THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

As it would turn out, this was the chap named on the fliers we'd seen earlier. The holiday-maker and
his son it seems had been out carp fishing with him that day and had had a burster with fish well up into
the thirties, and the guide, who turned out to be ex-pat English carp fanatic Dave Beecham, was
dropping off a video of the day.
He didn't stay long, but it was long enough for us to know that we needed to grab him as he left, which
we did, and a trip was arranged for a couple of days hence.
No gear was needed. No food or drink either. We would each get a high quality three rod set up with
all the latest thinking down at the business end.
Bait, feed, and food for us was also part of the deal, and we would be picked up outside the hotel for
the drive up in to the mountains where a number of lakes had been created by dams to collect rain water
for crop irrigation.
There are no natural lakes on the Gran Canaria. Obviously no indigenous freshwater fish species either.
Carp were put into these lakes to grub about and muddy the water in the hope of keeping weed growth
down, which apparently they did quite well. Large mouth bass were present too, though the story behind
that introduction was a little less clear.
On the morning of the trip I was apprehensive. As someone with a morbid fear of heights who once
decided to take a hire car on a drive across the mountainous interior, I knew what was coming.
Back then, the roads were so narrow, that once committed, the only way was forward. There was no
conceivable way of turning round. The only way out was to abandon the car and walk, which was too
far, and still almost as bad.
The sheer drops, some literally thousands of feet in places
and without crash barriers didn't help either. Fortunately, the
intervening years had seen some barriers erected on the
more dangerous bends. Not that I looked. I hardly dared
open my eyes all the way from Puerto Rico to Embalse de
Chira, one of the largest and probably most accessible of the
islands irrigation reservoirs.
De Chira is a vast piece of water in a spectacular almost
alpine setting, though a little bit chilly in the early morning
December sunshine.
Dave had chosen to take us close to the dam wall where he
piled in the boilies, the ripples from which were matched by
the number of ripples made by topping fish as far as the eye
could see.
I'm no carp angler, so it's not for me to comment, on top of
which, his business was working with holiday makers rather
than serious carp anglers. So maybe carp specialists would
have done things differently, I don't know.
What I can say is that the gear was good and we had fish to
Phill Williams, Canaries Carp just over twenty five pounds. And again, several years on,
we had more carp to just shy of thirty pounds, which for a
sea angler grabbing a day away from the beach is good enough for me.
Associated audio interview numbers: 55.
429