Rivers to dams to disappearing rivers

In the early eighties, or thereabouts, the government of South Africa was handing out subsidies to farmers to build farm dams. It was all about building infrastructure, and I guess on some level about food security in an isolated, alienated apartheid nation.  Farmers in our neck of the woods (KZN midlands) built dams. Pretty ones. Some had London planes planted next to them, or liquid ambers. There were concrete benches, and braai places built. Trout were stocked. Some irrigation happened, but I don’t think there was as much of that as the then government expected or hoped. Those Trout grew

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A high and wild place

There is a place we visit, where the grass is short, and the Trout are strong. We often just walk there with a camera. Sometimes we take the dogs. Mostly we just take ourselves. It is a windswept place; stark and open. Even the streams and dams are hard to find. When you look across the apparently flat landscape, it belies the folds and valleys that secret its lovely waters. Some of our friends spend a lot of time driving to find those folds and their Trout. We park and walk more. It is cruel for its lack of shade

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An old spot revisited

  I was out the other morning on a piece of water I hadn’t fished in a while. It was one of those peculiar days when everything seems quite on its head. I had set my alarm for five minutes to four on that Sunday morning. At around three I couldn’t stand the suspense any more and looked at the clock to see how long it would be before the thing went off. No luck….still another hour. Barely enough time to get sleepy when you’re sleepless. Too long to sit around waiting for a decent departure time. After what seemed

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