Iguela, Gabon. Surf fishing at sunset

Iguela, Gabon. Surf fishing at sunset, a photo by Nicola Zingarelli on Flickr.

If you notice, this image has been cropped on the horizontal side. The reason is that I didn't have a tripod with me on that trip, and had to put the camera on top of the cooler, and a corner of it was visible in the shot. The sunset on the western coast of Africa is pretty dramatic, and even though the colors have been saturated they're not far from what we could see every evening.

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Another great fly fishing video from NZ

Fly Fishing New Zealand DVD Video Trailer. what can I say... I want to visit New Zealand and I want to fish for those huge Brown Trouts, even though I have never been a Trout fisherman... The scenary is just stunning, NZ must be a photographic heaven, I cannot believ I haven't bene there yet. A terrible mistake I have to fix asap

Check this out folks...

Molix T-Jerk, amazing Sea Bass lure

After the fabulous fishing that has given me in Cork I doubt I will take too long to put it in the store. The Molix T-Jerk Suspending 11.7 cm has really surprised. First, it casts very well, the ball bearings in the body do their job perfectly and the small bib is not so much of an aerodynamic issue. But what has impressed me, especially considering that I'm not a fan of this type of lures who travel below the surface, is the action it has.

I tried several different kind of retrieve, slow and even, slow jerks and pauses, fast jerks and stops, fast and steady with no pauses, and finally very quickly paying with the rod tip up and down, producing violent jerks. The T-Jerk responds perfectly to each one of these actions, and never fails or starts swimming in a weird manner. Being suspended as well, during pauses and stops it stands still, and has been precisely during these moments I've had most of the strikes, until I finally managed to smash the bib against the bridge’s pylons.

Let's say that somehow this lure made me come to terms with the family of the "swimmers”. Two strikes few feet from the boat were as good as those I had on top water, and I have learnt something new

Carpe diem!

Grab de moment, freeze it, steal that image that only lasts for a second and disappears in the past. This is war reporters business, photojournalists, sport photogs, not mine for sure. Though, there are times when you are in the right place at the right moment and things just happen.

The following images are not new; I took them at the Maldives in November 2008 when we visited an atoll south of Male. I dropped the rod for a second, grabbed the Nikon and went to the bow, to shoot my friend Eugeni who was casting his large poppers.

Just to give you an idea of the action here to follow you will find a sequence of 4 images, while for me the real /carpe diem” image is the third one. Not only it perfectly froze the moment of the strike but also shows a good deal of body language and a precise moment of the action that speaks for itself.

Even though I spend a lot of time on a boat with the camera in my hand, I don’t have too many images like this. Carpe diem, that is!

Spanish Pikes

Last week I had an happy day. After a long and cold winter I finally went back to my favourite fishing grounds in the Castilla Leon area, near Benavente, 250km North-west of Madrid. This is about two and half hours drive from my house, so I left pretty early in the morning, fivish I'd say.

These are relatively small rivers, formerly populated with trouts and now, due to the pollution, dams and bad management have turned into great Pike waters. The fun thing is that you can wade most of them and fish top water a lot, in fact the water is pretty clear and also shallow, with lots of weeds.

The start of the day hasn't been very good. One of my favourite stretch of the river (and the whole river for that matter) was carrying a lot of water, pretty high with a strong current. Had two pikes following on the first pools but finally had to quit. Too dangerous.

Pretty upset I moved to another river. The water was perfect, it was quiet and beautiful and on cast # 3 I had my first Pike charging wildly the Super Spook from almost 10' and halting like Roadrunner once he saw me. Funny enough, the usually better shore was non productive and when I moved to the other, the sunny one, I found a good deal of fish in very shallow water, very aggressive with the top water lure. By the end of the morning I had collected 10 strikes, most of them missed, and landed 2 small fish.

In the afternoon, moving to another stretch of the river I missed the right turn and ended up in a road I didn't know until I found a small bridge on a nice looking river. A local explained me what river was that and I decided to give it a chance. "20 casts Nicola, only 20 casts and if nothing happens we proceed to our known spot". Thing is that on cast 3 a very nice fish followed and hit the spinnerbait under my feet. Missed it. 10 more casts and another fish follows, to strike again under my feet and miss the darn lure. Finally, a third fish inhaled the spinnerbait and I had the third fish of the day.

Needless to say I was hooked. I kept fishing downriver, in almost every deep spot I found nice Pikes (they're not big fish but we are in a small river as well) and started improving my score. Too bad I was on my own because it was a great day to take amazing photos. I had to do everything myself, and to make things worse I only had with me the Nikon D70s with a 35mm f2 lens, the less bulkier I have, great tool but not for wide angle stuff as most of the times I need. A SB600 was also in my wader's pocket and I used it a great deal, can't live without strobes these days.

Late in the afternoon I crossed path with a fellow fisherman, trying to catch a trout on a fly, exchanged few words and resumed my fishing. Next pool I hit a very nice fish (again, nice for these waters) and called the guy to help me with the photos. I asked him to hold the fish for me but he was clearly nervous and his hands were shaking. Hoping he was able to take a picture I held the fish and the result can be seen here. A good 10 pounder that looks like a 4lb fish!

It has been a great day out on the water, probably my favourite fishing after all