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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

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

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

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

Photo of the moment (85)

The indigenous, shade loving “snake lilly” , AKA “Blood Lilly” often found on steep slopes and in pockets of bush beside out Trout streams in spring.

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5 September 2017

Hope and despair

There are two river valleys I know in Trout country  that cause me despair. There are two others that give me hope. Let’s get the despair out of the way. If you have ever driven up the lower Pitseng pass from the turnoff outside Mt Fletcher, up to Vrederus on the plateau below Naude’s Neck Pass , you may have noticed the stream running parallel to the road for a long way. Perhaps you did not. You could be forgiven for not noticing it, because if truth be told, you seldom see it. It is completely inundated with wattle trees.

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29 August 2017
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