17 FEBRUARY 2013 NEWSLETTER
RANDOM PARAGRAPH FROM MY ANGLING LIBRARY
My latest view of fishing, one I believe has to be the evolutionary product of forty-five years of fly-fishing, is that everything has to do with smoothness, and that constant changing of one’s mind results only in not catching fish. Lee Wulff once said, along these lines, that the last thing to change is the fly.
From The Longest Silence by Thomas McGuane, one of the great works in modern angling literature.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK 
Rivers are like poems. No matter how beautiful they are, you have to study them and read between the lines before you plan your attack. The answers to catching trout are half in rivers, and half in us.
Randy Kadish
(This lovely piece of writing – and wisdom – was sent to me from Clem Booth in London. I had to look up the name Kadish, only to discover, to my embarrassment, that he’s a writer and fly fisher of some considerable standing.)
NEWS FROM SWITZERLAND – of Swiss chalk streams, bamboo rods, CdC and Maximilien Joset
Rolf Frischknecht emailed me earlier in the week from Switzerland to say he enjoyed my website and would I care to look at the site he runs (http://www.swissflies.ch/friends.php?l=en ). Email exchanges between us followed, among them this gem from him:
If you are a fly collector like me, I will send you some of the first ever made CDC flies, tied one hundred years ago! These patterns have caught thousands of fish over the years – and still do to this day. I bought them all, found in the kitchen of the grandson of the famous Maximilien Joset. And whenever you come to Switzerland, be invited to try our alpine waters or chalk streams: http://www.bamboorods.ch/index_bamboo_e.html
This was quite an offer. I accepted the flies of course, but was equally interested to hear about the chalk streams of Switzerland. The River Doubs is one of them, running on the border with France. It is home to a sub-species of brown trout I’d never heard of, the Zebra trout. It appears there are two distinct brown trout (S. trutta) in the Doubs, one locally called the Doubs trout, characterized by four black stripes on the sides, and the other a less common S. fario phenotype called the Zebra trout, they think may be to be a hybrid of sea-run brown trout that bred with the native fish.  Zebra trout But then on the question of Maximilien Joset, I discovered this piece written in 2006 by Grizzly Hackle in Fly fishing – Africa’s original fly fishing journal and I quote:
Leon Links, in his book Tying Flies with CdC, makes reference to Marc Petitjean’s study of the origins of the use of CdC as a fly-tying material. Petitjean identified two men, Charles Bickel and Maximilien Joset, who were almost certainly tying flies with CdC as far back as the 1920s.
There’s some food for thought. And how about those flies found in Joset’s grandson’s kitchen!
(Read the story on CdC in the April/May 2006 issue of FLY FISHING http://www.africanangler.com/fly_article.asp?id=290 )
A SMALL STREAM SOMEWHERE IN NEW ZEALAND
Two ex-Capetonians now living in Auckland have sent word of what looks like a delightful little stream that will remain nameless for reasons you will quickly understand. While the South island is home to brown trout, the North Island also has rainbows. In an email to Ed Herbst, John Taunton-Clark said he and Mike Somerville had thoroughly enjoyed the day. For John, it was a second visit.
John Taunton Clark fishing a stream somewhere in North Island New Zealand
Mike Somerville and I had a day on a small local stream a few weeks back. Fishing was very slow, but it is a nice little spot. Must get back there soon because the cicadas are now singing and the fish will be aggro. Mostly rainbows in the stream, but I put Mike onto a nice brown in the same spot I got a good rainbow last year.
Mike Somerville
ED HERBST WRITES FROM RHODES
I recently visited for the first time a repaired dam in the valley above the Birkhall farmhouse in Barkly East in the Eastern Cape Highlands , owned by Basie and Carien Vosloo.
Birkhall’s lovely upper dam
Since the dam wall was repaired 14 months ago, the 40 hectare dam has seen wild fingerlings from the inlet stream grow to more than one and a half kilograms. As we were driving through the grass at the side of the dam clouds of insects which, with my poor eyesight, I assumed to be grasshoppers, sprayed out ahead of the vehicle.
Pantala adult dragonfly alongside the dam
It was only when we stopped that I realised that they were dragonflies in the hundreds if not thousands. Luckily, I managed to get a photograph of one on my little digital camera and Tom Sutcliffe emailed it to South Africa’s acclaimed expert on these insects, Warwick Tarboton, who is a good friend of Tom’s.
http://www.warwicktarboton.co.za/Dragonfly%20list.html
Here is Warwick’s reply: “There’s not much detail on the dragonfly, but from its wing-shape it’s probably a Pantala, a highly mobile (perhaps migratory) species that is even thought to make an annual crossing from India to Africa. They arrive in South Africa in November and by January one sees them everywhere, even trying to lay eggs on the bonnets and roofs of cars. 
