Awakening a spirit
“Sometimes it requires considerable strength of mind to break the chain of business and go where we long to be, but such “a stitch in time save nine,” and even a few days on the streams in the spring time, while the air is fresh and bracing and all the world is young, will do much for a man’s health and strength.
The bit of sport and change of scene renew his youth, and he feels like a boy again.
The spirit of a boy lies dormant in many of us, and only needs to be released by just going fishing.
Good luck.”
The above lines were penned by Theodore Gordon in February of 1913.
I was chatting to a friend the other day and we were reminiscing how, as varsity students, we would jump in a borrowed car with insufficient fuel in the tank, and head for the hills hoping to get to a trout stream with enough daylight hours left to get a fish. We may have taken some peanuts, and we probably forgot a rain jacket. What was important is that we got out there. We got stuck in the mud; we lost huge fish; we witnessed hatches and sunsets; and we took grainy photos that we still gaze at with the fondest of memories.
Nowadays, it could be said that we fiddle around for hours making sure we have what we need. We check the weather; fill the car; buy new boots; consider whether its worth going considering travel time vs time on the water; make elaborate lunches; and worry about a week old report that says the river was low or dirty.
And we fish less.
It occurs to me that all those preparations and considerations and fancy sandwiches are sometimes the problem. Sure, it is fun to contemplate the trip and make ones preparations, but as one’s mind atrophies, these things also become the excuses we use for not getting out at all. Life is busy, and the gaps available for fishing trips are rare and short. When there is a gap, we may find ourselves thinking it is too narrow an opportunity to fit in a trip to the stream. We mull over how long it will take, and we build into the time required, all those things that put our comfort ahead of the goal of making it happen.
I now carry some peanuts, a can of bully beef, and a flask of water in my bakkie along with my fishing kit, and a bag with a change of clothes in it. If a gap opens, all I need is my car keys and the right attitude. I am fishing a lot more. Sadly perhaps, much of this is alone. But regardless of whether it is alone, whether I forget the camera at home, get wet, or find the river as dirty as they said it would be, that spirit of the boy is not as dormant as it once was.
Seven-11, and Flat Whites
September is a varied time. It is the month in which we are most likely to get snow, and at the same time, daytime temperatures of 30 degrees are far from uncommon.
Here where I live, when a September cold front comes in, we get eleven degrees and drizzle, and at that temperature there won’t be snow, not even on the high berg. If it drops to seven degrees then we expect some white stuff up on top. In the event that it hits five degrees, snow on the Inhlosane, the little berg, and hey, maybe even Karkloof is a possibility. Either way, that cold front is a valued thing, all the more if it drops some reel rain and lifts us up out of our dry winter.
In between, its typically what I call a “flat white”. Bright hot sunshine. No wind. White, flat light that is a photographer’s nemesis. Not fishing weather at all, it seems.
The truth be told, it can actually be quite good in these conditions if you go higher in the mountains, where it is cooler, and all the more so if we have had rain, like this year. My pal Ray fished a mountain stream the other day and commented that it was hot. But as he said the fish were “on the prod”, and he got enough of them to make the drive seem well worth the trouble. But I sit here on a bright Saturday morning, feeling a little disinclined to tramp up a river valley smothered in sunscreen and looking out for snakes. Instead I am tying flies, with a bottle of chilled lemon and mint water at my elbow. I have half an eye on the weather app. It predicts one of those eleven degree things later in the week, complete with drizzle. Heck….who knows, it might even rain! Now THAT has my attention. I saw the Viking yesterday and he had spotted it too. I said something about a mid-week adventure and his smile indicated he had been thinking the same thing.
So for now I am tying some streamers too big to show my sophisticated mates who think more of me; and some emergers so small that they belong in something magnetized, so that they don’t blow away when you open the fly box at the streamside.
I may tie up something in between just to balance things out. I’ve been listening to Paul Proctor’s chat with Pete Tyjas on his one hundredth podcast (Well done Pete!) , and I am about to check my tippet spools, and move a bunch of flies from the patch back into the box. Theodore Gordon’s collection of letters and “Little talks” are on my nightstand, and I am just a little inspired.
There will be a ‘seven’ or an ‘eleven’ to end this ‘flat white’, and I will be ready.
Breaking the code
The Letort Regulars used to meet for Sunday morning breakfasts, or for picnics at Charlie Fox’s place on the Letort spring creek, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Vince Marinaro and others would stay over at Charlie’s fishing hut, which he built on his property even before he built himself a house to live in.
