Spate

On Saturday we were out fly-fishing in the Underberg area. We had a storm in the early afternoon. Nothing special: just some wild wind, and 10mm or so of rain, and later the front moved in with a cool wind, a rumble of thunder and some rolling mist. Back home in Hilton that night I could hear a little rain on the veranda roof. That was it.
On Sunday, we took a drive under grey skies up to the Mooi River.
Wow:


Up at Silverdale the bridge was also not passable. A forlorn man stood on the far side of the bridge, with a look on his face that suggested that he was carefully calculating when he would be able to undertake his shopping trip to town , and how long his groceries would last.

Cutting across to the South we had a look at the Upper Umgeni.

This is normally tiny pocket water, which one gazes at with mild interest, wondering if it is worth flicking a fly into.

It was there that we met a young man who was staying up at Lake Lynhurst. He reported that it had rained all night, that the lake was dirty, and that the Umgeni Vlei is now a lake!
A little further on we had a look at a tiny little stream that we know:

From a spot higher up the hill we could hear the roar of another stream further along the escarpment. One with no name, that I have never seen, let alone heard before.
We stopped on the bridge over the Lions river, and that was of course roaring too. Further down at Lidgeton it had burst its banks, and flooded the Vlei there.
So in summary, the river fishing for Trout in KZN has been knocked out for a while. But remarkably, the Trout seem to withstand this violent change to their normally genteel environment, and within a few short weeks we will be fishing gentle glides, and trying to remember what all this flooding was like.
I hope.