Pantala nymph
They lay eggs en masse in ponds and dams, even rain puddles. There’s often a synchronised emergence as Ed witnessed where in the space of a couple of days (actually nights as this is when they emerge) large numbers come out. From eggs being laid to larva emergence takes about six weeks, so many larvae succumb in temporary rain puddles. By April they’ve gone again.”
What intrigued me was his statement that the dragonflies swam to shore at night to emerge from their nymphal exoskeletons. In this respect they resemble mayflies on Cape streams. This process, while it has been recognised for decades in Australia, seems not to have registered here.
I immediately thought of a pattern, Fred Durnford’s Corduliid, which was developed in the seventies and is featured in one of my favourite books on fly patterns, Peter Leuver’s Fur and Feather (Simon & Schuster, 1999). 
Fur and Feather
http://www.amazon.com/Fur-Feather-fly-tying-Peter-Leuver/dp/068486844X
It is specifically designed to sit in the surface film and create a silhouette against the night sky which mimics the dragonfly nymph swimming to the side of a dam to hatch. It has a dubbed fur body (which could easily be replaced by one of the modern foams like Larva Lace), deer hair legs, and over the top of the fly, three to six duck feathers tied, shiny side uppermost. The head is dubbed fur.
Fred Durnford’s Corduliid dragonfly pattern
This is something we need to investigate in South Africa because if we can develop an understanding of the dragonfly “hatch” and when it occurs – on Birkhall it seems to have happened in the first fortnight of February – it could provide some exciting moonlight fishing.
DEREK GRZELEWSKI
Derek Grzelewski
New Zealand writer, fly fisher, filmmaker and author of Trout Diaries (voted my fishing book of the year for 2012), just sent me his first newsletter with some really interesting content. Derek is an angler worth following.
http://www.derekgrzelewski.com/books.html
AN INJISUTHI EXPERIENCE
A message from Donovan Scott: 
Had an amazing weekend; caught plenty of small mountain rainbows (first ever)in the Injisuthi stream , and my 3 wt worked beautifully. As in your book, these fish are free rising and took an Ed’s hopper, a #16 RAB and an Elk Hair Caddis # 14, very willingly. Mostly the pocket water was crystal clear and flowing quite fast. Picked up some rocks and used a small net to see what insects I could find. There were lots of tiny mayfly nymphs, maybe size #16 to #20. Planning to go up again over Easter and to explore the slightly bigger pools downstream. Taking some ZAK's. I have tied some small ones with tungsten beads. They should do the trick in the fast pockets. Studying your book every evening after work. 
(The Injisuthi is a lovely upland freestone stream in the Drakensberg mountain range in KZN. Tom Sutcliffe.)
BILLY DE JONG’S ACE SMALL STREAM DRY FLY 
In my last newsletter I wrote of the extraordinary fish catching qualities of Billy’s favourite dry fly pattern and a number of readers asked for a picture of the fly. The tail is cock hackle fibres, the body black ultra-fine dubbing, the post is white hair (calf or buck) and the hackle is grizzly. Simple, sure, but you won’t easily beat this little pattern on small streams, anywhere.
FROM ANDRE POLLOW IN ZURICH 
The view out of my window shows me that this is clearly not a day for Flyfishing. I’m happy to be coming soon to Cape Town for one week.
(I am arranging an outing to the Holsloot and Smalblaar rivers for Andre and it looks like he’ll need it.)
FROM DAMON MATHFIELD FISHING STERKFONTEIN DAM FOR YELLOWFISH
My friends and I found the DDD in both natural and black very successful on the yellows fishing Sterkfontein Dam. The untidy DDDs tied with klipspringer worked best. Apart from being an effective beetle imitator, it worked very well mid-morning when the big caddis were hatching in the shallows. It is definitely a fly I will never be without on this water.
Suitably untidy yellow DDD
Here are some of Damon’s images from the trip. He hasn’t been long at his underwater work and we have been in correspondence on it. I think his images are outstanding: 
FROM PETER BRIGG
Pete Brigg, author of the much celebrated book on South African fly fishing, Call of the Stream, sent me this interesting note:
I'm slowly easing into this cyber world and have started my own Blog. I have sent the link to a few people for comment and so far most comments have been positive with constructive suggestions.
Have a look at http://callofthestream.wordpress.com/about/
FINIS
Perhaps a suitable image to end this newsletter for the week. 
Tom Sutcliffe
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