It was in that hut that they had a fly tying kit , donated by one Bob McCafferty, and their meetings, experiments and trials drew the attention of visitors like Lefty Kreh, George La Branche, ER Hewitt and Joe Brooks.
This band of fishermen, which included the likes of Ed Shenk, Gene Utech, Tommy Thomas, Ross Trimmer and others, were ground breakers. Their home water was what is still described as one of the most difficult trout streams in the world.
Stories abound about how spooky the fish are, and how clear the water is. The banks are sodden marshes in many places, the whole stream is only 9 miles long, and the fish are apparently all but impossible. Online searches reveal much evidence of these difficulties expounded in recent times. But reading Vince Marinaro’s “A Modern Dry Fly Code” (written in 1950) reveals that not much has changed in this respect. Marinaro humbly paints a picture of himself as a duffer, saying things like ”This stream has always been a difficult one for me to solve and for many others too. The capture of one good trout in an evening’s fly-fishing was quite an achievement” and “….the usual result in these cases is a violent reaction on my part intended to be a strike, something I fervently wish I had never learned, and the matter is concluded by a sudden parting”.
As a relatively slow flowing limestone creek (AKA Spring Creek, chalk stream, Limestoner), its trout have all the time in the world to inspect what the fly fisherman has to offer, as well as a remarkable abundance of food besides. These characteristics make the stream a veritable university of fly fishing technique. Puzzles and riddles needed to be solved there, because although early fly anglers could see the trout, they couldn’t catch them.
What makes this interesting, is that the likes of the Letort Regulars had other streams they could go to, where the trout were easier, but they didn’t. That is to say that they chose not to abandon this near impossible challenge in favour of easier waters. They fished other waters, for sure, but their identity as “The Regulars” formed around the most difficult stream in the Cumberland Valley, the one of which Marinaro said: “the Letort is a hard task master and does not treat lightly any violation of dry fly technique”.
This challenge saw them entertaining the mother of invention: necessity. If they wanted to work out the puzzle, they had to get serious about it, study the trout and the insects and learn by trial and error. And so a great “university” was borne.
I haven’t had the pleasure of reading Ed Shenk’s books, and I am sure there are many other enlightening ones besides that I am not aware of, but I have devoured books by Mike Lawson, Ernest Schwiebert, Darryl Martin and Vince Marinaro.
These articulate writings of a bygone era reveal a level of enquiry, dedication, observation, and let me say obsession, which is rare nowadays. A Google search will reveal tidbits, videos and anecdotes, and people who are quick to boast that they knew the Letort Regulars, but like me, they don’t add to the body of knowledge of flyfishing technique.
The discoveries of the Letort regulars were significant. They pushed the boundaries. They looked for the smallest hooks and finest tippets they could find and tied flies on them, and tried to land big fish on them. They spoke and wrote with deference to Halford and Gordon, but then gently introduced the flyfishing world to the new frontier of terrestrials. They pushed back frontiers. In the 1970 edition of “The Code” which I own, Marinaro writes with wry amusement about how he meets anglers out on he stream who offer him their tiny flies, complete with words of instruction and encouragement, oblivious to the fact that it was he who started the whole thing.
It is also interesting to read on modern forums, how the benches, stream improvements, access paths , footbridges, and passages across the streamside bogs are all gone. Quite apart from the fact that a highway bridge now crosses the river where Fox’s hut once stood, the attentions of this dedicated band of fishermen are seemingly a thing of the past. How strange that is!
Consider for a moment, that when the likes of Charlie Fox fished the Letort, it was probably not as famous as it is now. At that stage it did not have attached to it the history of some of the great personalities of flyfishing, and neither was it described as the birthplace of modern terrestrial imitation, as it now is. And yet, despite its ordinariness, it received the loving attention of these pioneers. That would be attention both in respect of hours spend studying its trout and how to master them, and also hours spent with spade and saw, making it into something great. Now in the glow of its fame, there is little evidence that any of this still takes place.
Instead there are some brass plaques, and there are those who claim to have known the men who made it great. There are also stories about how difficult it is to access the neglected sections, and there are dreadful stories of fish kills and pollution.
One forum commentator enlightens his colleagues as to the names of various stretches, pools and meadows, presumably because these exist only in the memories of ones like him, who witnessed the Letort in its halcyon days.
