trout - Truttablog

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

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

19 April 2015

Photo of the moment (28)

15 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

4 April 2015

Photo of the moment (19)

25 January 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

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

23 December 2014

Photo of the moment (3)

August sunset

18 August 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

4 August 2014

Dust and smoke in the Midlands

Yesterday I headed out along the Kamberg road. Sunday past, this had been the scene of a wild and awful wind. One that lashed the dry veld angrily, kicking up dust and tossing branches. Inevitably, fire had been involved too. The farmers were now on guard. Houses, and even lives were lost down Kokstad way. Yesterday was calm. In fact it was calm all day, and with Sunday’s wind fresh in everyones memory, the farmers were out in force burning fire breaks. Palls of smoke rose from a few spots up the valley. Something was burning up in the berg,

21 June 2014