“Guess who just got back today? Them wild-eyed boys that’d been away haven’t changed, hadn’t much to say. But man, I still think them cats are crazy.”
“the nights are getting warmer, it won’t be long. Won’t be long til summer comes, now that the boys are here again”
Thin Lizzy, The Boys are Back In Town.
“I haven’t come to fish” I told Neil “I’ve just come to fetch that fish down there under that poplar”.
It was true. I had lured him here on the premise that Chestnuts is frog water, full of big browns that have come down to the slower, fertile waters to snack on small antelope, chickens, frogs, and whatever else finds its way into a slow meandering river with deep pools.
“It’s as long as my leg“ he later shouted across the big pool. Well, when he landed it, it was 19 inches. That would kinda explain why he wasn’t able to step over the single strand cow fence. Electric bollocks.
I don’t know how he caught that fish. I mean he pricked it first, cussed and swooned and crowed, and then a few minutes later he caught it. Not without some trouble I might say. It took sliding down a mud bank into the river, and batting the fish about with that net of his which has a net bag no deeper than a loosely strung tennis racquet.
I also don’t know how I missed the two-pounder down under the poplar tree roots at Walter’s Reach. I took on that fish with a war-like strategy. Sneaking, stalking, moving position, and ultimately cutting off my tippet and dangling a big fat juicy beetle imitation into its lair on the end of a vehicle recovery cable. The damned thing ignored the beetle, came out of its lair to see what on earth was going on. Spotted me just five foot above its head, and was gone in a panicked puff of silt.
Bugger.
Bugger the fish that snapped me off in the same pool later. Bugger the one that came off in the Big Pool. Both of them actually…one that thrashed, one that jumped. And thank heavens for the one that stuck. Thank heavens too for Neil with his damned fine net (I forgot mine at home)
I should have known when I started shooting video footage of my conquest of that big fish, that the conquest wasn’t going to happen. I’ve been sending video clips to Dr Harry in Cape Town every time I stalk this big fish, trying to make him jealous.
Jinxed it!
All my unsuccessful attempts are immortalised on film. Neil left his camera at the car, and he had a pearler of a day. Go figure. Later, over a big jug of local craft beer at Hebron Haven he was aglow at the fireside. Walking on air he was. Two records bust like my tippet, on a single day. Biggest river Brown ever, and then a bigger one an hour later. Fish seen, spooked, lost, bumped, tickled and scratched. Scratched like our legs on the brambles. We were muddied, and windswept and sun-reddened, but not yet stung. The nettles are just starting to green up. They will get us later. The electric fence however doesn’t wait for the season to warm, it is always on. The big browns won’t always be on. They come down to this frogwater to fatten up in spring. I am putting that peg in the ground now. Our day proved it, and so did the day before.
That day I was up at the top in the lilliput water, which was as thin as Lizzy. You could see a fish blink at a hundred yards, but they saw you before that. The ones I spooked, hooked and landed were small. Pretty, but small. There just wasn’t enough cover and colour in the water to hide a big one.
The scientists reckon that when the body fat level of these fish drops below a certain point they say “To hell with this!” and head down to Chestnuts, where there is algae and warmth and food. It is a matter of survival.
What the fish don’t know is that sometimes there are two nutty flyfishers down there, crawling about in the dust amongst the dry weed stalks, on a hot brassy windy morning, conspiring to stick it to them.
“Weather getting canky” PD said in his text from Balgowan. “Here too” I replied, “but Browns on the prod!”. I have to remind myself every spring, when the gum trees are bucking and my lips are cracking; when the dust is in my hair and when one has to poke around in tall dead grass looking for the river; that the Trout are ignoring the algae and going hunting in the frog water.
PS. If you happen to go down there looking for fish, and if you don goggles and snorkel, you will find a heap of weighted Woolly Buggers in all the logs.
I’ll cut you a deal…we can split the loot 50/50.
3 Responses
Absolutely loved this. Xx Dr Harry
Thanks Dr Harry. Just so you know, I don’t plan on letting up with those videos!