(I must hasten to add that I have never visited the stream – I wish I could- and that my conclusions are based on desk-bound research, but I can find no evidence that refutes what I claim here)
This whole state of affairs puzzles me. Notwithstanding the burgeoning and ever pressing demands of the human population, the fact that an iconic and revered stream lies unkempt and at least in part, neglected, is an irony. So many other places have been killed by too much attention: turned to theme parks with gift shops and tourist centres, but this one, like many trout streams I read of, suffers neglect instead. I suppose I have to be careful what I wish for, but could I perhaps put in a request for something in between? I mean, could one of the people who revels in the nostalgia of the greats, not round up his buddies and go cut a path and lay a boardwalk to one of the pools? Maybe these fellows actually have it waxed. Maybe they fish there three times a week, meet in secret, and keep their wonderful exploits off the internet. That would be great I guess, and from thousands of miles away I may never know, but nothing leads me to suspect that this is the case.
Turning for a moment to the observations, and technical developments of the Letort Regulars: Has anyone seen Marinaro’s assertions on the body colours of the spinner vs the dun espoused, refuted, or even discussed since the 1990’s? It is quite possible that I am missing something, and that in fact these technical issues have been built upon since that era of great flyfishing books. But my mates and I just throw Para RAB’s. I know: Our particular streams are fast freestone waters, and fish will bite Humpies and DDD’s, so maybe the Letort/Marinaro model doesn’t apply here, and maybe modernisations of his work are widely applied elsewhere..
But, we do have some slower sections of river. Late last season a friend and I were foxed by some fussy trout in a series of slow pools.
Our frantic changing from a para RAB to a beetle to a CDC emerger simply didn’t work, and our conscious repertoire didn’t extend to significantly different solutions. We concluded that we were fishing one of the most difficult trout streams around, and I for one would have been happy with just one trout that evening. I can’t help thinking that Marinaro, if he was watching, would have labelled us as guys who “Stomped the banks and flailed the water”. And I can’t help thinking that all of us fly anglers have gone just a little bit backward. Our enquiries extend to scant viewings of Instagram pictures, and the odd YouTube video in which the tattoos and the brand of fly rod are the main feature. We don’t meet at the riverside to inspect the insects and discuss the finer points of the hatch, and life is too busy for a fisherman’s breakfast every Sunday.
We recently lost Lefty Kreh and Ed Shenk.
There might have been a code once, but I think its broken.
Additional Reading:
The landscape swells
“Place and experience become reciprocal touchstones, each authenticating the other. The landscape swells with the meaning of what has been lived there, and the shape of that living has, in turn, been molded by the place. The landscape no longer exists as a backdrop or setting but as a medium of experience, a material from which the occasion is fashioned, a character in the story of life” Ted Leeson, Jerusalem Creek.
Dust meets Mud
There suddenly came an October day when I heard the rumble of thunder. I heard it in the early hours of the morning, and then it got hot and humid. Smudges of pale cloud hung in a white sky. Then in the early afternoon, the pasty blue sky over the berg rumbled at us, and taking a look at it, I discovered that it may in fact be grey, not blue. I took my glasses off; then put then back on again. Somehow those colours were barely distinguishable as I squinted westward. We were sharing a rod and throwing dries at some tiny trout in hot treacle sunshine. The water was low, but it was cool, and clean, and soothing to be beside. Small Trout flashed at the flies.
We dipped our fingers in the water. Then we went back to the truck, packed up in the shade, and drove on. Later we put the vehicle in four wheel drive and drove it up a bank to get the bonnet under a pine tree, after the biggest hailstone in the valley hit the windscreen, scaring Trevor half out of his seat.
That was after we had explored two valleys, stopping at vantage points and on bridges and peering at clear water to better assess the flow and maybe spot a Brown. The flow was slow, and the runs held no cover. The pools were reasonable though, and we had no difficulty imaging trout in them, even if we couldn’t see them. We drank a lot of water, and the sweat trickled down our collars. At one spot, high above an enticing blue-green glide through a dolorite channel, we debated whether to rig a rod and clamber down the hill. It was stifling, and we couldn’t dally too long. In the end we allowed laziness to conquer us both and we merely spent an extra minute or two looking wistfully down the slope at the thing. Then we drove into welcome raindrops.
Once the risk of hail had passed we drove south through countryside that glistened following the passing of the storm. At the next river the flow was still low, but gulches and road drains poured red earth into the river in billowing, widening clouds, that contrasted with the slow clear flows.
