Current Fly Fishing Conditions
KZN Trout fishing conditions: Flyfishing in the KZN Midlands and adjacent Drakensberg:
I am not a full time, reliable source of all water conditions, but I endeavor to share as much news on current fly fishing conditions as I can . My info is Trout centric, and is gathered from my various trips (fly fishing and otherwise) across the KZN Midlands, and stuff readers and friends tell me about. I don’t blow fishing spots and I don’t cover the whole province. The news is mainly about rivers in the area from the uMkhomazi basin in the south to the Injasuthi in the north, with some stillwater info thrown in here and there.
If you have crossed a bridge, or visited a river, and would be willing to share your news, please do drop me a message (by clicking here) and I will share your news with full acknowledgement…or anonymously if you would prefer.
I hope this page is useful to those like me, who are always seeking out opportunities to get in a few hours fishing here and there.
Enjoy.
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Planning a trip to these parts? Want to know what KZN Trout fishing conditions you can expect in the KZN midlands and central berg at a particular time of year!
This section has just the updates from the current season, or last few months. If you would like to scan through the historical reports from 2020 through to what appears here, you can view the history in this LINK
Check in: 17 January 2025
In the last 4 days I have been out doing what scientists call “field work”. That has taken me over bridges on the Inzinga and uMngeni and a host of tributaries. Those rivers are roaring and dirty, just like the picture I saw of the Mooi at The Bend about 3 days back.
And we keep on getting sprinklings of more rain, after the over 100mm in about 10 days that we have now had.
So the soil is saturated (part of what I was measuring in the field), and all sprinklings of rain add pretty quickly to river flows.
It was interesting that when I passed the Midmar dam wall around 6 am yesterday, water was just licking over the top. When I returned around 5pm, it was pouring over!
During that time I was, amongst other things, doing water sampling on the upper uMngeni, where I encountered visibility of 73 cms (through a peat stain) and temp of 15.7 on the now-not-so-diminutive Poort stream, and down at Chestnuts 28cm (muddy!) and 17 degrees C.
So we have water, and we have good water temperatures. We just need a few rain-free days for the rivers to clear up and drop to levels where we aren’t at risk of being swept away. Some obsessive weather watching is on the cards!
Check in: 31 December 2024
The day before yesterday I stopped to see if I could help a couple whose Landrover was giving them some mechanical trouble. It turns out they carried some wire and pliers with them (standard Landrover rescue kit) and didn’t need my help. But since we were stopped beside the Amanzinyama and the view was fine, I lingered a while and chewed the fat while said wire solution was contemplated. Turns out they had been camping at Lotheni since about mid month, and although neither fished, they had kept an eye on the river. They reckon that to start with (mid December) it was a lot lower than they normally experience on this annual pilgrimage of theirs. Then there was some rain, and the level rose, but it puzzled them that the river was way more coloured than the flow suggested it should have been. Funny thing is that a mate who fished it a week earlier told me the same thing.
Either way we exchanged weather commentary there at the roadside and agreed that it had been particularly hot. The following day was a bruiser too. And my still water foray saw surface water temps at 24 degrees C. And a lone Trout which I feel guilty even fishing for.
I heard elsewhere that a bloke with big fishing plans, cancelled and stayed home by the pool.
But today is cooler (albeit humid as hell), and the Inzinga and Amanzinyama and Rooidraai were all coloured from a storm flush, and might have been cooler. And as I type this there is a roll of thunder.
Check in: 23 December 2024
The Hlambamasoka received a storm dump over the weekend, which turned even the main Lotheni a chocolatey colour, but only below that confluence. From Folly bridge up it was as clear as a bell, but it has to be said that the whole river, even down where it was dirty, was surprisingly low. We have just had a rainstorm here in Hilton, and the prediction was for these to be widespread, so as is usual with these summer reports, my info is probably outdated already.
What I will say is that the river was unbelievably hot. It was also quite busy. But here’s the thing: we saw two father and son duos fishing, and we bumped into my friend Robyn and her lady friend on the river. Pukka fly fishers, throwing light lines, respecting the environment and enjoying a berg river in a way that doesn’t demand a winner. I’m good with that.
