Stillwater - Truttablog

What’s in the box?

On Sunday I had one of those quiet days at home. After week-end, upon week-end of a days fishing plus a day of some other activity, I needed to re-group, and sort out my fishing tackle. Fly reels were turning up in cool-boxes in the kitchen, leaders in my briefcase, fly floatant smeared on my drivers license, that sort of thing. It was time to sort it all out. I also needed to empty the fly-patch, since I am sure I have been dropping flies off of there into bankside vegetation all over the province. So I emptied what was

10 September 2014

A crisp August morning

As we steered across the vlei and ascended the slight rise on the Western side of the valley floor, the strong yellow rays of the sun lit the hill, and at its base the coruscating blue water came into view in a narrow strip. The light was brilliant in its clarity, but gentle in its insidious arrival, and soft in hue. The cold, on the other hand, was brutal and harsh. The puddles were iced on the way in and, but for the fact that there was no moisture in the air, there would have been a frost as severe

24 August 2014

Silly Syllogisms

I often find that a thermometer is a poor measure of temperature, in terms of our experience of the fishing day. Leaving aside the wind chill factor, which we all know well, a thermometer reading tells very little about what it feels like to be out. Just the other morning, it was 13 degrees when I got up. On a winter’s morning, that is a very high overnight temperature, and one that on the face of it, should have the global warming guys saying “You see!”. But strangely it didn’t feel that warm at all. The thing is, that as

4 August 2014

Spotting Trout in stillwater

A piece of open stillwater can be a bland thing. The other day Neil and I were out on some lovely, but somehow dull water. There was a dead calm, and we didn’t see or touch a fish. I suggested that the day was a good advert for stream fishing. But sometimes it is very different. Today I was out alone on a small piece of water. Being mid winter the water was crystal clean, but more importantly the light was right. Light is so important in fly-fishing, but the right light is also so very difficult to describe. Suffice

20 July 2014

Bakkies, dust and lost reels

Every now and then, the eight to five world of suburbia, commitments and credit cards, releases me for more than just a day trip. In other words, every once in a while, I somehow find a gap, and head out on one of those fly fishing trips that involves a night or two in a fishing cottage. Not a few stolen hours, in which you are watching the time. I am talking about two or more days at a trot on the water. It is heaven! The anticipation of those trips is childlike in my case. It is childlike in

29 June 2014

Inchbrakie before and after

Before the Spring Grove dam. And after

21 June 2014

Stillwater Trout in KZN, A montage

9 June 2014

A chance encounter

If you carry a camera around on Trout waters long enough, you eventually bump into a co-operative Rainbow. It wouldn’t take a fly, but after I had photographed it, I caught it with my hands. Yes, I returned it. No, there were no witnesses.

2 June 2014

Journeys through the journal (7)

Plain “unsuccessful” days are the ones that don’t make for good magazine stories. They are however part of the tapestry of an outdoor life. The tiny inconsequential events on those days, are some of the the building blocks of a life of fly-fishing. It was the 28th May 2005. The plan was to fish an exclusive private water that Guy had access to in the Mooi River valley. I was excited at the prospect. It was not often that I got a chance to fish this water, and previous invitations to fish it had always turned into those red letter

18 May 2014

Picking them off

I was on the Eastern shoreline of a small lake that we sometimes fish. For my last minute day off from work, I had been blessed with mild sunny weather. It was April, and the blue sky was dotted with drifting puffy white clouds. There was a slight Northerly breeze. Just enough to ripple the crystal clear water. The fish were small. Tiny in fact. Last year’s stocking had clearly been a success, and as a result we would have to put up with these ankle biters until following seasons, by which time the fishing would no doubt be superb.

23 April 2014