THE committee of Carp-R-Us report the 2020 Spring series was abandoned, due to the coronavirus enforced confinement. Their Angling Secretary will be looking at the match schedule, following the government’s Phase 2 Intermediate easing of restrictions, expected to include hunting and fishing as a sport.
Carp-R-Us Angling and Social Club of Rojales is a registered Angling Association in Spain.
It is recorded as a Sports Association in both Rojales and Valencia, resulting in the Club being able to join both the Valencian and Murcian Fishing Federations.
This week I caught up with former Rojales resident Rosemary le Messurier, who managed to do a spot of fishing in Guernsey in the Channel Islands during the coronavirus outbreak.
“I go fishing for a few hours, from dawn,” said Rosemary, who returned to Guernsey a few years ago after over a decade in Spain.
“I was the hunter-gatherer, with a bream of 1lb 6.5oz – and a spider crab,” said Rosemary, who formerly fished at Guardamar.
Rare spider crab caught by Rosemary in Guernsey.
Rosemary who has fished from a boat, down the River Gambia, and who once hooked a deadly poisonous sea snake, said: “Unfortunately I haven’t been able to keep busy with fishing, because of the lockdown.”
Guernsey went into lockdown on March 25, and the population were only allowed two hours for exercise each day, which included walking, cycling or swimming.
Due to no new cases of the virus in late April recreational fishing from land was added for family members, but not groups. Fishing from a boat is still banned.
“It was the first weekend that we had been able to fish in two months, prior to the lockdown the weather was too bad,” said Rosemary.
Regarded as an acceptable exercise during the coronavirus lockdown period, the Guernsey tradition is collecting ormers, a shellfish also known as European abalone. “These are akin to Australian abalone and locals love them – I haven’t acquired the taste.
“They cling to rocks and there are only a limited number of times they can be got, between January and April each year, when the tide is at its lowest,” said Rosemary, whose interest in fishing began in her early teens, during family holidays to south Devon.
“Living in South London at that time, fishing was limited to holidays, but my brother found he enjoyed the laid back style of freshwater fishing, and still goes to this day.
“I was lucky that my first husband preferred sea fishing. When we married we moved from South London to Maidstone, Kent, and spent weekend nights on the beach, near the Dungeness Power Station, Romney Marsh, Kent.
“More often than not, we returned home empty handed – when we did have a catch it would be a small codling,” she said.
Rosemary, who cast her return love of fishing in 1987, said: “It’s rare when we don’t bring home something. Bream or Pollack, and in the summer months, mackerel, turbot and bass – but it’s very rare to hook a spider crab.”
