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A sentimental fool, a book, and a trout stream

I am deeply fortunate to be able to able to identify the symphony and serendipity in ordinary things, or  perhaps I am fortunate in that overtly serendipitous things do in fact befall me more than others.  Either way, these things are not lost on me.  Far from it…I savour them. So here’s one.  You tell me if this is a delightful chance, or if its just me being a sentimental fool: So…I found myself in Stockbridge, in a fly shop, being served by a fellow South African. And the shop had a better collection of books than the one over

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18 October 2019

Concentration and attention

“There are not many men who can fish all morning without seeing or feeling a fish and not suffer some deterioration in care or keenness that is likely to retard their reaction when at last the moment comes.”  Arthur Ransome,   Rod and Line, 1929 Who have you have lost a fish, because you weren’t expecting it?  A fish chased you fly at the end of the cast as you lifted off, and you were not focused enough to halt your rhythm and leave the fly in the water. A fish took your dry, but you had allowed such a bow

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28 May 2019

Lessons from the Landscape: Kamberg and a return to wildness

As a kid we visited and fished Kamberg a fair bit.Many of us did. I have fond memories: Jumping out of my skin when concentrating on a rising fish, in my own little world, when a ranger came up on the river bank alongside me  unnoticed and asked “Liseeence?”  Followed by the rattling off of every Trout fly that he knew. He knew a lot of them! Booking  Stillerus beat number one, and being excited at being offered beat two in whispered tones by the lady in the office, as no-one had booked it that day. I felt so privileged!

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15 February 2019

Blood on my sandwiches

I had never hooked a trout before this week-end. That is to say, I had never held a fly between my two fingers, and used it to hook a trout. There is a first time for everything. There is also a heavily wooded valley cut by a tributary of a favourite stream, which I had never entered. Here a reclusive and interesting man resides. I had never met this hermetic bloke before. What I have done before, is to go on a day’s fishing and not take my fly rod out of its tube. That happened once when PD and

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28 October 2018

Berg winds: Someone keep count please.

Saturday was number one of five. Five. That’s the number of berg winds you have to have before you get decent spring rains.  The rains won’t come until you have had five of them.  So says my Dad. In August 2015 we didn’t have five berg winds.  Remember that drought? To qualify, a berg wind must occur after the 1st August. It must come from the North or North East or North west, but either way, it must be strong enough to bend a gum tree, such that it shows the silver underside of its leaves. And it must be

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6 August 2018

Rest days

I don’t know about you, but after a day which typically involves say 2 hrs in the car, 8 hrs on a river, and traversing say 7 to 12 kms of rough territory, I need a break.  Call me soft, but at least half of that “traversing” involves getting in and out of the stream, boulder hopping, and  scrambling, and it is normally with a pack on my back that is heavier than it need be.  To add to that, I may have fished for 8 hrs and driven for 2, but the number of hours between when I left

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18 October 2017
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