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Crow bars and treble hooks

Last week-end, we kept a Rainbow from the Umgeni. That is only the third Rainbow I have ever seen come out of the Umgeni, (It is a Brown Trout stream) and in the interests of purity I encouraged my fishing buddy to smack it on the head. We don’t do that very often anymore, so it took me repeating the suggestion several times before he reluctantly harvested the little fish. What was remarkable about it, was what was in its stomach. There was a whole bunch of digested stuff that wasn’t immediately identifiable, but then there were these hard little

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8 May 2015

Back to heaven

“all the rusted signs we ignore throughout our lives choosing the shiny ones instead”   (Pearl Jam: Lyrics to the song Thumbing my way , from the album “Riot act” 2002)

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5 May 2015

Buzz

It started with mosquitos the night before. They had bugged me half the night, buzzing around my ears frequently but at irregular intervals. I could hear them, and I guessed at their location for the purpose of aiming my ineffectively flailing open hand. The ants required the same open hand, but thankfully the blows were one hundred percent effective, crushing the little buggers milliseconds after they delivered a painful bite to the back of my neck. I had picked them up at a fence crossing. They must have been crawling on my back. There was this pole you see. A

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29 April 2015

Wet socks and Whisky

My mind is a whirl of flaming Lombardy poplars, water clear and cool; of shafts of sunlight cutting across the mountains and igniting the yellowing veld. Whisky from the bottle cap, ice on boots, and rocks on two wheel tracks. Rods, flies, cussing, jokes and dust. Cold wet socks. Trout. Nuts, mussels and biltong from the backpack. The Birkhall porch: swirls of light and clinking glasses in the night. Tobacco smoke and fishing plans.  Roads: ever curling , descending, rising, twisting and demanding another gear. The veld: whisked and brushed by wind, seed-heads bowing and bucking, in browns and pale

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19 April 2015

A Gilboa gallimaufry

Gilboa Estates, named after mount Gilboa is a beautiful place. The mountain itself is the highest point on the Karkloof range of hills. Although less striking than Inhlosane mountain, the Karkloof is an iconic skyline, and is visible from far across the midlands of KZN. What makes this range unusual is that it protrudes out from the main Mount West/Greytown ridge as a high narrow spur, in an easterly direction. This gives it some unique characteristics. Firstly, it gives it a cool southern side, that is ideal for natural forest to form. So unlike the main ridge to the North

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11 April 2015

Cool bunnies

Easter time, or more specifically late March through all of April, is a magical time for us trout fly-fisherman here on the  eastern seaboard of South Africa. We have just come out of the stifling heat of February, which is about as “un-trouty” as you can get, and those of us with European origins are feeling ever so slightly more comfortable, no matter how African we profess to be. Our rainy season is drawing to an end. We can still get rain at this time of year. In fact we can get rather a lot, but the wild unpredictability of

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4 April 2015
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