We had a few fish rise to our dries, but it was very slow, as you can expect in such warm low water.
The uMngeni was no doubt just as warm, dare I say worse, but it was flowing stronger where we crossed it at the Chestnuts bridge.
The uMkhomazi was dirty down at the Stoffelton bridge, but I would imagine it too would have been clean (and probably low) up in the berg.
The Mooi, Bushmans, Injasuthi? Hell…I don’t know. But if I did, and if I knew yesterday, it will likely be different today.
And different again tomorrow.
Check in: 19 December 2024
I crossed the Inzinga this week, and was surprised to see how low and clear it was. Mind you, my mate Ray said the Bushmans was like that on Monday too. I think he got caught in the same storm which I heard rumbling and hissing off to the north of where I was. The one that chased us home too.
The stillwater I visited was a tiny bit off colour, probably from the wind action of last Thursday’s rather extreme gale. (and heat!) A tributary of the Bushmans was also that colour, but I think that was from a storm which hit there, and nowhere else.
The uMngeni and the Poort have been crystal clear and getting lower, and there is no knowing if the current soft rain will lift the levels of those and other berg streams without dirtying them.
All I know is that the coming week we are expecting widespread (note…I didn’t say evenly spread) rainfall. That will bring some welcome cool, but could also bring some unwelcome dirty water. We will just have to venture forth and see what we can get.
If a friend’s report back is anything to go by, they will be the usual 9 to 15 inch river Browns, and we could get half of them on the nymph and the other half on a dry. And the pattern won’t matter much.
Check in: 11 December 2024
Let’s just say that my butter is VERY soft.
I peeked in at the upper uMngeni yesterday on my way to a (very early to beat the heat) site inspection, and it was running very clear, but still with good flow.
Two mates fished a high altitude lake off towards Lotheni a few days back, and really struggled in strong wind. Despite very good returns on that water a few days prior, they struggled.
But they did get a fish each, and one of them was a Brown which looked more like 6 pounds than 5.
Check in: 2 December 2024
We seem to be having a mix of blistering hot weather and high rainfall. Last Monday (and Tuesday) were unbearably hot, even up in the hills. Interestingly, (I must share this with you!) On Tuesday I was about 500m away from a large indigenous forest up near Fort Nottingham, and out in the open sun. It felt hot, by my bakkie thermometer read 24 degrees C. I then drone about 2 kms away from the forest, same altitude, and the temp was 30 degrees C. So there’s some evidence of the cooling effect of intact, indigenous forests. As if to prove that, a pal and I fished the very upper reaches of the uMngeni on Saturday, and the water temp stayed fixed on 18,5 degrees C all day. We were fishing a stretch that comes out of the forest.
That water was clear, which was pleasing, since last Wednesday I measured 50mm (2 inches) in 4 hours of rain, and it seems to have been widespread across the midlands and the berg.
If this is anything to go by, all the KZN rivers will have been full over the week-end, but the higher stretches will have been clean (and cool). The relatively cool weather has persisted, and I see no long hot spells, or heavy rain, forecast for the coming week.
My recent fishing suggests that, unless you hit it lucky, the Browns want a deep sunk nymph, rather than a dry. I am doing my usual thing with a small, compact (“fluffless”) nymph like a pheasant tail, with a flashback thorax cover, on a #18 hook. That is to say, a Grip Egg hook, which has a wonderfully wide gape and sharp point.
Check in: 18 November 2024
We are suddenly thrust into the mid-summer mayhem when it comes to weather predictability. The uMngeni was looking superb, then there was 100mm of rain in its catchment in a week. But that dirtied up the Furth stream, and not the main stem, which just got a dose of summer tannin stain. The combination looked brown in the photos from Chestnuts on Saturday, but apparently it was not as bad as the photos suggested and you could still see a fly in it.
