Stillwater - Truttablog

Keepers

My friend Roy sent this to me the other day: “I grew up with parents who kept everything & used them time & time again! A mother, God love her, who washed aluminium foil after she cooked in it, then reused it. She was the original recycle queen before they had a name for it. A father who was happier getting old shoes fixed than buying new ones. Their marriage was good, their dreams focused. Their best friends lived barely a wave away. I can see them now, Dad in trousers, tee shirt and a hat and Mom in

9 July 2013

Showing the others a toffee

Over the years, there have been more occasions than I care to remember, where my colleagues have out-fished me a dozen to one, or where they have caught fish and I have not, or perhaps I caught all the small ones, and the other bloke landed several ‘lunkers’. Those are the days when you try to copy their retrieve. You borrow an identical fly, and then at some point they will start giving you advise, or let you take their spot. This just makes it worse, as you try desperately to bury that nagging human nature called competitiveness. I am

20 June 2013

You can’t catch a Trout with a yo-yo

A good many years back, we were out on a first class piece of water in the Kamberg valley, and I had my two young boys with me. They were really little guys at that stage. “Knee high to a grasshopper” as the saying goes. We were tackling up at the time, but the boys had got distracted, and just as I finished tying on a fly, I looked up to see they had diverted their attention to perfecting the yo-yo. It was in vogue at the time, and they were distractible youngsters, but as my gaze shot over to

16 June 2013

Doughnuts

I can’t be sure when I first stepped into a float tube. What I do know, is that on the morning of 29th June 1985 Roger Baert arrived on the farm, to come and help us see if we could catch some of the Trout we had stocked in our new dam. He was a little late: He had stopped on the way in to watch a duiker for a long while. I fished from the little rowing boat that my father had bought us, aptly named “DryFly”, and Roger fished from a float tube. Not just any float tube

10 June 2013

Big “Nasties”

As the weather gets bitingly cold, and the landscape loses the soft warm comforts of summer, one’s demeanour as a fisherman probably changes. By that I am suggesting that when you are out there in a cold wind, with waves coming in at you across a large stretch of cold water bounded by drab dry grass, and no sign of anything moving, you are less likely to fish a #18 emerger. Well I certainly am less likely to do so! Less likely that is, than when it is spring, and a soft breeze brushes a water surface occasionally disturbed by

31 May 2013

Up the creek without a net!

There was a time when I was less than diligent about carrying a net. It was in the days before magnetic net keepers, and at a time when long handled retractable nets were the order of the day on stillwaters. The problem lay in carrying the net. I’d clip it to my belt, but when I went to crouch down, it would hinge around and the handle would catch me in the groin unexpectedly. I would try shoving it down my trousers, which worked ok until you went down on one knee and it poked you in the sternum.

27 May 2013

Standing still

Many years ago, I used to fish stillwaters with a fellow by the name of Guy, who had bad knees. I don’t know how bad the knees were. All I know is that when I was crouching in the tall grass or beside a bush at the water’s edge, he was standing tall, because it was uncomfortable for him to crouch. So I was at an advantage. I could take cover just a little more than he could. So the fish were less likely to see me, and I would catch more fish. Neat! Except that it didn’t work like

10 May 2013

Waelcyrge

Waelcyrge is the Gaelic spelling of the word Valkyrie. And the Valkyries, are apparently winged figures of Anglo-Saxon mythology. They come swiftly over the battlefield after the dust has settled, and choose at random, the lucky souls that are destined to Valhalla (Heaven). And loosely linked to this, the Vikings may have brought to Britain when they invaded, the practice of planting Yew trees in their graveyards, as a means of linking the bodies below with Valhalla above. Yew trees still grow in English graveyards to this day. The first Viking king of Britain was King Canute, who was famously

4 May 2013

8 things to consider about sun gloves

I recently started wearing sun gloves when out fly-fishing. Here are my personal observations: 1. Sun protection. I suppose this has to be number one on the list. I started wearing them for this reason alone. I simply didn’t want my hands to look like my grandmother’s did, with large dark spots on the back, and with a leathery look, and regular little bleeding nicks. The gloves seem to do the job well, and considering that sun-cream washes off ones hands, the glove would be the way to go. We have harsh sun conditions here in South Africa, and one

23 April 2013

The call of a crane

A kind and generous friend recently asked me to describe to him in words, the sound of a crowned crane. I suppose it was because I had recently done a short piece on cranes. Perhaps it was because he hasn’t heard a crane before, but on reflection, I think it had more to do with him setting me a writer’s challenge: The sound of a crane comes on the wind. A wind that whisks through swaying grass, and moans off against the far hill, like air over an open bottle. A wind that briefly rattles the thousand paper leaves

22 April 2013