We picked our way towards home on a back road that I had not driven before. We chose it because it took us all the way down the valley and then crossed the river again on the way back. We slithered along on wet roads, and then suddenly we were on tar again. The rain had stopped but it felt steamy again.
I recognised hills, and reported our position to Trevor. Then I got some hills wrong, and had to re-orientate, until I was nodding confidently again. Then we were back on dry roads, but soon after I dropped Trevor off there was more of that grey/blue sky and lightning. As I climbed out of the cab at home I was greeted by thunder, and a piet-my-vrou. I put my feet up on the veranda, after a long day of driving, and had a cup of tea, looking out over the lawn and sniffing the petrichor.
The next day was hot. We washed the mix of winter’s dust and summer mud off the bakkie, and the inside got a spring clean. Boots were dried. Winter clothing was removed, and I re-stocked the vehicle with a repaired tow rope (after we broke one helping someone out) and made sure there was a raincoat in there, and snake gaitors.
Later we holed up in the cool of the house, barefoot and in shorts, and feeling the humidity. I checked my stream box, and resolved to tie up a few more dries. I hadn’t looked in there until now.
Its uncanny how you can’t really tell the blue sky from the grey but thunder serves to sharpen the focus a little, and suddenly you realise it’s a storm. A bit of thunder and humidity signals the passage from spring to summer, and suddenly you know it is here.
Storms.
Heat.
Hatches.
Strong, invigorating river flows. (we hope!)
Summer….
Making my way West to Winter
Making my way west, away from the brutal hissing, rattling black highway, puts me in the folds of soft hills. Soft hills decked in the ochres, fawn, brown, yellow, maple orange and bare sticks of winter’s onset. The only hard lines are the escarpment, where the berg presses against the sky in a stark outline. It is an outline of a boundary against which we retreat. It reminds me of my prized dorm bed at boarding school, that fit in a corner against the walls of the basement boiler, and was warm in winter. So too, the berg is a boundary of comfort. Heading west puts me in place where my back is covered. The higher I go, the less of the downstream lowlands I see and the further I am from that highway. I can choose how high to go, and my decision depends on my need for escape from the lowlands….depends on how much of that brutal highway I have been absorbing of late.
The westward route extends past the railway lines and coffee shops and tourists who point out of their windows before taking sudden, lurching turns. Driving it now, I am rolling the vista back and forward in my mind. Back to summer, when it was rank and warm, and roadside grasses had aspirations of being giant elephant reeds. Forward to June, when the stems of bolted grass are stark sticks, losing husks and gathering dust. In between was the golden season. The season of crocosmias paniculata, lit like burgundy on fire. The season of falling stars: delicate blooms of Oros fake orange (6% real, the rest delivered along that highway from a factory somewhere). The golden season that went too quickly and took with it its red wine pin oaks and its amber London Planes; stole the spathes, spikelets and awns of the wild oat grass, and made off with its cool mornings and breezy warm days. We are left now with crows and sticks and dust; mornings too still to blow away the frost; days too hazy to feel the earth’s lines.
The contrast of our sport cuts like an old blunt knife. Like that cake knife back home, the one with the split wooden handle, bound with string. One that must be pressed and worked, and tilted to cleave the days and leave autumn aside, and winter to be coped with. Autumn with the rivers still open, and their small shy browns spooking at my clumsy casts. On that last day, my wading boots slid into the clean water. Water so clean I had to put my hand into it to be sure it was there. When it seeped through the neoprene onto my skin, my breath knew it was there, and it escaped from my chest in alarm. The fish were rather offish. The ones I found were the ones I spooked, or were rising, but there were few of both. The rising ones only needed one cast to dissuade them, and I couldn’t make them gentle enough. Not even with whisper fine 7X tippet on the two weight, and CDC dries. They just didn’t want them. And I suppose I just didn’t need them either. What I needed was the cold water, and warm sun weak enough not to roast me. I needed the Prussian blue and blackened purples of the shaded side of Baboon hill as my backdrop; and I needed the willows still with leaf but a sorry lemon lime hue leaf, not a lush green one. I needed silk surfaced fields, pale and dotted with bales, each one throwing a shadow as black as charcoal. I needed those trout too, but I only needed them to show themselves to me. I didn’t need to posses them. I only needed to possess autumn.
But the knife has pressed and cleaved the seasons now, and autumn can’t be possessed any longer. I drive further on rippled, bone shaking corrugations, and I throw dust clouds in the wake of the bakkie. At the bridge I pretend not to look at the river that jilts me. It runs clear, and strong enough to make me think of spring, although I deny the thought. My thoughts must run with the season.
