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What’s in the box?

On Sunday I had one of those quiet days at home. After week-end, upon week-end of a days fishing plus a day of some other activity, I needed to re-group, and sort out my fishing tackle. Fly reels were turning up in cool-boxes in the kitchen, leaders in my briefcase,  fly floatant smeared on my drivers license, that sort of thing. It was time to sort it all out. I also needed to empty the fly-patch, since I am sure I have been dropping flies off of there into bankside vegetation all over the province. So I emptied what was

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10 September 2014

Hopeful romantics

I remember several years ago, taking my [then] girlfriend  to a favourite stretch of the upper Mooi in September, and finding it very low and slimy. She must have doubted my honesty, because for months I had described to her this babbling brook of ice cold crystal water, rushing over rocks. And on a hot dry September day, it was anything but that. The water was clear, but it was undeniably sluggish, and there was a furry brownness to the underwater rocks.Water limped between pools, rather than gushed, and nowhere did one see water droplets thrown into the air by

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4 September 2014

A crisp August morning

As we steered across the vlei and ascended the slight rise on the Western side of the valley floor, the strong yellow rays of the sun lit the hill, and at its base the coruscating blue water came into view in a narrow strip. The light was brilliant in its clarity, but gentle in its insidious arrival, and soft in hue. The cold, on the other hand, was brutal and harsh. The puddles were iced on the way in and, but for the fact that there was no moisture in the air, there would have been a frost as severe

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24 August 2014

Journeys through the journal (9)

It was March. The  grass seeds were suspended high on tall bent stems, their weight barely sustainable in the heavy morning dew. Their greenness was still in them, but not for much longer.  A  pale duskiness was creeping into the veld from the base of each plant, and replacing the verdancy of mid summer. Heavy rain had swept across the upper reaches of the Ndawana that week, but it was not a summer rain. The weighty black clouds hung low over the quiet veld, and cast shadows that were cool. Brief spells of bright sun were warm, but failed to

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13 August 2014

Silly Syllogisms

I often find that a thermometer is a poor measure of temperature, in terms of our experience of the fishing day. Leaving aside the wind chill factor, which we all know well, a thermometer reading tells very little about what it feels like to be out. Just the other  morning, it was 13 degrees when I got up. On a winter’s morning, that is a very high overnight temperature, and one that on the face of it, should have the global warming guys saying “You see!”. But strangely it didn’t feel that warm at all. The thing is, that  as

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4 August 2014
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