My cousins are farmers in the Indezi valley. The Indezi valley for those who do not know it, is the valley the N3 follows between the Lions River and Nottingham Road turn offs. It’s a little stream made smaller by the depredations the golf course resort at Boschoek and of Mondi whose pine plantations sprawl across most of its course.

So to say that the Indezi runs a little on the thin side is no understatement. In fact, in winter it hardly runs at all. However, none of this was of particular interest to me. What interested me is that my cousins own a stretch of the Indezi which to my knowledge has not been fished, or at least, not since anyone can remember.

Now it has to be said that I have developed a taste for virgin waters ever since Tony Kietzman remarked the other day that he did not think the waters we were fishing had been fished before. What if, I thought, the Indezi could deliver the same sort of promise? True there would not be any trout, but perhaps shoals and shoals of yellowfish had somehow found their way past the Indezi Falls and were just waiting for me to discover them.

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This would be quite a feat as the falls are substantial and the Indezi rises less than ten kilometres above them.  However one must never underestimate the power of an idea. Reality has never beaten an idea, at least not to start with.

So it was that mid-morning on 1 April found me kitted out with every gewgaw a small stream fisherman deems essential to his happiness, ready to tackle the virgin Indezi.

I ignored the oppressive heat and the roar of the Easter traffic on N3 passing just overhead. I also ignored the bemused glances of the farm labourers who had gathered to watch my preparations. Ignoring the giggling remarks of their children frolicking just upstream from me took a little more effort.  Sometimes it helps not to speak any Zulu.

What I could not ignore was the stiff little downstream breeze that got up just as I started rigging my rod or, after I started fishing, the realisation that some streams do not remain virgins by accident. It is a hard won prize jealously guarded with bramble, barbed wire, overgrown banks and fallen trees. The Indezi is such a stream.

This drastically reduced the water that I could fish increasing in inverse proportion the water in which fish, if indeed there were any, could safely hide.

It has to be said that these were not ideal conditions to attempt French hand to leader techniques, especially not with a seven foot rod. But this did not deter me. Happily in a very short time my fourteen foot leader was down to eight foot. The fact that it took six flies to achieve this was an acceptable sacrifice. Not so was my encounter with a rotting fencepost and the extremely aggressive ants that lived there. They swarmed over me in the blink of an eye. I managed to kill most of them but some escaped enlivening the rest of the day with ill-timed and painful nips sometimes in the most inconvenient of places. 

And so I battled on sacrificing countless flies to the gods of tree, grass and rock. I did not spot a single fish, though this was not to be expected as the water was a trifle on the muddy side. Did I mention that my cousins are cheese makers and that I was fishing on a dairy farm? I must say the combination of a hot day and cow shit is simply delightful. I count as the day’s only success the fact that I overcame the many attempts of my felt soled boots to land me in it. I can also tell you that lush pastures are death traps. All that verdant grass nestling at the river edge hides no end of surprises. How was I to know that the bank ended some twelve inches before the grass did. That is why I’d ended up hugging that ant infested fence post.

There were occasions when I got in a decent drift. Indeed sometimes, when the ants were not biting, I could even pretend that I was enjoying myself. I think I may have spooked a fish, but it could just as easily have been a fast swimming frog. There were also occasions when a hook up on a submerged branch or rock induced a moment of expectation.

Hope springs eternal, especially in the hearts of fisherman.  But even so there comes a time when even the hardiest fisherman admits defeat and seeks solace in the bottle. So it was that I found myself nursing a beer kindly provided by a solicitous cousin.   “I never thought you’d come”, she said. When you telephoned me this morning I thought you were playing me for an April Fool!”