I alight from the vehicle into wiry, tawny grass, and am greeted by warm sun and a raw breeze. The air is coming at me from the north across the cerulean ripples of the lake. I need a jacket. Later, I push the toe of my boot through iced muck, sticking to the cattails and reeds in the boggy margins. Just beyond, a band of still water laps in inky rolling waves that curl into the cattails and are tamed. At the outer edge of that bank, the mesmerizing ripples start, glinting fierce sunlight across at me and in, under the brim of my hat to hurt my eyes. Although I have to squint to look at it, its that transition that I am after, and I throw a team of flies across there. It is close enough that I am cautious not to move, and that a false cast is not needed. The black DDD alights, and the rice-bead corixa imitation plops just behind it. I hold the rod high, and still, poised expectedly. “The hang” they call it. It feels more like a long wait to me. Nothing happens. I try it a few more times, but winter fish are stubborn, and averse to our formulas. You will have more luck calling the cat.
Before long I am moving from spot to spot. My focus has changed to seeking warmth from the sun between wind gusts, casting in a direction in which I save my eyes the glimmer, and achieving crisp loops and pleasing distances. I have long since changed to a single fly, and I retrieve faster than I want to.
It seems slow, and there is a lot of time for considering the world, and the lake, and the season past. I am small and I am perched on a high vista in the wind, and the opening lines of the book of Ecclesiastes run repeatedly through my mind. I have to remind myself that this is what winter fly fishing is about. I consider a day back in the eighties, where I fished Triangle dam like this all day, and in which I was rewarded with one Rainbow. Only one Rainbow; but it was big and angry and I still have the photo. “Stick it out” I tell myself, but I needn’t, because I always do stick it out. It is merely an exercise in getting one’s mind alignment right. Standing there alone, with more thoughts than time, and all the time in the world to pick which ones to use, you never know if you have that alignment right. Never will.
Many hours later I am jolted by a silvery rainbow. It’s lively, but it is a small one. Later, another takes the fly as I lift it, but for the rest the fish are off the prod, and this day will remain one of wind and sun. “Meaningless. Meaningless”.
As I step out of the cab to close the last gate behind me in the gloom of evening, my senses are hit by the silage-like scent of dead, dewy winter grass, and my entire childhood washes over me in the time it takes to close the gate.
It is winter now.
Pewter and Charcoal: a little Brown and Catlow
“It was one of those times that I think come to all fishermen: when we win back something of the vision of our angling boyhood, but at the same time experience it with the deeper gratitude of a grown man” Laurence Catlow, The Healing stream
I think Catlow’s comment is befitting of those times, when you land a Trout, even a very small one, and in the moments before you release it, you admire it and think “Damn I love these fish, and I love this pastime”
Pewter and Charcoal: Gierach and conservation perfection
On obsessing about conservation while fishing, Gierach once wrote:
“I can’t say I spent a lot of time brooding about this: the fishing was too good for that, and I also understood that if you chase perfection too far down the rabbit hole, you can end up growing your beard down to your belt buckle and carrying a sign that reads “The End Is Near”. “
(A fly Rod of your Own: John Gierach)
I am trying to avoid the beard and the sign, but I do relish this one place, which to me represents a degree of conservation perfection attained. It is very dear to me.
The black mist
On the eve of our planned trip, I happened to be up on the river. Call it a bit of a “forward patrol”. It was late afternoon, and I was peering into what looked like slightly brown water, squinting against the harsh afternoon rays of the sun, that were beaming in from the west to burn my corneas. “I think it could be clear by tomorrow” I reported to The Viking, factoring in the that there were 14 hours between us and our planned trip, as well as the fact that we would be about 3kms upstream.
I was not wrong.
Our Saturday dawned bright and clear, and when we arrived at the river in the dew, it too was “bright and clear” in the way that good Trout streams are in the early morning light.
The Viking was into a fish in the first run, as was I at the pool just above him.
From there the day unfolded in a delightful haze of small Browns grabbing at the fly; rounding corners and exclaiming “Aah, gee look at that!”, and brief moments looking skyward at circling birds of prey. Sure there were brambles, and the ‘khaki bos’ and blackjacks were at the point of seeding in a spectacularly bad display of what happens when we muck with pristine valleys. But all in all, and with the nostalgic review that accompanies the memories of a good day astream, it was a brilliant outing.
