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It’s still a delight….in any colour

The DDD is old hat here in South Africa. (Photo courtesy of Tom Sutcliffe) I did a quick google search for DDD. First time around I got all sorts of weird stuff, so I added the words “Dry Fly”, and still got no less than 89,000 hits!  That says something, doesn’t it? I will admit that after page three the real DDD gets replaced by tent fly sheets, and obscure digital equipment, but let’s just say you won’t struggle to uncover information about the real thing. Probably the most comprehensive article about tying and fishing it, is written by none

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24 February 2014

Journeys through the journal (4)

It was mid winter in 2012. The fishing club committee had arranged a week-end on a large stillwater, for us to see if we could help the hatchery there boost it’s brood stock with some hens and cocks. On the Saturday I enjoyed taking my good friend Win out on the canoe. Win had had a rough year, health wise, and I enjoyed the opportunity to help him “break the fishing drought” so to speak. Some of us took a few minutes to find our sea legs!  The boat is stable in that it will never tip over, but it

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15 February 2014

A Bustard no less

  I still call this one a Stanley bustard, but they tell me it has changed its name. I wonder if it knows, that it’s is now called a Denham’s Bustard. It is a really large bird, that struts confidently in the veld. I haven’t often been able to get as close as I did this day.

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12 February 2014

South African Shelduck

  The shelduck is most distinctive in that the male and female are equally striking, but different, and I always seem to see them together. They inhabit our still-waters here in KZN, and provide a welcome distraction on slow days.

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7 February 2014

Summer fishin : “hot , wet, & wild”

With the water temperature in the lake varying from 21.3 degrees at 5 metres depth to 23 degrees at the surface, this was always going to be a tough day’s fishing. The sun was out in the morning, and I sat out there on the tube, lathered up with suncream, thankful for the breeze, and not entirely confident.

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29 January 2014

Recce

To reconnoitre:To Survey, make a reconnaissance of, explore, scout (out), make a survey of, make an observation of. Something I like to do from time to time, is to go and find a “new” piece of water, to give it a look over, and to “plan the attack”, so to speak. These expeditions steal precious fishing time, so they are best undertaken on those hot blustery days when, if you were out there with a fly rod, you would be sleeping under a tree anyway. Stillwaters seldom need this kind of work….they are by their very nature, easy things to

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22 January 2014

A buzzard

From a way off I thought this was a steppe buzzard A closer look revealed a rufus coloured underbelly. An immature Jackal Buzzard I thought at first, but of course that bird has a rufus band across the chest.  As an amateur birder I really cant be sure. All I know is that those primary feathers look very familiar. I have two of them stuck in my fishing hat! Yesterday I saw a book on raptors in the bookshop, and with only  a mental picture, I decided that it probably is a Steppe Buzzard. They are fairly common, but their

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15 January 2014

Tenacity and persistence

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes have to check myself. I have to take note and avoid falling into the trap, the lazy trap, of going through the motions, and not fishing properly. Typically at day’s end, or when fishing in less than ideal conditions, ones mind starts to wander. The most classic symptoms of this are probably: starting to retrieve the fly too fast lifting off to cast earlier than you should: not fishing the cast out Moving to a new spot and failing to fish the water under your feet, but just casting “out there” not

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7 January 2014
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