Streams - Truttablog

The reachable, the authentic and the appealing.

Questions I ask myself: What if a trip to catch Golden Dorado or Milkfish is not reachable. What if GT’s and Jurassic Lake are beyond the reach of your pay-cheque? Will you dream instead of fishing? Or will you go explore that stretch of stream that has never featured on facebook? The one that looks a bit grim at the road-bridge lower down, and that would take a lot of effort to go explore. Or will you stick to the best “front-page waters” your pay-cheque and leave balance can get you to, in the hopes of getting closer to the

4 July 2016

Flouro knots …..and fables?

TTP (3) Tips, Theories & Pointers Local wisdom has it, that when using flourocarbon, in place of Mono, one should be mindful of the following knot issues: Flouro to mono knots are problematic, they slip Surgeons knots, done in Flouro, require you pass the tippet through the knot three times, not just two like you would with mono Perfection loops just don’t work with flouro. Period I did have some difficulty backing these claims/ideas up with a Google search. What I did do was to take a piece of 5X flouro, and tie a perfection loop in one end, and

23 June 2016

The J Vice

It is a masterpiece, and a beautiful thing!

3 June 2016

Are you being poisoned by your great grandfather?

Since I am more interested in rivers than history, I have yet to establish whether the original farms “Manor Farm” and “Brigadoon” actually share a common boundary or not. I have been busy working on a river instead of pouring over old surveyor general maps, which I would also like to do, if I could just find some time. What I can tell you is that you can see one farm from the other, and that the Umgeni River flows first through Brigadoon and then Manor farm. Brigadoon being on the southern bank, and Manor Farm on the northern one.

25 May 2016

Mynahs, Trout and Mielies

As a youngster, I was conditioned to hate Indian Mynah birds. They were an alien species, made a horrible noise and were often seen chasing other birds away from food. I once witnessed the neighbouring farmer’s wife shooting an Indian Mynah through the sash window , from well within the master bedroom, with a 12 gauge shotgun! KABOOM! I was not yet a teenager. That’s got to leave an impression! But then I noticed the bird appeared in the Roberts Bird book. That was puzzling, because it is not indigenous. And then Mynah bird’s range appeared to retract a bit,

22 April 2016

Mountains & Trout

Mountains & Trout [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfYfg0rjaTw&w=560&h=315] Vimeo: https://player.vimeo.com/video/162736307 Mountains and trout from Andrew Fowler on Vimeo. Vir die van julle wat die Afrikaanse woorde van hierdie liedjie ken, sal julle seker met my saam stem as ek se dat dit heelwat toepaslik is.

14 April 2016

Two men and a storm

We fished on up the stream. If anyone had been watching, and this far up there definitely would have been no one, but if they had, they would have seen two tough fly-fishermen. Fly-fishermen far from the comfort of a cottage or a car. Far even from a cave, or any other shelter, and plying their nymphs rhythmically and unaffected by the approaching storm. Relaxed fishermen, confident in their plodding steps. Bold and unaffected men. Guys who maintained a singular focus on the finesse and accuracy of their casts. Guys, who in the face of a darkening and foreboding sky,

23 March 2016

Peeping Inhlosane

A good portion of my personal fishing history, has developed upon a patch of landscape from which the Inhlosane mountain is in view. Often the mountain is barely in sight, when some fishing tale unfolds. It might be in the background at some obscure and seldom seen angle, or it might just be peeping over the horizon, its furrowed brow of wrinkled cliffs crowning the ridge, like some concerned Grandpa looking in. Like an elderly father figure, concerned for the way things might turn out. Its dome giving away its ever watchful presence from afar. The Inhlosane must have looked

14 March 2016

Umgeni River clean-up no 5

This is the third year that the Natal Fly Fishers Club (NFFC) is arranging volunteer days to clean up on the Umgeni river. The next two such days are 27th Feb (next Saturday) and 12 March. We are trying to rid the river of alien invasive wattle trees, restore good flows, terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity, and yes: good fly-fishing. Many South African fly-fishermen have probably read about this somewhere, so I won’t bore you with the background and history. If you do need any more info, you can visit this blog. This is just about the here and now and

20 February 2016

The writing of Seth Norman

The other day my friend and I did an exchange of sorts. He and his wife got oxtail. I got his left over beers, a good bottle of wine and the loan of a book. I should consider myself lucky. He would have digested the oxtail in a few hours, and I haven’t yet returned the last book he lent me. Truth be told the oxtail was an experiment: a mix of three rather dodgy looking online recipes, each of which attempt to condense the cooking time of oxtail from six hours to two, and none of which I followed

8 February 2016