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We should really stock carp here

At the tender age of seventeen, I would have been hamstrung and home-trapped, had it not been for Plunkington. Plunkington was eighteen years old. He also, as luck would have it, had both a driver’s license, and a car that got us to fishing water with almost respectable reliability. There was a time, the memories of which are sufficiently hazy, that I struggle to place it in the continuum that was my growth into fly-fishing, in which that car transported us to Midmar. Midmar, small tents, mealie pap, and carp. Deck chairs and booze from brown paper bags completed the

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29 September 2016

Bill Miller’s flies

My Friend Jay Smit recently returned from the States, bearing gifts from his host in Boise, a week or two earlier.  The ever generous Jay, invited me to put my paws in the cookie jar, and take a look at what I pulled out!…….   Wow! Thank you Jay, and thank you Bill!

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23 September 2016

An eagle’s flight over Trout country

If you were to stand on the top of Giants Castle , at the source of the Lotheni and Bushmans rivers,  (LINK) and send an eagle in a straight line, at a bearing of 115 degrees,  to the top of Inhlosane mountain, the eagle would fly off from your feet at 3100metes above sea level. It would cross the source of the Elandshoek, which peels off to the right (the tributary of the Lotheni that joins the main river opposite the camp site), then it would cross the source of the Ncibidwane flowing away to the North, and on the

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20 September 2016

Reverse flies: Upside down and the other way around.

In April this year, a man by the name of Kenneth Einars posted these pictures on Facebook: Interesting aren’t they!  And beautifully tied too. These immediately sparked my interest, because I had recently read Peter Hayes’ excellent book “Fly Fishing outside the box”, where, in chapter 3 he makes a rock solid argument for having your adult dun imitation  facing upstream if there happens to be a downstream wind. Hayes is a deep thinker, and a great writer, and throws old ideas wide open for re-consideration. That’s what he has done with the idea of having your adult mayfly imitation

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13 September 2016

Kolbe, Kocherthaler, Cartwright and Cane.

I recently became the custodian of some classic fly fishing tackle.  That is to say, it was not given to me, but circumstances dictate that I must look after this stuff for a while, (and I am not saying any more than that!) Petro and I opened the heavy and elegant, but battered box on the lounge floor the other night over a good bottle of red. The box was engraved, and inside, apart from the Palakona  cane rod, Hardy’s leaders in muslin inserts, reels, tiny trout flies, and the like, were two fishing permits. So from this, and the

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23 August 2016
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