Then the Mooi was a bit coloured up on Sat morning, but the Reekie Lynn stream was crystal clear, and that combo was good enough: I saw 3 anglers out on the river that day. By evening the main Mooi was looking marginally cleaner, and the Reekie Lynn was blown out, with another storm in its catchment as I drove through there.
The Hlatikulu remained blown out all week-end.
My pal on the Bushmans said the river was the colour of “Sprite” when I called him on Friday. A word of advice: If your Sprite is grey, don’t drink it! Anyway, it seemed to be clearing during Saturday, but then after swirling storms all day one of them stuck…stuck lots of hail to the face of the Giant that is, and then the river was rising and still not “Sprite”. But the Bushmans clears quickly and I reckon you could head out there as long as you are prepared to lower your standards and swing a Woolly Bugger.
I can confirm that it still works.
Highmoor was slow, and hot on Sunday, and hot is what to expect now if the sun is up in the morning. Hot, with the prospect of rumbling storms as early as 10:00 am.
But if you take a hard hat for the hail, sunscreen for the roasting, and a Woolly Bugger for the Trout, you should be fine. All you will have to worry about is the lightning.
Oh and the snakes maybe….
But damn, when you hit it right, with all that fresh water pumping through the system, and a good Trout in strong flow…It is very worthwhile!
So don’t stay home.
Check in: 7 November 2024
My friends at the Bushmans tell me that the colour of the river is that of “Stoney Ginger Beer” after recent rains.
Yesterday, the uMngeni at Chestnuts was more like “milo”, except that is was more orange/yellow than that. Unfortunately that is the result of a big dam spillway upstream on the Furth stream that is eroding badly. What that does mean, is that the river above the Furth’s confluence with the uMngeni is actually rather clean and fishable.
The surprising one is the Mooi. All the rain seems to have by-passed this one, and my assessment yesterday is that while it is not horrifically low, it definitely is in need of a damn good flush. The Reekie Lynn stream was also low.
The water was a little brown and lacked a freshness to it, notwithstanding that it was quite clear enough to fish.
Clear enough perhaps, but the Trout were positively un-cooperative at Riverside yesterday. That is three slow days on the Mooi in the last month.
I am starting to develop a complex.
Check in: 27 October 2024
The Mooi was clean yesterday below the falls at Reekie Lynn. And flowing well. You couldn’t have asked for more. (except perhaps for more evidence that there are Trout there).
The water was 18 degrees C at mid afternoon. Very pleasant.
Stillwaters: I heard news of some good Rainbows caught on a local syndicate up near Impendle: some stockies, and some fish of 20 inches….so not all fish were affected by lockjaw it seems.
Check in: 24 October 2024
Rainfall figures everywhere vary from 60 to 75mm. Fantastic!
The uMngeni at Chestnuts is coloured, but it seems mainly so from the Furth stream, which was pumping yesterday. The Poort stream is quite a bit stronger than the main stem of the uMngeni at the moment, was a bit coppery yesterday, but much better today, and the main stem is crystal clear but flowing rather well.
The Mooi at The Bend looks like this today:
Check in: 21 October 2024
The week-end was soggy and cool. Perfect Brown Trout weather you may think. I thought that too. But if there’s one thing about Browns, they are unpredictable. The river was low, but not in a sad way, and it was wonderfully clean. I had some knicks, bumps and scratches, and my mate Noel landed just one 12 incher on the mid uMngeni..
then we went in search of a brass rail to put our feet on while drying out.
A mate fished one of the high altitude lakes. He didn’t really cream it either.
Today has been cold. Too cold for rain of any consequence, I thought. The Norwegians (YR) were right. I was wrong. It is bucketing down as I write this, with thunder an lightning to boot.
Wonderful, I’d say!
Check in: 11 October 2024
Yesterday, I had occasion to chat to a farmer who looks after a lovely piece of water on the Nsonga. We chatted about its resident Loch Leven browns: a topic that gets me going. He said that the fish have bred well this winter, which is pleasing and somewhat of a relief.
I say a relief, because both he and another farmer from Fort Nottingham confirmed that they are experiencing weather as dry as the inside of a Simba chips packet. Here in Hilton we have had 75mm since opening day, but everywhere in the hills seems to have had 30 in total, and a lot of warm dry weather since.
