Truttablog

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

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

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

7 January 2014

Spate

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:

29 December 2013

The Trout streams in summer

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.

23 December 2013

Plover

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.

19 December 2013

Peat, Grass and Sunburn

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

17 December 2013

To see or not to see.

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.

9 December 2013

Boston, Bass and Big Bangs

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

27 November 2013

What’s with this crazy weather!

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

20 November 2013