FISHING HIGHLAND LODGE
Click in images to enlarge
This was a wonderful August to be fishing Highland Lodge in the Stormberg Mountains of the Eastern Cape because the trout were exceptional and the weather was a touch milder than in previous years. My performance was dismal when it came to hooking and landing trout and I got nowhere near the results my mates Chris Bladen, Darryl Lampert, Gerrit Redpath and Jean Bence did.
They out-fished me with ease. I had a few days with some bug, even had to spend a valuable angling day resting up, but that to one side, my fishing was simply not on song on this trip. Next year I will turn the tables around.
Water temperatures were around 6 to 7 ° and clarity was down on previous years, I think because of days of high winds blowing across very parched landscapes and depositing dust.
Darryl Lampert showed us all why he is such a successful angler. He thinks a lot about what he is doing, isn’t scared to innovate and never ever gives up. His highlight in my view was a day when he landed a dozen hefty rainbows many of them taken on size 16 Soft Hackle patterns!
Gerrit Redpath just went his quiet way catching fish after fish.
As usual we all spent plenty of time behind cameras and at one stage on a particularly lovely day weather-wise, I ended up in a float tube with no less than three heavy SLR cameras draped around my neck. Something tells me I’m just destined to be a stranger to the need to rationalise!
Most days we left the lakes well after sunset when the air temperature dropped to around 0 to -2 °.
EN PASSANT
On the drive up to Highland Lodge this last trip, in the middle of the Karoo, 80 Ks from the nearest town, this sign flashed by. For a moment we were a little stunned to say the least. Take away toilets!? But a more detailed reading helped to clarify things. Maybe they need an art director?
JOHN WATT’S UNBELIEVABLE FLY VICE
Says John:
Herewith pictures of my tying vice mainly made from bits and pieces I had in my garage. The pedestal is a Cessna undercarriage saddle. The gooseneck was nearly the right shape; just needed a bit of encouragement. Other bits were adapted as required to fit. The base previously had some other use so the holes were already there. The lever on the pedestal locks the shaft in any position. The rest is ornamentation!
I suppose Jay Smit would frown a bit if he saw it!
On the contrary, I think Jay is going to be greatly impressed.
(Jay Smit is a master engineer of state of the art fly tying vices. http://www.jvice.com/index.html)
FLY FISHING FOR TROUT IN KENYA FROM JUSTIN HEATH
Justin says
Herewith a photo essay on what Kenya has to offer trout-wise. Rather than going into specific rivers I’ll try and keep it general and give an overall idea.
Kenya has some fantastic trout fishing either in the rivers running off the five main water catchment areas of the Aberdares, Mt Kenya, Mau, Cheranganis or Mt Elgon or in dams and lakes on or near these water catchment areas.
The two most easily accessible, from Nairobi, and hence most commonly fished are the Aberdares and Mt Kenya.
These photos are from a river running off the Aberdares that we fished last Sunday. It’s in a forest and at much lower altitude (+/- 7000 – 8500ft).
Getting to the rivers can be challenging and the hikes in and out often long, battling through thick bush and stinging nettles, unless you find an elephant trail for a short while.
At this time of year the streams look superb and are much clearer than during the rains. I included this photo to give you another idea of the steepness/ vegetation getting in and as out.
You can see how high the rivers come from the log-jam on the right in the photo above.
If you pick up a few rocks then there are plenty or either very small clinger mayflies or these much larger ones. Size 10 Brown Copper Johns, Kenya bugs and Zaks all work well.
Probably true of most places worldwide, the further off the beaten track you go the better the fishing gets. On this particular stretch this was about our average size fish.
NICK TARANSKY RETURNS TO LAKE JINDABYNE IN NEW SOUTH WALES
Says Nick
I went winter polaroiding again on Lake Jindabyne here in New South Wales, with my wife, Miri. With a big high pressure squashing down over the mountains we had one of those definitive "Blue Sky" Jindy days with barely a breath of wind.
We got to the Lake at about midday, this time fishing the upper Eastern part near ‘Kalkite’, and fished until the sun started creeping behind the mountains at 5:30 pm. This Eastern side of the lake has a strange, almost lunar harshness to it. In some ways, it is ugly, but has an icy appeal to me, especially on these chilly still days.
This calm weather offers the best and worst of it. More fish seen, but they can be very spooky. We saw about 15-20 fish in total, and managed to present the fly to about half of them. I hooked one early on, using my standard polaroiding fly, a #16 Black and Peacock Spider tied with a fat body and on a heavy gauge, short shank hook. With a floating leader, it will hover in shallow water, but if the leader is pulled under immediately after the cast, it will sink reasonably quickly, and it's small enough to not spook the fish if presented within a few feet.
It's hard to see the fly, but you can usually tell when the fish takes it, from the white of its mouth opening or even its "body language". Miri and I both saw the mouth open with this fish, and when I struck it ran, and ran and ran. My half fly line (I use a half a DT for nearly all my fishing) and most of my backing went in three successive surging runs, and I realised I was in trouble. The bank here shelves down rapidly over jagged granite rocks and even with as high a rod as possible, I felt the line come up hard over rocks and then go slack as the leader cut.
