Session Report ยท Portugal ยท April 2026
There’s a version of this trip report where I tell you about the largemouth bass we stacked up across two Portuguese reservoirs, the zander that came out of that recessed arm at sunset, the perfect morning light bouncing off flat water while three rods bent in unison.
That’s not what happened.
What happened was a broken line, a self-releasing bass, one lad who kept snagging the bottom and needed his knot retied seventeen times, another lad who nearly took a carp to the bank on ultra-light tackle before his old man intervened at exactly the wrong moment โ and two days of proper, unglamorous, absolutely irreplaceable fishing.
The Setup
H and D live in Portugal. I live in the UK. We get a handful of weeks together each year, scattered across the calendar like dropped coins. Fishing is one of the things that closes the distance โ not metaphorically, in the way someone might write on a motivational poster โ but practically. You’re standing next to each other. You’re watching the water. There’s something to talk about that isn’t the awkward business of catching up, and there’s something to focus on when the words run dry.
H is the younger one. Still at the age where a lure twitching through the wrong depth and suddenly drawing a follow is enough to keep him locked in for hours. D is firmly, defiantly in full teenage mode โ permanently bored, except when he’s gaming or fishing, two situations where he becomes suddenly, completely alive.
We arrived at my parents’ village in the afternoon. Bags down, rods out โ because that’s the right order of priorities. We hit a large reservoir before the light went. Largemouth bass country. The water was high from winter rains, the margins flooded out, structure harder to read than usual.
Day One Afternoon: H and the Carp
I was busy with D. He was learning the uni-to-uni knot โ a rite of passage โ fingers going through the loops with the focused frown of someone defusing something. H was off on his own stretch of bank with his telescopic rod, a 1โ8g rated thing that has no business landing anything serious.
Rig:ย 2g jighead ยท Maverick Micro Pulse 5cm ยท Braid to fluorocarbon leader (uni-to-uni)
Then we heard the drag.
That thin, urgent sound a reel makes when something has decided it’s leaving and your gear is the only thing standing in the way. H had seen a fish โ he told me later, with the authority of someone who has been watching water for years, that he spotted a flash of a big fish cruising through the shallows and cast in front of it. It took. And it ran.
I turned to see the rod doubled over, H holding on, feet braced, doing everything right. I left D mid-knot and jogged over. The fish โ a carp, a good one from the fight โ was still going. I reached down and tightened the drag slightly, just a touch, just enough.
The line went.
Braid to leader junction. I hadn’t retied it since the last session. My fault, entirely, no footnotes. H looked at the limp line, then at me. He didn’t say anything for a second. Then: “That was a big fish, Dad.”
It was. And I lost it for him. I’ve been fishing long enough to know that the ones that get away write better stories. But standing next to a kid whose first proper fight just ended on a fraying connection point you should have checked โ that one stings a bit.
I’ve retied that junction since. For the record.
Day One Continued: The Bass That Left on Its Own Terms
We carried on. The reservoirs out here are vast, especially at winter flood levels โ you’re fishing against a landscape that has temporarily rearranged itself and isn’t interested in making things easy.
I hooked a largemouth bass on a black and purple chatterbait, tipping it with one of our 4″ SlickSwim paddle tails in an experimental reddish colourway I’d been testing. Decent fish. It came up, jumped, shook its head with that particular fury largemouth have when they’ve decided they’ve had enough, and threw the hook mid-air with the casual competence of a fish that has done this before.
We watched it go. No more action until the light went. We called it.
Day Two: Cold, Windy, and Mostly Me
We came back at sunrise with the optimism that only a blank day followed by a night’s sleep can generate.
The second reservoir was bigger, more exposed, and by the time we arrived it was cold, cloudy, and the wind was cutting across the water in that flat, determined way that makes fishing feel like a test of character rather than a leisure activity. D and H stayed in the car. I can’t blame them.
I worked the banks for an hour. Nothing moved. We drove to a spot we know โ a smaller arm of a nearby lake where a stream feeds in, the water deeper and sheltered, the kind of place that holds fish. We’d had zander here before. Zander are what we’d been genuinely hunting โ that subtle, low-slung predator that doesn’t announce itself until it’s too late.
The cows weren’t around. This matters. There are herds out here that treat the bank as personal property and have the temperament to enforce it. With the coast clear, we walked out along the arm, three rods into the water, fishing soft plastics across the bottom in water that looked like it should be producing.
What it produced was snags.
Repeated, patient, occasionally profane snags. Retying knots for kids is part of the deal. You do it without complaint because it means they’re still fishing, still interested, still on the bank with you instead of on a screen.
And here’s the thing about D โ the one who is always bored. He never stopped. Cast after cast, snag after snag, retie after retie. He kept beating the bank long after most kids his age would’ve handed the rod back and gone looking for a signal. That persistence โ that refusal to sit down โ is the single most important trait a young angler can have. Technique can be taught. Gear can be upgraded. But the willingness to keep working the water when nothing is happening? That’s not something you can buy. Both my boys have it, and I’m quietly proud of that.
Big carp were showing all over the surface. Rolling, cruising, entirely unbothered by us. The zander, if they were there, were keeping their own counsel.
We packed up as the light faded. No fish in the net. Rods back in the car, drive back through the cork forests, the boys half-asleep in the back.
What It Was Actually About
Here’s the thing about fishing with your kids when you don’t get much time with them: the fish are the excuse, not the point.
H is going to remember that carp fight. The sound of the drag, the bend in the rod, the freight-train run of something big through shallow water. He’s going to tell that story โ probably already has. The ending (his old man tightening the drag at exactly the wrong moment) will get funnier every time.
D tied a uni-to-uni knot on a cold Portuguese morning. He kept casting when there was every reason to stop. Those aren’t small things. They’re the building blocks of someone who’ll be a serious angler one day โ and on current evidence, he already is.
I got to stand on the bank next to both of them for two days.
No fish. No problem.
Maverick Tackle lures are handmade in the UK for UK freshwater predators โ and apparently, Portuguese reservoir carp with a taste for a 2g jighead. Full range at mavericktackle.com.