26 October 2017
My hiking buddy said I would burn my eyebrows off with this thing. I bought it anyway. Turns out he wasn’t far off the mark. There was this little incident last year, you see. But enough about that. It’s a fantastic little thing, and it requires finess and skill to make it really hum. Not like one of those little gas cannister things that you just switch on and light. You would have to read Pirsig to understand. This photo was taken in that little sheltered spot under the Nchi shi bushes at Highmoor. It is the perfect spot to
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
“Two blank days: Not a very interesting subject? Perhaps not. But if you feel like that about it, pass on” From GEM Skues, Itchen Memories, which was published in 1951, after his death. The coffee is “1000 hills”, a bean from Rwanda. When I stopped in at Ground Coffee House the barista persuaded me to have a flat white, and not my normal cappuccino. “Cappuccino is just all milk….you really want a double so that you can taste this bean, because its brilliant”. he said I agreed, and while I was there I bought a bag of beans. A good
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
With thoughts of reverse tied flies running through my head, and the recent sound of buzzers hovering in the cattails at the lake shore, I tied up these midge emergers: Upside down: you know….get the hook point up into the hackle and have all that steel less obvious. The other benefit, is that your tippet is tied to something under the surface. If you consider this the dropper and tie a point fly on the eye of the dropper fly you have this: …. and then you use a very small larva pattern to sink off the point and
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
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.