Truttablog

No cameras please

Ever had some amazing experience and said “damn….where was my camera when I needed it!”. We all have. But then there are times when you didn’t have the camera, and somehow in re-thinking the day, or the event, it was fitting that it never made it into the vault of evidence. As a schoolboy, I remember the master wishing I didn’t have a camera with me on the fishing trip when I took this photo: (Note the towel strategically covering the name of the school in question) There was the time I went on a flyfishing festival many, many years

15 August 2018

Berg winds: Someone keep count please.

Saturday was number one of five. Five. That’s the number of berg winds you have to have before you get decent spring rains. The rains won’t come until you have had five of them. So says my Dad. In August 2015 we didn’t have five berg winds. Remember that drought? To qualify, a berg wind must occur after the 1st August. It must come from the North or North East or North west, but either way, it must be strong enough to bend a gum tree, such that it shows the silver underside of its leaves. And it must be

6 August 2018

Talismans

I don’t exactly make a habit of picking up rocks and bones and bringing them home. I have heard of a guy who makes a habit of carrying rocks in his backpack (big heavy ones) and placing them back on mountain tops, as his way of countering erosion everywhere. That sounds like even harder work than bringing them down off the mountain to put on one’s fly tying desk. I have done that very seldom. Three times in fact (if memory serves). These three idiosyncratic items serve to centre me in an obscure metaphorical way. There are three of them

2 August 2018

Somewhere joyful, near “Opportunity lost”

“But every angler who experiences bad fishing fears, above all else, that he’s the only one who’s experiencing it” Ted Leeson, Inventing Montana 2009. When we were under the shadow of magnificent Ha Ha Lamolapo; when we were camped where the rushing water of Angel falls filled our ears at night; when we were spooking an 18 inch brown in the pool at Rooiwal in the driving rain; at all those times, we didn’t feel hard done by. We may have felt a bit bleak when the brown James swore was 30 inches long, would not open its mouth. I

18 July 2018

Rivers to dams to disappearing rivers

In the early eighties, or thereabouts, the government of South Africa was handing out subsidies to farmers to build farm dams. It was all about building infrastructure, and I guess on some level about food security in an isolated, alienated apartheid nation. Farmers in our neck of the woods (KZN midlands) built dams. Pretty ones. Some had London planes planted next to them, or liquid ambers. There were concrete benches, and braai places built. Trout were stocked. Some irrigation happened, but I don’t think there was as much of that as the then government expected or hoped. Those Trout grew

9 July 2018

Lady Luck

It was just really bad luck. That’s what I told my buddy, after he showed me his fancy dragon fly imitation, and I gently rolled it around in my hand to admire it. And the eyes just fell off. Just like that. He had bought it. It was an artwork. And now it was an eyeless artwork. His glare met with my shrug. What do you say? It was just bad luck. We had bad luck that week-end too. Well, I did anyway. I landed just one small Rainbow, and that was on hallowed waters, where trophies and numbers are

12 June 2018

Coffee & Quotes…

My brother gave me that coffee pot. Solid silver and as heavy as a boat anchor. The lid is bent too. There is little point in making the coffee, then pouring it into the ornate pot, and then pouring it into a cup. But I do. On cold days, with a good book. Speaking of which, Jerry Kustich has written some fine stuff. I don’t yet have his latest one ( “Holy Water”) , but I am re-reading one of his early ones (2001) “At The Rivers’ edge”, from which I take this quote: “The older I get

28 May 2018

Photo of the moment (100)

No 100 has some significance. It shows a cleared section of the Umgeni, which is very close to my heart. It shows Inhlozane mountain, which I grew up within sight of, and it was taken on a day when we caught browns in numbers markedly higher than before the place was cleared. That’s Rogan in the the river…all-round great guy and son of my late river clearing and flyfishing pal Roy. Call me sentimental!

11 May 2018

coffee & quotes….and a bit more

This cuppa was brewed up in the mountains, when the rain and cloud and wind didn’t look like letting up. Waiting this stuff out is infinitely better with good coffee. And on the subject of waiting it out: Ted Leeson’s writing continues to delight me in a way that has me laying the open book down on my lap, after reading a particularly erudite and poetic piece, and clucking and shaking my head in awe of his ability to capture a moment or concept, with which I identify immeasurably. “Much of the technical fly-fishing literature at which anglers have suckled

7 May 2018

Marathons, Trout and glamour. Be inspired.

Rogan and I were discussing the nature of flyfishing as a sport while we walked along an overgrown river bank recently. Our topic is difficult to define, but I don’t think Rogan would disagree if I said that we were both bemoaning the low number of entrants to this thing who are able to embrace the ordinary, the uncomfortable, the companionable, the day without winners, and the less than glamorous. People happy to embrace adventure complete with failure and no social media exposure. People content to learn by trying instead of waiting for a Youtube video. People who fashion something

4 May 2018