The Viking fished several stretches that I had explained I was going to fish. When he caught up with me, I translated my flailing hand signals, which were meant to convey that I had already fished it, and invariably he replied “I know, but it just looked so good” .
It did look good.
All of it.
The water was not as clear as the upper Bok in winter, but you could see every pebble on the streambed, and the Trout were not scarce. They were not big either. Somehow we got much bigger fish here last year, but it really didn’t matter. At one spot I climbed into the river, and seeing a dead tree behind me, I flicked the fly out in a half hearted roll cast, so that you would have been able to reach the strike indicator with a garden rake. That dark orange indicator (my solution to silvery afternoon light) positively leapt forward and I lifted into a fish that wouldn’t quite have made twelve inches, but it was my best of the day.
The Viking’s best had come earlier. I saw him hoist the fish aloft after a whistle to alert me to his success, and I rather suspect he had wanted me to go down there and photograph it. But I had moved into a good position in such a sweet run, that I pretended not to know that, and fished on with my dry fly.
Back at the car, the Viking produced the special “Black Mist” craft beer that he had been boasting about. It was cold, and it was wet, which are two good attributes of any beer opened at the end of a long sunny day on a Trout river. But I said I could taste undertones of Bovril, and peaty water from a bog in Scotland. While The Viking was deciding whether to be offended or not, I asked if I could have the second one. As we drove home our light mood battled our tiredness, and the elevating effects of the black mist, which we agreed was an entirely different thing to The Red Mist. But we agreed that if you drank enough of one, it could lead to the other.
We also agreed that it had been a day to celebrate, and in the morning I reviewed the pictures which helped support that judgment, with satisfaction.
Fishing with Worms
At a time when so many South Africans are emigrating and the grounds that there is nothing left worth staying here for, it was refreshing to see at least our fishing, through the eyes of a foreign visitor this week.
“Wow, Wow, Wow!” were the words that Bert Worms kept repeating, as we drove up the valley, and as we stopped to look out over the vista before us. It is a valley that I travel to most weeks, and it has become old hat to me. You can see Inhlosane mountain off to the south, and northwards is the Kamberg mountain, maybe even Monks Cowl in the distance on a clear day, and Ntabamhlope in the north east. Looking back down from where we had come you see the tops of Lynwood, Miracle Mountain and Mount Ashley. In between are endless folds of rolling hills coloured anywhere from emerald green to the deep dark shade of pine plantations. You don’t see much habitation in between. I looked at it and started to think that it did look quite cool, as Bert uttered his twelfth “Wow”.
Then we trundled down to the river to cast a fly.
On the way Bert and I chatted. He is the chairman of a small fly angling club in the Netherlands, as well as a much larger, general fishing club. He spoke of our local fly fishing magazine that so impressed him and I asked him about their local magazines. “Yes, we have one” he said “but everything they publish is about fishing somewhere else! We have hundreds of kilometers of river fishing in the Netherlands, and they just write about how good it is over there and over there” . Interesting, I thought.
At the river, I lent Bert a rod and we strung up. The water was a bit off colour from a storm 2 days earlier, and I found myself apologising for the state of our river. “Yes, he said “It is off colour, and at home we probably wouldn’t fish this, but look at this!” he exclaimed, waiving his arms at the wide open space”
There was a pause, and then he added “Wow!”
Later, a storm threatened from the west, and as the lightning grew closer, I looked at Bert to read his appetite for more. We seemed to sort of resign ourselves to throwing in the towel. Then as we drew closer to the fencing stile, I had a quick rethink, despite the few raindrops that had started to fall. “If you are happy to take a short walk down there, there is a very beautiful pool I would like to show you” He seemed keen, so we instantly and silently resolved to extend our short time on the river. At the big pool, the rain started to pelt us, but Bert was not deterred, and kept throwing a fly, until he was rewarded with a pretty Brown.
“Wow!” he said, and we wended our way home, chatting happily as fishermen do, when they know they have shared a good day, and a good place.
Photo of the moment (110)
I was fishing this stillwater over the Christmas break, and I looked down and saw this one dragonfly shuck. Then I started noticing more, and more. There were dozens. I wish I had been there to witness the hatch !
looking for clean water in the Westcountry
My recent visit to the UK afforded me an afternoon on the Test (see my last video), but before that, I went hunting for clean water and willing trout in the Westcountry (Devon and Cornwall). Rain, and the calendar were both against me…..
