Good Afternoon.

The preparation continues in earnest and I have just been to renew my three-month vacational licenza - that’s the Italian for license by the way. In Italy if you want to fish, then you need to get a type D license, and for three months this costs the humble amount of 16 Euros. I was informed that this license was all I needed, as far as the Lombardi region is concerned. If you fish out of this region then it seems you must buy the license for that region too, although this is where it can get confusing. I was reliably told that if you’re a tourist then the one license covers you in Italy, however, when we had the visit from the Guardia at the last lake, they informed me I needed a different regional license and also the separate Fipsas ticket which costs an additional 25 Euros. My advice to any would be traveller is this: Buy the regional license first. If you need to buy the other one because you are visited by the Guardia on the bank, then buy it if you are requested to do so. I will explain further why I advise this. I have been visited by the Guardia in the past and had only my regional license; this was sufficient and nothing was mentioned about the Fipsas, which is a private organisation incidentally and stands for the Italian federation of fishing and water sports. I think the Fipsas seems to covers certain stretches of lakes and rivers and only in certain regions. If in doubt ask at the fishing office at the provincial office, in any large town. To add more confusion! The regional licenses are paid for at post offices and the Fipsas is only purchased at tackle shops or on the bank. I hope you got all of that!

Tomorrow morning I drive to pick up my bait supply from IndyLine. They have kindly stored my surplus, and it also gives me a chance to give some useful feedback to IndyLine about some of their products that I have been using for the past three months. I have updated their sponsor page today with some of these products.

My boats are all prepared and sat on my trailer. I will be taking my large trailer boat to transport my equipment to my chosen swim and will be towing this with my Yamaha powered inflatable. This is the big task on Thursday morning and it will involve two trips no doubt  – I have the dogs don’t forget. I am taking more food and water supplies than normal, so I don’t get stuck, and I will probably be adopting my three bivvy set up!

The weather is truly glorious today and I have been smiling all day long. I am super keen to get started at the next lake and I am now off to do a big food shop to complete another stage of the preparation. I have also recently bought a new little gadget for my laptop. A small single rechargeable speaker system, made by a company called Puro. It now means I can have music at a level I can actually hear, rather than trying to hear the pathetic output from my laptop speakers. This little speaker actually amplifies the sound by more than ten times, and for 30 Euros it is the best little extra I have bought in ages. Highly recommended!

I also have finally found one vital piece of music that I have been searching for, since my beloved iPod crashed and burnt last year. I installed some software in Febuary, enabling me to legally download music using my little Internet stick. It is now possible for me to download music on the bank…how cool is that! It works so well in fact that on my last fishing session with Danilo, I asked him what album he would most like to listen to? Being a Reggae fan, he requested any Peter Tosh album. In ten minutes it was downloaded and playing; not really my taste incidentally! I have built up quite a library in the last few weeks, and the lost gem that I have finally recovered from Rapishare was the Aug 2001 Pete Tong Essential Mix from Space in Ibiza  - an absolute classic!

The next blog will hopefully come to you on Thursday evening from the bankside when I am all set up.

Cheers

Jake and the dogs.

Tags: Essential Mix, Fipsas, Guardia Pesca, iPod, jake langley-hobbs, Pete Tong, Peter Tosh, Puro, Rapidshare, Reggae, Space in Ibiza

This entry was posted on March 16, 2010 at 7:36 pm and is filed under The Italian Job!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.