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

"The Bridge" session.

Yesterday evening I went scouting for a place where to relax a bit and take some photos. As usual I was looking for some running water hence I opened the map and headed north, towards the Sierra of Madrid. Without knowing it I arrived to a place that I have already visited with my wife and daughter and recognized a road to the Jarama river, in an area not infested with bulls and hardwired fences.

The familiar noise of the running water raised my spirits. I put my high boots, grabbed the camera and tripod and took my way down to the valley, where the Jarama River was running. The photo session was OK but nothing spectacular, many different shots in places that somehow called my attention, but I was enjoying it. Every time I go out to take a picture I try to take it as a learning experience, not thinking about coming out with a winning image. Hence, whatever it comes, if is an improvement over previous tries is a goal achieved.

Towards the end of the day I discovered this sort of a "Bridge". Maybe is just a decorative log, even though I doubt that the elves of the woods spend their time re-decorating it just to make it look nicer. Anyway, I placed the tripod and started playing with exposure, white balance and obviously the flash.

The first shot I'm showing here is very orthodox. Cloudy white balance and nothing else. I like it but is probably average, it doesn't have any special "edge".

This is a B&W conversion of the same shot, maybe is a little bit more appealing because of that Black & White feeling yet is not a gigantic improvement. For a novel photographer like me is a nice image but I understand that it cannot compete on the major league

Here below is where I started playing with the camera configuration and my always available portable speed light, in this case a Nikon SB600

Here things started to get a tad odd. I changed to WB to tungsten and played with the SB600 speed light with two full CTO gels on it. The result is a tad exaggerated, the "Bridge" is cooked, way too hot. There's a lot of flash light spills on the ground as well.

Second attempt. Mellowing down on the gels and the amount of flash bursts. Changed the white balance in RAW to something closer to Fluorescent rather than Tungsten. The result has improved a bit but at least to me it still looks a bit too hot.

Third attempt. Maybe I'm wrong but I think this is the right way. There's no signs of the flash bursts on the ground and the color given to the "bridge" is more natural, yet still creates a contrast with the background. Unfortunately I couldn't paint with the flash further that half the log. For my next attempt I will try with a torch.

Funny enough I don't seem to be able to do landscapes kind of stuff without playing around with a strobe. Maybe one day I will grow up :-)

Rome. Home?

Even though I was born in Florence, Rome is the place where I have spent most of my life. My house is still there, as my family. Now I'm based in Madrid, a city I like, and a country, Spain, that gave me a family, my adorable wife and daughter and a great job, which I love. Thus, Rome will always be Rome, home..I mean...you understand me.

Rome is a tough place to live. Traffic, pollution, very bad logistics, chaos, a lot of bureaucracy, you name it. Is supposed to be a big capital, probably some believe is THE capital and still has not a decent Subway service. Every time they start digging a hole there's a million ruins awaiting for them. For every short section of underground tunnel in Rome, they built a complete new line in Madrid. The pace is different, Rome seem to run fast in the streets, where everybody drives like Valentino Rossi (bikes are a big deal in Rome BTW) or Fernando Alonso, and yet, when it comes to build something, everything goes in slow motion. Is true, I now live in a city that moves fast, has an active and hard working major, and is able to complete very important works in a blink of an eye. I'm spoiled. But Rome is slow. Can't deny it. Is slow by all means, by any comparison.

Yet, I firmly believe that is THE most beautiful city in the world. Having had the chance to see a bit of this old planet, I cannot stop wondering at the Capital's beauties. The mix of very old, old and dramatic modern mess is stunning.

The narrow streets in Trastevere and the gigantic Coliseum, St Peter, and the Tevere river, a huge and unfortunately very polluted vein that flows through the city dressed in a green from another planet. It was called "Il Biondo Tevere" by the Romans. The blond river. I'm still wondering where that golden color has gone, but I know it has gone for good.

