Brown Trout

Late winter Browns

A day on a stillwater towards the end of winter, trying different tactics; the shoreline and a float tube, until I get the formula right and start catching the fish I was after.

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A case for the caddis

I am keyed into these little house builders at the moment. I guess I am just seeing a lot of them around in our stillwaters.  Almost without exception, they have built their houses of either weed fragments, or small pieces of grass stem. In his book “Presentation”, Gary Borger says that he “has had superb lake fishing” with caddis larva patterns, but amongst the  American literature in my library there doesn’t seem to be more than a passing references to these caddis dwelling in pieces of weed fibre and grass. In “The nymph fly tyers manual” by Randall Kaufman, one

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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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Spotting Trout in stillwater

A piece of open stillwater can be  a bland thing. The other day Neil and I were out on some lovely, but somehow dull water. There was a dead calm, and we didn’t see or touch a fish.  I suggested that the day was a good advert for stream fishing. But sometimes it is very different. Today I was out alone on a small piece of water. Being mid winter the water was crystal clean, but more importantly the light was right. Light is so important in fly-fishing, but the right light is also so very difficult to describe. Suffice

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Picking them off

I was on the Eastern shoreline of a small lake that we sometimes fish.  For my last minute day off from work,  I had been blessed with mild sunny weather.  It was April,  and the blue sky was dotted with drifting puffy white clouds. There was a slight Northerly breeze.  Just enough to ripple the crystal clear water. The fish were small. Tiny in fact. Last year’s stocking had clearly been a success,  and as a result we would have to put up with these ankle biters until following seasons,  by which time the fishing would no doubt be superb.

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