(Oh, and by way of explanation….most sheep I saw on Dartmoor had red arses……)
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 the street. In fact I found myself with a pile of “must haves” that would simply not fit in my luggage on the return trip, and I had the agonising choice of which ones to put back. One of those was a book called “The Healing Stream” by Laurence Catlow. It is a book I had not heard of before.
I read a few pages, and decided it was on the “keeper” list, and by that night I was reading it. My decision was an unequivocally good one. The book is a delight and a treasure, with words that flow like pure prose.
A short way into the book, the writer starts to suck the reader into his love affair with one particular river. He rights lyrically. I quote:
“….drive up Garsdale to Hawes, where you turn left and head up through Gayle and over Cam Houses; then it is down to Oughtershaw and Beckermonds before following the beginnings of the river through Yockenthwaite, Hubberholme and Buckden, through Starbotton and Kettlewell and so, after the rough poetry of these northern names, down to the main beats of the Kilnsey Club.”
Those names washed over me as I put the book on the nightstand and fell asleep.
The next day, I found myself on a bus, travelling up a river valley in the Yorkshire Dales. The purpose of that bus ride is the topic of another discussion, but suffice it to say that it was not directly fly fishing related. The bus wound its way up a river valley in ever tightening bends, and over bridges that hardly seemed wide enough for a bus. As we progressed the valley became more and more lovely, until it started to literally take my breath away. The rain spattered on the windows of the bus. That was an excuse not to take photos, but at some stage I took a decision not to attempt a photo, because the beauty was so stunning that I knew that a weak attempt to capture it all, would in this case, serve only to tarnish the memory of such a heavenly place.
As we made our way, I started to take note of names. The village of Kilnsey. Kettlewell. Starbotton. Buckden. Hubberholme.
I am a bit slow, and putting something in reverse is sometimes quite adequate a move to fox me, but at this point I did awaken to the fact that I was travelling the valley I had read about the night before.
Of all the valleys in that fair land, I was in the one I had read about the night before. This freak event deepened my sense of appreciation for where I was. It awakened in me an awareness of how special this beautiful trout stream is to at very least ONE angler. An angler and writer, who I might add is brave enough to admit that his own sense of nostalgia and appreciation on the banks of this river regularly drive him to tears. He even comes a little unhinged.
Having seen his valley, I completely understand those tears. The beauty of the Wharfe River valley in the Yorkshire Dales defies description and capture on celluloid.
It is other-worldly , and to visit it is an experience bordering on the religious, especially when you have by sheer chance read the paragraph describing it the night before.
Perhaps its just me? My mates say I am a little unhinged myself.
Stiles
If I haven’t posted for a while, its because I am trying a new style of things, and that meant I had to acquire some new skills. And speaking of Style….here’s the first V….log:
To hell with Nemo
Isn’t it funny how, when you are searching for one thing, you find another. We went in search of backpacks stolen from foreign hikers in the mountains and found other things.
I had gone looking for trout, and found cold driving rain at Highmoor. From there we infiltrated the next valley, where vagabonds and miscreants, might descend from the hills and make their getaway with their loot, and we found:
A trout stream.
And Gaffney.
OK, so we knew the Trout stream was there, but I hadn’t been there in a little while, and I wanted to show it to Anton. In the Trout stream, Anton found some weird bugs that looked like a cross between miniature crabs and aquatic ant lions, but they escaped in short bursts, and when I asked him if he would be able to identify them in a book back home, he said he thought not. I suspect a water bug or water cricket.
But Gaffney identified me when we met her on the way out. She and I had met before, while waiting for the King to arrive. (For four hours in the hot sun…I remember the sunburn). Gaffney was delivering an officer who had returned from leave, back to his mountain outpost in the Ncibidwana valley. An outpost which lay directly in the path of any vagabonds or miscreants who might make a quick getaway from Highmoor with their loot. We discussed the stream with her, and plans to conserve it. The water had been warm, but the flow was good, and we had seen promising ripples tight against the bank in the first pool we came to. The clarity was good, and Anton and I agreed it looked suitably Trouty. Gaffney brimmed with pride at our appreciation of her Trout Stream. It turns out that Gaffney is a champion of wattle eradication, has achieved great things on the Little Mooi, and is likely a perfect ally for efforts to maintain the Ncibidwana.
Just before saying our goodbyes, Gaffney asked if we had seen Pienkie. Hell no. Pienkie….custodian of great Trout fishing at Highmoor has been missing for ages. We had not found Pienkie. There was some confusion, but it emerged that Pienkie was now stationed at the self same outpost up the Ncibidwane valley! To hell with Nemo….we had found Pienkie. (We did wonder what deed or crime might have lead to her banishment though…..)
