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a Vote for messy

“So what I am suggesting here  is a complete approach to our waters where the competitive, lip-ripping edge is left back in the fast lane of societal superficialities and the joyful spirit of camaraderie, sportsmanship, and involvement with nature are the main goals”.  Jerry Kustich I get a sense that my fly-fishing is a more messy affair than it is for the guys I bump into around these parts.  Take Squidlips from Smoketown for example:  He  drives his blue Nissan up to the Bushmans on an appointed Saturday, and a day later there are a dozen glossy pictures on social

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2 January 2019

Blood on my sandwiches

I had never hooked a trout before this week-end. That is to say, I had never held a fly between my two fingers, and used it to hook a trout. There is a first time for everything. There is also a heavily wooded valley cut by a tributary of a favourite stream, which I had never entered. Here a reclusive and interesting man resides. I had never met this hermetic bloke before. What I have done before, is to go on a day’s fishing and not take my fly rod out of its tube. That happened once when PD and

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28 October 2018

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.

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15 October 2018

Beats, Beans, Books…

Seasick Steve  does a wonderful rendition of “Gentle on my mind”   [click that if you have Spotify]  that I have been listening to lately at my tying bench. But in case you thought “beats” referred to something else, I can give you some news on this river beat: That there is my movie making friend Zig, behind the lens. He and I were on the forest section of Furth Farm on the Umgeni last week, getting some pics of this lovely stream in a spot where it runs deep between rocky banks, shaded by a forest that now comprises only

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9 September 2018

Photo of the moment (100)

No 100 has some significance.  It shows a cleared section of the Umgeni, which is very close to my heart. It shows Inhlozane mountain, which I grew up within sight of, and it was taken on a day when we caught browns in numbers markedly higher than before the place was cleared. That’s Rogan in the the river…all-round great guy and son of my late river clearing and flyfishing  pal Roy.   Call me sentimental!

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11 May 2018

Coffee & Quotes

“We fished these streams with a weighty sense of proprietorship, and grave recognition that we might just be the only people on earth who cared that the Trout were there at all”   pg 38, Jerusalem Creek, Ted Leeson. These words struck a chord with me when I first read them, to the extent that I immediately wrote them down in my journal. That “weighty sense of proprietorship” is exactly the feeling I get when I walk and fish my local river; a stream long forgotten by most, which I have probably written about and referred to, too much. Too

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28 November 2017

a gentleman of the highest order

A few days back, a member of our fishing club booked to fish a fairly remote river beat on his own.  The river he chose is one that does not receive as much press as better known streams. I do not know this man. I do know that he heads up a large corporate concern that is a household name. I can imagine that he could afford to fish anywhere he liked. He is probably well connected and could fish some private water that I would not have access to.  I do not know this man. I do know that

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19 November 2017
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