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Stillwater celebration

The mornings have been cold. Lake fringes, boats and tackle have been laced with ice. The sun has been golden, sweet and welcome. The water has been sparkling, clear, and shimmering blue in contrast to the dusty veld. The Trout have been willing at times. We have had small strong silver fish, and larger Rainbows, flushed in deep colours. We have warded off the chilly breezes with jackets and gloves and “buffs”. Hot coffee has been essential. The sunsets have come quickly. 

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21 June 2015

Buzz

It started with mosquitos the night before. They had bugged me half the night, buzzing around my ears frequently but at irregular intervals. I could hear them, and I guessed at their location for the purpose of aiming my ineffectively flailing open hand. The ants required the same open hand, but thankfully the blows were one hundred percent effective, crushing the little buggers milliseconds after they delivered a painful bite to the back of my neck. I had picked them up at a fence crossing. They must have been crawling on my back. There was this pole you see. A

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29 April 2015

Wet socks and Whisky

My mind is a whirl of flaming Lombardy poplars, water clear and cool; of shafts of sunlight cutting across the mountains and igniting the yellowing veld. Whisky from the bottle cap, ice on boots, and rocks on two wheel tracks. Rods, flies, cussing, jokes and dust. Cold wet socks. Trout. Nuts, mussels and biltong from the backpack. The Birkhall porch: swirls of light and clinking glasses in the night. Tobacco smoke and fishing plans.  Roads: ever curling , descending, rising, twisting and demanding another gear. The veld: whisked and brushed by wind, seed-heads bowing and bucking, in browns and pale

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19 April 2015

Cool bunnies

Easter time, or more specifically late March through all of April, is a magical time for us trout fly-fisherman here on the  eastern seaboard of South Africa. We have just come out of the stifling heat of February, which is about as “un-trouty” as you can get, and those of us with European origins are feeling ever so slightly more comfortable, no matter how African we profess to be. Our rainy season is drawing to an end. We can still get rain at this time of year. In fact we can get rather a lot, but the wild unpredictability of

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4 April 2015

Mid summer stream fishing

A celebration of our upland Trout streams on video://player.vimeo.com/video/117028709 Summer streams, Summer dreams from Andrew Fowler on Vimeo. View on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6bvftJdnjc

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19 January 2015

Small streams and patience

In the summer months, I often have occasion to fish some tiny streams. I really enjoy those waters. Delicate strands of water, in which any trout that you do succeed in catching, is a miracle of nature. Delicate strands of water Sure, the words “miracle of nature” are over-used, cliched, and bordering on corny, but consider this: We have just come through a spring drought, both in KZN, and the NE Cape. You just have to drive through the Kamberg valley, as I did yesterday, to see that despite all the green grass, the dams are still not full. That

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23 December 2014

Silly Syllogisms

I often find that a thermometer is a poor measure of temperature, in terms of our experience of the fishing day. Leaving aside the wind chill factor, which we all know well, a thermometer reading tells very little about what it feels like to be out. Just the other  morning, it was 13 degrees when I got up. On a winter’s morning, that is a very high overnight temperature, and one that on the face of it, should have the global warming guys saying “You see!”. But strangely it didn’t feel that warm at all. The thing is, that  as

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4 August 2014
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