Being a Roman I rarely had the chance to properly visit the city. I've been here and there but there's always that sense of.. : "I'm here all the time, I can go and see it another day!" Wrong! Mistake! You end up seeing nothing, neither today nor tomorrow, and you miss some spectacular stuff.

Funny enough, it has been thanks to the assignment for a Spanish photo magazine that I HAD to go and see my city. Move my ass. Explore it, grab the light and the sight and put them together in form of digital files. This happened in different occasions. I had the winter and the rain and the summer and the sun. I wandered around the ruins and among the people, walked the high street and hid in the shade of the little "vicoli" near Piazza Navona. The main target was a decent shot but the truth is that I found myself mouth agape looking at what I have been missing for some good 40 years of my dumb life.

For several reasons I didn't go to Rome too often but chances are I will be there again soon. The grandmother wants to see her granddaughter and I need to get back to refresh my Italian, that is now melting in a dangerous mix with the Spanish and it scares the hell out of my progenitor

If I feel lazy and don't want to walk around for a sightseeing my camera drags me out. She is teaching me how to appreciate the details and the big scheme of things and she's giving me a reason to walk for miles, unaware of the complains of my aching feet.
She's turning what was a boring activity into a pleasure and an interesting and instructive thing to do. Can't wait to be back to walk trastevere in a wet afternoon, with the puddles reflecting the old buildings and the weird people you see around. No matter if my photos come out good or not, I have a good excuse to dive into such a beautiful city. I mean CITY!

Pikes, my freshwater love affair

Before getting hooked to saltwater fishing I was an avid freshwater addict. while still in Italy, either when I was in Rome or Milan my target was any kind of predator I could find in lakes and rivers. By that time it was mostly Black Bass, Trouts, Chubs and Pikes, the latter being the highest in the ranking. When I finally moved to Spain, where I still reside, I switched my attention mostly to the salty drink yet haven't abandoned my first lover. I soon discovered that the potential for freshwater predators in the Iberian peninsula was much better than the one I had in my home country, and Pikes were numerous in several environment, among whom I favoured the small rivers.

The real heaven for me was the area of Castilla Leon, near Zamora and Benavente. This is where I found the Pikes in wading waters, eager to snack a top water lure or a skirted spinnerbait. To my greatest delight I could walk on the river for a long time without having to exit the water, from knee deep to the maximum allowed by my wading boots: casting under the trees, near the edges, on top of the weeds with weedless soft lures.

To be very honest this is till my favourite fishing of them all. I travel all over the tropics during the season but is when I go back and target my marbled friends, face to face, on my own or with one fishing buddy, that I make peace again with fishing. To add more interest to the adventure I have now found a way to carry my DSRL with me, and it really takes little risk (well, just a bit) to drawn, and finally I can take more decent photos with the help of my occasional fishing buddy. Among them all my friend Pepe http://josehweigand.blogspot.com/ is the one that better fits my idea of "ideal" fishing companion. Not only is an excellent fisherman, but he is also a very good photographer, and he has fun both fishing and snapping images altogether, not to mention posing for my attempts to catch a decent exposure.

The last day we spent together was delighted by an extremely good activity of our toothy friends which allowed us to take a good deal of photos, and of course have a blast fishing.

There's no monster fish among our catches but the strike of a Pike on a top water lure is something that really gives you a thrill. Finally, when a 10lb fish shows up is a big party, we're not picky guys...

He played a lot with his D300 furious shooting sequence and I carried forward my experiments with the external strobe, trying to learn something that the guys at Strobist show with so much skill at http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/.

Pepe also taught me a trick or two, and I'm very grateful to him to share his expertise. He has just put out his own blog this very week, actually through him I discovered that it was easy and suitable even for an Internet dork like me, and pushed the release of mine as well. We're counting the days to be back there, knee deep in the water casting on top of the weeds, waiting for the amazing blast of a Pike. No matter how small or big it is, we're there for the enjoyment.