Truttablog

Zoom. You gotta love it!

My Friend Neil and I were out the other day roving around between some Trout waters that were not looking all that promising. Neil asked me to stop, and asked if he could borrow my camera. I had been boasting about just how fantastic these bridging cameras are nowadays. On optical zoom only, shot from the passenger seat, this is what he got: On no zoom: 1200mm equivalent, optical zoom only! And in the photo editor back home, effectively using digital zoom: And a bit more, just to show where you can go with this thing: These were taken

11 July 2014

A Detail for Eyes

A recent topic of discussion has been that of eyes on our Trout flies. It occurred to me that we have come a long way in that department. My earliest memory of eyes on flies was that of the Clayne Baker swimming nymph, in which one was required to tie an overhand knot on a bunch of marabou fibres. Now that was a trick! I think at that time we normally made eyes by simply cutting a stub of tuff chenille either side of the hook. Those were not very pronounced eyes, and come to think of it, the snipped

3 July 2014

Bakkies, dust and lost reels

Every now and then, the eight to five world of suburbia, commitments and credit cards, releases me for more than just a day trip. In other words, every once in a while, I somehow find a gap, and head out on one of those fly fishing trips that involves a night or two in a fishing cottage. Not a few stolen hours, in which you are watching the time. I am talking about two or more days at a trot on the water. It is heaven! The anticipation of those trips is childlike in my case. It is childlike in

29 June 2014

Dust and smoke in the Midlands

Yesterday I headed out along the Kamberg road. Sunday past, this had been the scene of a wild and awful wind. One that lashed the dry veld angrily, kicking up dust and tossing branches. Inevitably, fire had been involved too. The farmers were now on guard. Houses, and even lives were lost down Kokstad way. Yesterday was calm. In fact it was calm all day, and with Sunday’s wind fresh in everyones memory, the farmers were out in force burning fire breaks. Palls of smoke rose from a few spots up the valley. Something was burning up in the berg,

21 June 2014

Inchbrakie before and after

Before the Spring Grove dam. And after

21 June 2014

Going further up

Skimming through fishing magazines, websites and books, I can’t help but notice the prevalence of articles espousing the wildness of the fishing. The secret location is so remote that a helicopter was the only way in. The bigger fish are in the headwaters above the waterfall, and it takes several hours to hike in. For the best fishing, you have to walk further. And so it goes. And we want to be the one who DID walk further. The one who went higher into the mountains, beyond where your unfit mates would ever go. We hope that the fishing there

14 June 2014

Stillwater Trout in KZN, A montage

9 June 2014

A chance encounter

If you carry a camera around on Trout waters long enough, you eventually bump into a co-operative Rainbow. It wouldn’t take a fly, but after I had photographed it, I caught it with my hands. Yes, I returned it. No, there were no witnesses.

2 June 2014

The Roach wears undies

At a recent gathering of the Natal Fly Dressers Society (NFDS), Jan Korrubel demonstrated the tying of the well known “Papa Roach“, that excellent Dragonfly nymph pattern that is making it into halls of fame. Herman Botes’ Papa Roach: Photo ex Tom Sutcliffe…see link above Jan has a pragmatic approach that I enjoy. He chatted about the fact that he couldn’t bring himself to leave the hook shank bare under the Zonker strip, “because it just looked wrong”. I Know Herman Botes intended the hookshank to be the flat base of the fly’s shape, but a bit of dubbing finishes

23 May 2014

Journeys through the journal (7)

Plain “unsuccessful” days are the ones that don’t make for good magazine stories. They are however part of the tapestry of an outdoor life. The tiny inconsequential events on those days, are some of the the building blocks of a life of fly-fishing. It was the 28th May 2005. The plan was to fish an exclusive private water that Guy had access to in the Mooi River valley. I was excited at the prospect. It was not often that I got a chance to fish this water, and previous invitations to fish it had always turned into those red letter

18 May 2014