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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Hope and despair

There are two river valleys I know in Trout country  that cause me despair. There are two others that give me hope. Let’s get the despair out of the way. If you have ever driven up the lower Pitseng pass from the turnoff outside Mt Fletcher, up to Vrederus on the plateau below Naude’s Neck Pass , you may have noticed the stream running parallel to the road for a long way. Perhaps you did not. You could be forgiven for not noticing it, because if truth be told, you seldom see it. It is completely inundated with wattle trees.

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Wattles, apathy and good cappuccino.

Some days will always be slow ones. There will be those days where a long week will catch up with you, and instead of heading out at 5 am, you will put your alarm on snooze, get up at 6:30, and have a decent breakfast, complete with a cappuccino.  Driven as one might want to be to get out on the water, sometimes fishing days will turn out that way. The rigors of a business week will catch up with you, and your body will rebel and tell you to “chill”. On Sunday, I obeyed. Egg, bacon, beans, toast, ended

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With the dew still on it.

Do you remember that scene from “a River runs through it” where the camera swoops across a  rocky ridge, and reveals the two boys running across the open grasslands? Here in the KZN midlands, our landscape, notwithstanding its beauty, is lined and dotted with trees. Not only trees of course, there are fence-lines and farmhouses and roads too, but the trees are significant. Early writings by explorers in this area reveal the extent to which this place was a sea of grass. A world with the dew still on it:  there are still patches to be cherished. I read somewhere

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Confessions of a Trout snob

When reading Duncan Browns book recently, (Are Trout South African), I became aware of the depth of my prejudices.  Duncan does a fine job of pointing out the nuances and peculiarities that we apply in deciding if something is indigenous or not, and it is a thought provoking read. I go for Trout , with a capital T, (Alien) and definitely not bass (with a lower case B), ( also alien). I strongly dislike wattles and brambles (Alien), but love the sight of a stand of poplars (also alien). I don’t care much for scalies [AKA “yellowfish”] (indigenous),  and I

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