We failed to find two of our fishing club beat markers elsewhere in the valley. They were simply…..gone. Like backpacks.
Of those that remained however, we found one with bullet holes in it. Now, I don’t know why, but somehow this discovery filled me with joy and pride. The fact that our signs had garnered sufficient merit to become the targets of wild vagabonds and miscreants with rifles, somehow triggered in me a sense of satisfaction and happiness. I can’t really say why. We inspected the holes, and held a discussion about what calibre may have been used, and how poor the aim of the shottist was.
While the level of the Bushmans River was fair, and vastly improved from a few weeks ago, the temperature was too high, and there was nothing to celebrate there. But we stopped at the Vulindlela Tavern anyway, to celebrate…..the bullet holes….or something. There I received a bear hug from one of the patrons, and two ice cold Zamalecs from the bar lady, who acted without surprise, suggesting that she serves storm-drenched flyfishers all the time.
We drove back, drying steadily as Anton’s bakkie seats slowly wicked away all the rainwater from our backsides. The conversation was good too.
I had gone looking for Trout, but instead I received a dousing, experienced good company, explored a good Trout stream, and found joy and pride in some bullet holes. We also found cold Zammalecs.
And we found Pienkie!
To hell with Nemo! We will catch him when the weather cools.
Books, Boarding School, and Beats
“Often enough, the best position for a trout to see and catch these active nymphs is near the river bed” ……..
”It is useless to try to tempt such a fish with an artificial nymph fished just below the surface, or to cast a dry fly over him”
The words of Frank Sawyer, from the book Frank Sawyer, Man of the Riverside, compiled by Sidney Vines.
Frank Sawyer was famous for, amongst other things, The Pheasant Tail Nymph, which you can watch the man himself tying in this link.
Sawyer’s book “Keeper of the Stream was first published in 1952. In 1958 it was followed by “Nymphs and the Trout”, which was revised and re-published in 1970. Sawyer died in 1980, and Sidney Vines compiled “Man of the Riverside” after his death, and published it in 1984.
In 1984 I was a schoolboy. A mad keen fly fishing schoolboy.
In that year I fished, amongst other places, Hopewell dam near Swartberg, Lake Overbury, A couple of dams in Underberg, The Umzimkulu, The Umgeni, and the Mooi on Game Pass. It was my second visit to Game Pass. Back then it was privately owned, but fairly choked with wattles. My photos make for a valuable before-and-after record. I also fished the Mlambonja at Cathedral Peak, and several dams in the Dargle. I also fished some water in the Hogsback, and fell in at a dam in the Karkloof.
My log book reflects that I was using 3X tippet on the dams and 5X on the rivers. My best fish of the year was a “four pound, nine ounce” rainbow from “John’s dam”. I remember this fish well. PD and I had walked up to the dam, and we fished the evening rise. It was in the dead of winter and ice cold overnight. I took forever to land that fish, and by the time I was done, it was pitch black. We had no torch, and walked back the couple of kilometers to the farmhouse in the dark. Later PD confided that he couldn’t see a damned thing, and that he just followed the pale colour of the back of my shirt all the way home.
What is puzzling, is that in 1984 I was in boarding school, and I think you will agree that the above fishing exploits were substantial for a youngster with no means of transport who spent most of the year limited to the school premises.
Its best to sit and consider these things to favourite music. Call me a hillbilly, (which most of my music links will confirm) , but I really like this guy’s stuff:
Artist Justin Townes Earle on Spotify
And in case you thought I was talking about a different sort of beat:
A recent catch return showing a pleasing number of browns caught on the Ncibidwane has my mind wondering back to our explorations there not so long ago. I remember hiking up there with my family on a day so hot that what we mostly did was sweat and swim. I remember a day when we went up higher than we have ever done before, and then hiked back and saw a fish of near 20 inches within sight of the car. PD remarked “Why the hell did we hike all the way up there?”. And I remember another long hot day of hiking with my friend Roy. On that day we found ourselves weakening by mid morning, and only then realised we had forgotten to eat our breakfast. We sat under the scant shade of a Protea, and Roy proceeded to eat a tub of yoghurt with his fingers….he had forgotten to bring a teaspoon!
It’s time I got back there. I have a car nowadays. I am not limited to any premises. I might throw a Pheasant Tail nymph…….
