This morning’s plane barreled down the runway, shedding hissing droplets, beneath a heavy sky, and its occupants were wrapped in winter jackets. This evening I sit on the porch in a summer rainfall region that I call home. And it is hot. And it is winter.
Well, sort of. It is that between-month of August. August with its hot winds, cool nights and smoke brushed skies. The month of burnt grass, cold water, paper dry skin and frayed tempers. The month in which we are not yet permitted to fish rivers. Which is a moot point, for there are no rivers….just sluggish trickles, like shadows that stayed behind after the rivers ran seaward.
The stillwater fishing has, by all accounts, been pretty miserable, and the rivers are off bounds. So I feel a little robbed. The bloke in the fly shop in Cape Town sighed and said “Oh well, for us, we have no option: winter is just fly tying season”. I felt a twinge of envy. He hadn’t been robbed of anything. He did say though that 1 September was probably going to be a meaningless date, since the rivers would still be dangerous to put one’s toe into.
Our 1 September, one might argue, is equally meaningless. Sluggish water, algae, hot rocks.
And go figure: we live in the same country!
But I will say, if the KZN river fisherman can turn a blind eye to the aesthetics of it all, and go chuck a high calorie offering into some gloomy pool somewhere, there are Trout to be bagged. Hungry ones!