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Delicate Tributaries

My friend Keith had been told that there were Trout in a small tributary of the Umgeni that passes under the road a few kilometers south of Everglades Hotel. There were no Facebook posts, no Google search results, and no Whatsapp groups that could confirm this. It was a time before all these things.  There were also no newspaper articles or books on the subject. There were just a few words spoken, and that was enough. It strikes me as a time of both innocence and inquisitiveness ,that on that information alone Keith went fishing. Tom Sutcliffe similarly related to

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6 November 2017

Coffee and quotes

My hiking buddy said I would burn my eyebrows off with this thing. I bought it anyway.  Turns out he wasn’t far off the mark. There was this little incident last year, you see. But enough about that. It’s a fantastic little thing, and it requires finess and skill to make it really hum. Not like one of those little gas cannister things that you just switch on and light.  You would have to read Pirsig to understand. This photo was taken in that little sheltered spot under the Nchi shi bushes at Highmoor. It is the perfect spot to

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23 October 2017

Rest days

I don’t know about you, but after a day which typically involves say 2 hrs in the car, 8 hrs on a river, and traversing say 7 to 12 kms of rough territory, I need a break.  Call me soft, but at least half of that “traversing” involves getting in and out of the stream, boulder hopping, and  scrambling, and it is normally with a pack on my back that is heavier than it need be.  To add to that, I may have fished for 8 hrs and driven for 2, but the number of hours between when I left

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18 October 2017

Coffee and quotes

“Two blank days:  Not a very interesting subject?  Perhaps not.  But if you feel like that about it, pass on” From GEM Skues, Itchen Memories, which was published in 1951, after his death. The coffee is “1000 hills”, a bean from Rwanda. When I stopped in at Ground Coffee House the barista persuaded me to have a flat white, and not my normal cappuccino. “Cappuccino is just all milk….you really want a double so that you can taste this bean, because its brilliant”. he said I agreed, and while I was there I bought a bag of beans. A good

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6 October 2017

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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29 September 2017

Midge designs explored

  With thoughts of reverse tied flies running through my head, and the recent sound of buzzers hovering in the cattails at the lake shore, I tied up these midge emergers: Upside down: you know….get the hook point up into the hackle and have all that steel less obvious. The other benefit, is that your tippet is tied to something under the surface. If you consider this the dropper and  tie a point fly on the eye of the dropper fly you have this: …. and then you use a very small larva pattern to sink off the point and

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19 September 2017

Named Pools of the Umgeni

I love maps. Let’s do a  drill-down to my nearest Trout Stream here in South Africa: Firstly, for those outside of South Africa…. see below: Then, below is the detail of that purple rectangle above: And below again: Detail of that red elipse above, showing the major Trout Streams of the KZN Midlands. (the red dots denote the source of each stream. The copper line shows a significant ridge of high ground, with altitudes in metres above sea level along it. ) Pick out the Umgeni River above, and here below is a general locality map of the area closer

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15 September 2017
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