Sorry for not dying

September is typically characterised by such things as heat waves, snow, drought and gales, mixed with lovely blossoms, veld fires and greenery.  This September was no different. If I scan the above list, I believe ‘snow’ was missing this year, but last year we had snow in the first week of October, so in a way nothing is atypical yet. It might feel atypical, but that is just our oscillating take on things. This year, the mix of the above has delivered us low clear water. Nothing unusual about that at all. In fact I think this state of affairs

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“On the Prod”

It is a term my fishing buddies and I have adopted over the years. It refers specifically to Brown Trout, and it is an attempt to describe their behaviour when they are prevalent, on the feed, and generally visible to the observant flyfisher. Browns, as we all know, are fickle things. They have a habit of disappearing, both in stillwater and in streams. Their apparent disappearance is a very common cause of comments about inadequate stocking, or the catastrophic effects of a drought, or deep suspicions and conspiracy theories about sinister fish-kills. I too have fallen for their tricks and

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I thought that looked familiar, Kehlamehlo

  Forgive me for sharing the exact same picture a second time, but I thought this was too good not to. See the picture taken by me recently and posted here on Truttablog (Photo of the moment no 46). Hopefully you realised that there is a trout in there Now look at the picture below. It is a picture taken by Tom Sutcliffe on a stream he frequents. Tom showed me a stream recently, and after we had fished it, I returned a few days later with my wife for a casual hike (I was under strict “no fishing” rules!)

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Spotting Trout in stillwater

A piece of open stillwater can be  a bland thing. The other day Neil and I were out on some lovely, but somehow dull water. There was a dead calm, and we didn’t see or touch a fish.  I suggested that the day was a good advert for stream fishing. But sometimes it is very different. Today I was out alone on a small piece of water. Being mid winter the water was crystal clean, but more importantly the light was right. Light is so important in fly-fishing, but the right light is also so very difficult to describe. Suffice

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