Stillwater – Page 18

Flowers in the veld

Us fly-fishermen are a fairly obsessive bunch. Obsessing about fish mostly, and everything to do with catching them. I certainly do. But as my good friend Roy has noticed, of late I have started to take note on the wonderful flowers we encounter when we go fishing. Here is a selection of what you can expect to see in the highlands of KwaZulu Natal if you take the time to notice. One day perhaps I will develop the skills required to identify them all properly, and maybe I will commit their names to memory.For now I just looked them up

9 March 2013

A gift from Bernard

Five years ago, I was given a wonderful gift. It was a Garmin e-trex vista HCX GPS. A nifty little handheld, waterproof “hiking type” unit, that slips into your jacket pocket. At the time, I was pleased to receive it, and was sure it would come in use out there in the veld somehow. But I had no idea how much I was to end up enjoying it. I suppose this has something to do with the fact that us humans are great measurers of things. And many of us outdoor types all the more so. Perhaps I speak for

24 February 2013

knotted leaders

I suspect that knotting ones own nylon leaders nowadays, is a little like carrying carthorse food in the boot of your car for a long trip. We have simply moved on. We have knotless tapered leaders, and they are great. Correct. We do. But I am an eternal fiddler of the piscatorial type. And none of the tapered leaders I have bought come with an explanation as to what taper they were designed on. None of them come with a boiled butt, or a switch in material from nylon to fluoro-carbon somewhere along their length. Tying your own tapered leaders

21 February 2013

A high and wild place

There is a place we visit, where the grass is short, and the Trout are strong. We often just walk there with a camera. Sometimes we take the dogs. Mostly we just take ourselves. It is a windswept place; stark and open. Even the streams and dams are hard to find. When you look across the apparently flat landscape, it belies the folds and valleys that secret its lovely waters. Some of our friends spend a lot of time driving to find those folds and their Trout. We park and walk more. It is cruel for its lack of shade

11 February 2013

Fishing cars

It is a simple fact that hardly anyone can afford to have a dedicated fishing car of any quality nowadays. There are those who have written about their fishing cars, but they were all somehow old “jalopies” (as we call them in South Africa), that made for a good story but were not reliable enough to provide a fishing trip of any comfort. So the reality is that the vehicle one goes to work in every day, has to double as your fishing car.With this in mind, any self respecting fly-fisherman, will of course choose his vehicle without any consideration

24 January 2013

Blogging on paper

This blog started in 1981. I know, ………………………..there were no blogs in 1981, and our computers still ran on paraffin. But the concept started back then, even though I didn’t know it at the time. In fact I only came to that realisation the other day, when my son was paging through my personal logbooks, and he remarked that what I had there was a blog on paper. That would be because my fishing log is so much more than that. From about 1983 I started recording every day’s fishing in the same format. The same format that you will

18 January 2013

A Fishing log

Nothing fuels the fires of nostalgic fly-fishermen quite like a fishing log. There are personal logs, and there are those old books that the farmer keeps for his water. The one for which he calls you into the light of his kitchen, to fill-in before you depart. They may be leather bound, or maybe just a simple book from the stationer in town, but either way the book will be tatty from age and use. And if it is not yet a little yellowed , just give it time.

13 January 2013

Camera on the water

For as many years as I have fished, I have carried a camera when I fish. At first, and being more than 30 years ago now, it was one of those entry level film cameras that was so rickety in its construction, that it threatened to let light in at any moment. It took awful pictures. Or perhaps more correctly, I took awful pictures, but it worked. I still have those awful pictures, and they are great, if you know what I mean.

9 January 2013

Christmas break

Today we closed up the office and all went home for the last time this year. The place was deserted early, the town had taken on a sort of festive quiet, if there is such a thing, and the common frame of mind was one of “It is done”. Christmas break. A time of hot bright mornings, violent aggressive afternoon storms, and the countryside a sea of waving green veld.

21 December 2012

Merciful professor of mathematics and Trout

Before leaving the hospital, I was careful to check with the surgeon that he did indeed recommend fly-fishing the following day as part of my recovery program. He confirmed that with my feet in the water and some beer going in the other end, my very recently attended to kidney would be happy as can be.By the following morning the effects of the general anaesthetic had worn off enough that when PD texted to say “are you up to this” I replied in the affirmative without hesitation, and he was forced to overcome his own stress induced lethargy, and come

5 December 2012