We saw a few fish and interestingly a number of browns rising regularly to midges, which is quite rare in my experience on Jindabyne in winter.
Miri managed a nice brown later in the day (again, on the black and peacock), and then I popped one on the take, having cast from up high on the bank over the rocks and debris. My excuses on both my losses were the fishing gods.
FROM GRAHAM THOMAS ON FISHING IN ICELAND
In three days fishing, 10 rods caught over 200 fish, and many of these were multi sea-winter fish, over 80cms and into double figure weight (in pounds). Perhaps most significantly, only five of these fish were kept; the rest all released…
Read more on
http://www.tomsutcliffe.co.za/fly-fishing/friend-s-articles/item/828-fishing-northern-iceland-%E2%80%93-text-and-images-by-graham-thomas.html
THE RIVER WANDLE AGAIN, LONDON’S TINY CHALK STREAM
In an earlier newsletter I wrote of a little chalkstream in south west London called the Wandle. In his autobiography FM Halford described catching two trophy trout from it in 1869. The little chalk stream fell into serious disrepair due to urbanisation in the 60’s and 70’s, but has happily undergone considerable restoration with the help of the London Wildlife Trust and other organisations.
A friend living in London, Matthew Holden, recently wrote to say;
Two weeks ago I bumped into a fantastic Danish chap while practicing casting in Ravensbury Park on the River Wandle, a chalk stream we have in London. I showed him a productive spot I know well and he landed his first ever chub. He then insisted I should have a cast and here are shots of the stream and the nipper I got!
An equally interesting aspect of this little river is its rich history. For example, this is where FM Halford first cast a dry fly. But I was alerted to yet more history on this stream.
No lesser fly fisher than Admiral Lord Nelson lived in Merton Place on its banks and fished the stream regularly. He bought Merton Place, a large estate, for his mistress, Emma Hamilton. History has it that she was some lady. She is said to have danced naked on a table at the protracted stag party of one Sir Harry Featherstonhaugh. Whatever, I’ll park the Wandle’s history right there for the moment.
ON READING FLY FISHING
On our recent trip to Highland Lodge we chanced one night to talk about great angling reading as opposed to great angling literature.
A case in point, for example, is Oliver Kite’s book, A Fisherman’s Diary. It’s a book I have read more times than I will ever know, enjoy as much now as when I first read it, but admit it will never really be part of fly fishing’s great literary heritage. Similarly, Charles Ritz’s A Fly Fisher’s Life is great reading, as opposed to great writing, and the same can be said of Sydney Hey’s Rapture of the River or Vincent Marinaro’s In the Ring of the Rise.
I would think the recognized works of angling authors like Negley Farson, Ernest Hemingway, Harry Plunket Greene, Roderick Haig-Brown, Robert Traver, Harry Middleton (there are many, many more but I won’t trouble you with them right now), are deserving of the title ‘great angling literature’, or ‘classic literary works’, or ‘literary masterpieces’, whatever you want to call them. It strikes me, though, that claiming classic literary status for any fishing book is as risky as wading out on thin ice over deep water. Someone is bound to disagree with one or two of your choices and who’s to say he’s not right. And anyway how would you categorise the works of say, Nick Lyons, Steve Raymond, Arnold Gingrich, Zane Grey, Thomas McGuane, Paul Scullery, John Gierach or Seth Norman, to name a few? It’s probably easier just to tag them with the term ‘great angling reads’ and just leave it at that.
Here the pure ‘how-to-do-it’ books are clean out of the debate. That opens another treasure trove that embraces the likes of Halford, Skues, Bergman, Brooks, Ivens, Marinaro, Schwiebert et al, right up to the many splendid works of the last decade, including Peter Hayes’s acclaimed Fly fishing Outside the Box: Emerging Heresies.
I think what is needed is that I first compile a list of my truly great angling reads, books I would recommend to the average young fly fisher as essential reading for the soul, for the mind, for the fun, for the humour, for sheer literary genius, or for the poetry, or for all of those reasons. One on my personal best list would be Robert Traver’s Trout Madness.
After that I will compile my list of essential ‘how-to’ books – with a little help from my friends.
BIG TWO HEARTED RIVER
All that said, Big Two Hearted River by Ernest Hemingway, a two-part short story, is a classic by any measure. Regarded by some as the greatest piece of angling prose ever written, Hemingway used a style popular at the time where the underlying meaning is only hinted at, rather than plainly stated. Big Two Hearted River is the story of a young man returning from a terrible war to camp out in a remote fishing haunt of his youth where he finds the surrounding forests had been devastated by a recent fire. His fishing is described in minute detail, the war only barely hinted at in the destruction and ashes of the fire. Hemingway believed this made the tale all the more powerful. I will leave you to decide should you choose to read it. To give you a taste, here is a short piece from the story:
Nick looked down into the pool from the bridge. It was a hot day. A kingfisher flew up the stream. It was a long time since Nick had looked into a stream and seen trout. They were very satisfactory. As the shadow of the kingfisher moved up the stream, a big trout shot upstream in a long angle, only his shadow marking the angle, then lost his shadow as he came through the surface of the water, caught the sun, and then, as he went back into the stream under the surface, his shadow seemed to float down the stream with the current, unresisting, to his post under the bridge, where he tightened facing up into the current.