Add to that the REALLY hot weather over the last two days, and things don’t look so good for the Trout. The Poort and the uMngeni right up at the top were as clean as it gets this week, and more than a bit low. Chestnuts had plenty of water to cover a Loch Leven leviathan, but the water temp was up as high as 22 degrees in the heat of the day on Wednesday.
Another friend described the Lotheni as “just a trickle”.
So the rain that my weather app is predicting next week will be very welcome indeed. It is hard to believe that they are predicting air temps of just 7 degrees, and today was 30!
On the stillwaters: Sorry: I really have no news at all!
Tight lines! (for when it cools down I mean. You wouldn’t fish in this would you?)
Check in: 27 September 2024
While it looks to me that the uMngeni has fared best in terms of water level after the snow and rain of last weekend, the Mooi and Little Mooi don’t look quite so good. Yet.
Reekie Lynn stream:
Mooi at Riverside
Little Mooi:
I reckon the Bushmans is better:
This despite so many snow-broken trees from Balgowan to Mooi River. Either way, all of them are fishable, and I reckon the Lotheni will be similar, as will the uMkhomazi after the collective 40 to 60mm of rain and snow in the last 2 weeks. Certainly the water table will be up, and much of that first flush of opaque dusty stuff will be largely gone. So with more rain and snow predicted from tomorrow through Monday, things are looking promising.
What was surprising to me yesterday was the almost completely melted snow on the berg, and water temps which peaked at 19 degrees at 3 pm!
There were some trout about. Not a lot, and they didn’t seem to want to come to a dry, but they were there:
(Thandabantu beat: Bushmans)
Check in: 25 September 2024
The uMngeni is looking rather good
Check in: 24 September 2024
My weekends have involved a wedding, and then some snow, and I cant remember what else, so my fishing news is scant.
I can tell you that we had 24 mm of rain last Tuesday, and that it was widespread across the midlands of KZN. The uMngeni was up, but also opaque from the first dust washing, as it were. Then on the weekend we had that snows and rain. I measured another 38mm . I don’t know what others got, but either way, It was widespread as you well know.
And today we have sun and warmth.
So if you stand still for long enough, something will grow right through you. It would be better to move. Go fishing perhaps.
The water will be cold, if my swimming pool is anything to go by, but I reckon that by Friday it will have warmed enough to get us back to where the fish are likely to be on the prod. That is my theory anyway.
A mate tells me that there aren’t as many fish in the Bushmans this year as there were last, but that he is averaging fish around 12 to 13 inches, and got a 16 inch fish two week-ends back.
That’ll do.
Check in: 2 September 2024
Interestingly, there seems to have been a higher than usual attention on opening day. Maybe it is just that I was somehow more aware of it this year.
Either way, the Bushmans seems to have been occupied by anglers top to bottom. The few pictures I saw showed the river dry as a bone, but more so up at Giants Castle than down on the community waters. Up in the park, my friend Jan tells me they had a big fire and while the veld is greening up, the pretty little hiking bridge below the parking spot went up in flames.
Some fish were caught all along the Bushmans, but not in great numbers. I heard that some guys had a blank on the Mooi. Some mates and I had plenty of action on the uMngeni.
Water temps seemed to be universally 11 degrees in the morning going up to 16 according to my friend Ray.
The fish seemed to be on the prod, doing crazy brown Trout stuff….chasing stripped flies, ambushing woolly buggers right under your feet, rising when absolutely no hatch was visible, that sort of thing.
Flow is low everywhere, but those deep green pools with cover, and a sunk fly (as opposed to a dry) seemed to be the recipe.
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Older water conditions posts:
This page starts to load very slowly if I leave too many of these posts on here, so what I do from time to time, is copy the older ones across to a document for posterity, and delete them off here. If you want a picture of what sort of KZN Trout fishing conditions to expect at any time of year here on the Brown Trout rivers of the central KZN midlands and berg, then look no further than this rich history.
Click HERE to open and read the conditions history