On Saturday we were out fly-fishing in the Underberg area. We had a storm in the early afternoon. Nothing special: just some wild wind, and 10mm or so of rain, and later the front moved in with a cool wind, a rumble of thunder and some rolling mist. Back home in Hilton that night I could hear a little rain on the veranda roof. That was it. On Sunday, we took a drive under grey skies up to the Mooi River. Wow:
A selection of mid-summer images from the Trout streams of KwaZulu Natal. I have mixed them up: The Bushmans, The Umgeni, and the Mooi. All beautiful streams. All worth a visit. The water sometimes runs high, and could be discoloured at times.
The black winged plover, or lapwing. We don’t see these fellows all that often, and I struggled to get a picture of this pair. We were taking a walk on the hillside on a hot spring afternoon, and waiting for the weather to cool off before trying for some Trout at the evening rise on a nearby stillwater. The birds kept taking off, circling, and landing between us and the sun, and seldom close enough for me to get a clear picture.
In the height of summer, our stillwater fly-fishing is a fickle affair. Picking your day is difficult, and hap hazard at best. If like me, you are a working man, you already have the formula wrong. You will not pick your Trout fishing days: Government and organised religion will do it for you. You will have more fishing days available over Christmas, than at any other time of year. And these are the days you will be lumped with: The water is flowing out of every orifice in the hills. It rushes and gurgles through tall lush grassland. Grassland that
The other day, PD came up the river bank to where I was standing and bummed a fly off me. Nothing unusual about that. But then, after I handed him a #18 nymph, I had to watch as he squinted, and cocked his head to one side, and held his hands out far in front of him. (this was before he got specs, but I think it was a #8 woolly bugger he was struggling with) I obliged and lent him a spike to clear the hook eye, but the show continued.
In recent weeks, fate has taken me into the Boston area on several occasions to spend time there with a farmer ,a forester and a faucet. On Saturday, I dragged myself from an afternoon snooze. Between that and a looming business trip commencing Sunday morning, I knew I had to fit in an errand to Boston to shut off a valve on a dam. As we wound down the hill between the trees in the gathering gloom of the front that was curling in from the South, I spotted the dam in the distance. Even from there I began to
I was in a doctors waiting room the other day, when one of the professionals emerged from her office and remarked to the receptionist : “Did you know, that in the old days we used to have storms on summer afternoons, and the sun would come out again afterwards! ”. It is not politically correct to call this stupidity. So someone please help me with a politically correct term that is vastly more disdainful! Given that weather is what people use to pad inane conversations, there is a lot of babble out there that serves only to heat the air
“Despite the threnodies of a few recidivist Halfordians, the fly-fishing tradition is a progressive, generous and inclusive one, and it pays to be mindful that not everyone will be interested in the stipulations of your personal code” From “Trout Hunting” by Bob Wyatt There are many of us fly-fishermen who are quirky, moody, and solitary. We have built up some illogical notions over the years, and we only stick with other fly-fishermen who happen, against all odds, to “get us”. So we go for years, wearing older and older clothes, fishing with the same blokes, and probably the same tackle.
Highmoor is a wonderful fly-fishing location. It sits high up above the top of the first line of cliffs forming part of the Drakensberg range (known as the”little berg”) at the source of the Little Mooi river. I have been fishing it for many years, and visits there are always a minor pilgrimage. A recent trip inspired this amateur clip.
On the last Saturday of September last year, Mike and I headed out to Riverside on the upper Mooi river. This stretch of river is club water, and is on a dairy farm that sits within the “U” shape formed by the KZN parks area of Kamberg Nature reserve. We were blessed with a pleasant sunny day, the temperature peaking at just twenty two degrees C, and the occasional light gust of wind. One parks under some plane trees at the farm entrance and fishes upstream from there. This is classic KZN river water for me. Quite high river banks,