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a Vote for messy

“So what I am suggesting here is a complete approach to our waters where the competitive, lip-ripping edge is left back in the fast lane of societal superficialities and the joyful spirit of camaraderie, sportsmanship, and involvement with nature are the main goals”. Jerry Kustich I get a sense that my fly-fishing is a more messy affair than it is for the guys I bump into around these parts. Take Squidlips from Smoketown for example: He drives his blue Nissan up to the Bushmans on an appointed Saturday, and a day later there are a dozen glossy pictures on social

2 January 2019

Somewhere joyful, near “Opportunity lost”

“But every angler who experiences bad fishing fears, above all else, that he’s the only one who’s experiencing it” Ted Leeson, Inventing Montana 2009. When we were under the shadow of magnificent Ha Ha Lamolapo; when we were camped where the rushing water of Angel falls filled our ears at night; when we were spooking an 18 inch brown in the pool at Rooiwal in the driving rain; at all those times, we didn’t feel hard done by. We may have felt a bit bleak when the brown James swore was 30 inches long, would not open its mouth. I

18 July 2018

A bitch called Kevin

Just as music is all about the spaces between the notes, and how you can judge the authenticity of a friend who fails to say or do something, so there is much to learn from when you don’t catch fish. Longest silence, and all that stuff. It’s therapeutic. It’s not about the fish. Bull. It sucks. I recently spent a day on the Mooi, when the wind blew so damned hard that when I got to Krantz pool, I swear the water was occasionally piling up in a great big bulge in the middle of the stream before flattening out

9 November 2016

The Longest Silence

In Thomas McGuane’s wonderful book of the same name he writes “For the ardent fisherman, progress is toward the kinds of fishing that are never productive in the sense of the blood riots of the hunting-and-fishing periodicals.” That is a deep thought, and one that makes me feel a little better. Clearly I am progressing, because I am not catching a whole pile of fish! Of course I would like to catch some better sized fish, or a few more of them, but I will bow graciously to this “progress” that has been bestowed on me. The truth be told,

2 October 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