Holy Land fishing

[jiraff]

Here is short one from Israel.
Fly fishing is not as popular here, we have no trout and not a lot of fresh water places at all.
But there is good yellowfish in Jordan river and the Galilee Lake, can be quite hard to catch it.
We have a lot of small tilapia which takes flies and small lures all summer.
Previous weekend we have opened the freshwater tilapia season, it is locally called "Musht" (arabic).

[Babyson]

A nice bit of information of your fishing there and some really nice photos too. What camera was used?

Thanks for the report.

Rob

[jiraff]

Canon 30D + Canon EF 100-400mm F/4.5-5.6L IS USM

[Kevin James]

Should try around the Gaza strip area.....some of the species really go off with a bang!

Interesting report.

[KevinE]

Hi there Arthur,

I seem to recall reading something about rainbow trout in Israel. i could be wrong though, and you would know better than me in any case.

I believe the brown trout is native to some areas of the Middle East. Possibly Iran or other montainous regions?.....

[jiraff]

Iran could be a problem for us here
I'll better visit you guys in summer.
But seriously, there is comercial rainbow trout farm in the north here.
They have a realy small fishing lake, but it is just pathetic, the people bait fish with 6 mt rod 20gr float, 0.4 line and no4 hook. and so I do not realy like the place...
There ia a small river at Lebanon border with raibows, but it's nature reserve.
We fish for quite a good yellows here, some up to 3 kilograms are not rare.
Last season I've tried on lures, but this one I'll try realy hard on flies.

[chris williams]

Nice pics Jiraff thanks. Very interesting about the yellowfish and tilapia in the Jordan and on Galilee

[Surly Ghillie]

Hi Jiraff,
shmi Ze'ev. When i was a kid, back in about 1957-8 I used to catch fish in the Chaztzbani river, which flows off the Golan, a coupkle of clicks away from kibbutz Mayan Baruch, which back then was the border between israel, lebanon and Syria. . We were not supposed to fish there as it was regarded as unsafe. I got into plentsch trouble for exploring there. At the time I never knew what the fish were, till years later when I concluded that they had been probably been trout. I used to catch them with live grasshoppers and insects i caught on the river bank.

By the way, back then the Med had not been entirely denuded and we also found good fishing at Cesaria

[jiraff]

Hi Jiraff,
shmi Ze'ev. When i was a kid, back in about 1957-8 I used to catch fish in the Chaztzbani river, which flows off the Golan, a coupkle of clicks away from kibbutz Mayan Baruch, which back then was the border between israel, lebanon and Syria. . We were not supposed to fish there as it was regarded as unsafe. I got into plentsch trouble for exploring there. At the time I never knew what the fish were, till years later when I concluded that they had been probably been trout. I used to catch them with live grasshoppers and insects i caught on the river bank.

By the way, back then the Med had not been entirely denuded and we also found good fishing at Cesaria

That's right, there used to be lots of trout in Snir(Chaztbani), but people used to catch it on bread, so there is nearly nothing left, but we catch smallscale yellows on dry flies there, although they quite small.
In mideteranean the fishing got much worth over past 20 years, but there is still lots of seabream and some elf and bass. During winter time we usualyy fish the sea.