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In the dead of night

Being one who mulls a lot (someone once labeled  me a DTN*), I have been dabbling with the concept of night fishing. Mental dabbling that is. And I am talking here of night fishing in rivers ….not stillwaters. I have done a bit of night fishing on stillwaters. A bit. Not enough. But I confess, I have never truly night fished a stream. My angling background is thick with images of people holding up fish in an inky blackness, or stories of Browns coming out in the dark, and of talk of fishing at night when it cools off. I

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23 October 2015

Rain and rivers

With the onset of our spring rains having occurred in some places and not in others, the weather is foremost on the mind of the river fishermen. In fact our conversations are just a little obsessive at the moment. This is why:

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1 November 2014

Hopeful romantics

I remember several years ago, taking my [then] girlfriend  to a favourite stretch of the upper Mooi in September, and finding it very low and slimy. She must have doubted my honesty, because for months I had described to her this babbling brook of ice cold crystal water, rushing over rocks. And on a hot dry September day, it was anything but that. The water was clear, but it was undeniably sluggish, and there was a furry brownness to the underwater rocks.Water limped between pools, rather than gushed, and nowhere did one see water droplets thrown into the air by

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4 September 2014

Journeys through the journal (5)

the 4th September 1988. The farm “Avon” on the Mooi River. It was one of the best spring fishing years that I have had. The diary records it as being a dry spring, with the river not flowing all that strongly, and plenty of algae around. On this particular day PD and I were only on the water around 10 am. It was cold, clouded and blustery. I remember we went up to the top boundary, and fished downstream from there, although we were of course upstream nymphing. I know, it is illogical, but were were younger then, and it

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5 March 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:

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29 December 2013

Journeys through the journal (3)

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,

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30 October 2013
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