after a month's stay in portugal, mostly spent doing maintenance work to the house, in a way sad but happy to be back in the s.a.
my wife and daughter met with me somewhere in the middle of the stay for two weeks, we visited many villages, churches, castles and coastal beaches in and around my home town of villa de nogueira in azeitao near setubal about 30kms south of lisbon. during their stay we took two days to visit the mountain range of serra de estrela. the village of choice was manteigas, situated in upper reaches of the river zezere. the initial plan was to visit or should i say fish both rivers, zezere and mondego but time only allowed for zezere.
After a 360km of travel we booked into the hotel berne, a lovely appointed hotel with pool, games room and restaurant with homemade chow, very clean and well appointed rooms. After checking in we went to town to sample the beer, wine, cheese and of course to get intel about the fishing. A annual national freshwater fishing license was purchased for less 7 euros, contacted the responsible group to arrange a beat or two and only to be disappointed, they only allowed fishing on thursdays, saturdays and on public holidays (was visiting only for a tuesday and wednesday) but was allowed to fish the lakes at any time once a daily fee of 20 euros was paid at the authorities. No thank you, my interest was stream/river fishing and the only option I had was to fish downstream from a village called sameia about seven kms from manteigas. Without any delay we drove to scout the river at sameia. Just below the this village we came across a resort with a ski pad, camping and swimming beach with a lovely kiosk to kill the thirst and snacks after a days fishing, all this on the banks of the zezere river, at least I had something to wet a line the following day. we drove back to manteigas to visit the hatchery before the sun set. Funny thing was that no one had answers or knowledge of the trout in the hatchery except for a dog that accompanied us. This dog was super friendly and knew his way around the the hatchery, no jokes, he nudge us on from to pool to pool with paused for two or three minutes inbetween then back to the car, like a true guide. Apparently this type of dog is indeginous to the area and no one knows the species name, actually no one knows nothing in this village, not even what trout species they have. My best guess was two species of trout, a definite brown trout (with a silvery colouration) and the second, a very dark cross mix between a brown and rainbow.
The following day, after a continental breakfast, headed to the stretch of river below sameia. what I saw the day before wasn’t to be, I thought I saw trout, what I landed was a specie of fish native to river (only find out later the locals call it “peixe do rio” – river fish in English, damn porras couldn’t find a half decent name for them, so I did, named them George after the bar tenders name). hundreds of them ranging from fry to 10 or 11 inches in length, profile and behaviour like trout. they turned out to be like our small mouth yellows. My rod of choice was the horizon lls 1wt rod with a hand tied 15 ft leader, 7x tippet and a wide selection of dries. After a long struggle to hook one, found they couldn’t leave the zak fly alone in rapid water. Caught plenty but the bigger ones were just too smart for the fly. after about a several kms of river and 13 hours of fishing I retreated to the kiosk for some well deserved cold frosties, not a single trout was spotted. later, a shower and scrumptious dinner meal at the hotel, plenty of port and other delicate drinks before bed for some needed rest before trekking back home.
DSC_0125.jpg DSC_0127.jpg DSC_0173.jpg DSC_0192.jpg DSC_0178.JPG DSC_0194.jpg DSC_0142.jpg DSC_0144.jpg DSC_0153.jpg DSC_0160.jpg DSC_0162.jpg DSC_0195.jpg DSC_0199.jpg DSC_0196.jpg DSC_0202.JPG DSC_0205.JPG DSC_0210.jpg DSC_0211.jpg DSC_0213.JPG
Bookmarks