years ago, I kept on ending up on the road to a town called Bastardo, which somehow seemed particularly fitting.
Jolyon
Zach–Mike has answered your question (“it’s the karst”) in a way I wouldn’t have been able to, having forgotten my elementary geology/geography.
The guy I was with, Niccolo, mentioned that there is a lot of undeveloped trout-fishing potential in Italy, in particular an area in Lazio, north of Rome, that is known as “the Land of the 10,000 spring creeks”.
You might want also to think about a tarptent from Henry Shires:
http://www.tarptent.com/projects/tarpdesign.htmlLight, mosquito-proof and well-made.
Dot Man
Thanks–I’d seen your stuff via sexyloops, but always figured the carbon footprint of sending dots to England more than my conscience could stand
