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.
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,
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
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
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
The buzz and blur of youth. It was a time when our fly-fishing tackle was of poor quality, but our experiences were not. We were impoverished in material things, but bailed out by parents who put wheels under us, and held back enough not to quell our thirst for adventure. They were as brave in letting us go, as I am fearful of letting my own kids go, thirty years on. I saw my son off at a bus station in the dodgy part of town this morning. My parents drove me to a campsite in a luxury vehicle, and
I arrived back from a business trip to the north starved of music. During that week, in a country where the power authority is lobbying for 25 hrs of load shedding per day, work and discussions of work, left no space for music. But on my return domestic servants were bopping and jiving in front of a sink full of dirty dishes to the new “fall song”. Very catchy! The middle Mooi was also apparently bopping and jiving in a brown sort of way. There had been heavy rain up on Allandale, and the algae is being flushed out of
Sitting at home in Maritzburg, Durban, or wherever else one hails from, a flyfisherman is plagued with the problem of not knowing what the Trout waters up there in the hills are looking like. I am off to work soon, but had the good fortune of trundling around in the Kamberg area over the last few days. So here is an update for those of you lucky enough to still have some leave: We are still very much in the grip of drought, in that many dams are very low, and rivers have still not had a “spring flush”. The
The method one uses to connect your fly line to your leader, has been a topic of discussion for a long time. It might be true to say that most flyfishers use a loop to loop connection. This preference is fuelled by the fact that most fly lines now come with a welded loop on the end. This certainly is an easy and versatile way of going about things. It is very easy to change your entire leader at any time. The downside is bulk and “catchiness”. By that I mean that a loop to loop connection, and in particular
“Forget your perfect offering. There is a flaw in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen I had this new line. It was heavy in the forward part, and arguably more of a five weight than a four. But it was really awesome. I fish a five on that rod anyway, and I was worried that the four may be too light. I need not have worried. I took it out on a hot Saturday afternoon and gave it a throw on the nine foot rod out on the lawn. All good. Very good! It was time to