(Hemingway on Fishing is an enjoyable collection of his many descriptions of angling and includes Big Two Hearted River. The book was published by Globe Pequot Press (2007). It may well be available in South Africa from http://www.netbooks.co.za/. )
ROBERT ROWLES SHARES HIS NEW WIGGLE DAMSEL
Says Robert
I recently tied up three of these wiggle damsels out of curiosity just because they looked so realistic and I wanted a new fly tying challenge. I tested them in a friend’s private dam in Mooi River (KZN) two weeks ago and was surprised at how well they fished in very slow conditions. No other fly stirred up the interest of the bigger fish on this trip.
The fly produced two very good trout (both 6lb) and I had another good fish break me off on its first run. I proceeded to tie up about six more for my next trout trip. Have you had much luck fishing similar jointed flies for trout? This is the first ‘jointed damsel’ pattern I’ve ever tried before and it has won me over! It looks very realistic in the water.
(On our recent trip to Highland Lodge both Chris Bladen and Darryl Lampert tied articulated flies, nymphs and attractor patterns. Chris pointed out – and is dead right – that you get far better articulation using a loop of steel trace to attach the second hook rather than nylon. Tom Sutcliffe)
An expert in the area of articulation is American Blane Choklett with his famous Game Changer patterns using Fish Skull® Articulated Fish Spine segments readymade for joining to create multiple articulations. See http://flymenfishingcompany.org/products/fish-skull-products/fs-articulated-fish-spine/fish-spine-flies/)
MORE ON THE SNEEUBERG FROM PIERRE SWARTZ
(The Sneeuberg Mountains are in the vast, arid plains of the great Karoo, inland of the historic town of Graaff-Reinet and about the last place on earth you would ever expect to find a trout stream!).
Says Pierre Swartz, local guide in the area:
I had the good fortune of being up in the Sneeuberg again recently and had a walk up the stream to see how the trout are doing. I was fishing with a young boy, Hardus du Plessis, who is a regular client of mine. The trout we saw were in full spawning colours and could be seen as they moved about in the shallow water.
In a particular pool I came across a large cock fish of over 3 pounds slowly cruising the margins of a long, deep pool and when it became aware of our presence it turned and dived straight for the cover of an overhang.
After many attempts to fool the fish we gave up and headed further upstream to do some more exploring. The spring is still running strong even during the dry winter we have experienced.
For more information about fishing in this part of the Karoo contact Pierre at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.">This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
THE FUTURE OF TROUT IN SOUTH AFRICA
Ian Cox, a Durban based lawyer, gives a sobering lawyer’s take on the recent classification of trout as a type 1b alien invasive. Says Ian,
Though many do not know it, trout bass and carp fisherman woke up on Saturday 20 July 2013 as potential criminals, liable should they ever catch trout bass or carp again, to a fine of up to ten million Rand and a period of imprisonment of up to ten years. Similarly, thousands of people whose livelihood depends on the many South African’s who enjoy fishing for these species also woke up to find that what they do for a living is a either under threat or in some cases a criminal offence. This is because the previous day the Minister of Environmental Affairs listed trout, carp and bass as invasive and alien species in terms of the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act.
The full text of his article on my website is well worth reading
http://www.tomsutcliffe.co.za/fly-fishing/friend-s-articles/item/808-trying-to-make-sense-of-the-national-environmental-management-biodiversity-act-ian-cox-a-durban-based-lawyer-voices-concerns-about-the-future-of-trout-bass-and-carp-fishing-in-south-africa.html
MORE ON ALPINE STREAMS
From David Elliot
Just got back from another trip to the Alps and had a wonderful day with the dry fly at Kals am Grossglockner. The trout were a bit tricky to spot in the fast water but it was great fun.
The trout had a tendency to hang about in the side pools where the flow was not so fast. I saw one that even used a back eddy to hold its position using virtually no effort! I heard that the rainbows like the fast stretches and a nymph worked but I tended to stick to the dry for the slower parts.
TOP BOOK SELLERS
What is the most published book in the world after the Bible?
According to an article on the research work of Prof Marjorie Swann, a Walton devotee, it is, believe it or not, The Compleat Angler! Through her research she has been able to contribute fresh facts about the book and its author, Izaak Walton, and she makes a credible case for him still being of relevance to a 21st century audience as an environmental writer. She is now working on a book about The Compleat Angler.
CHEMIST GETS TOP AWARD
Leon Martuch, a chemist, is to receive the American Museum of Fly Fishing’s 2013 Heritage award. What for? Well, he developed the original Air-Cel and Wet-Cel fly line coatings in 1954 and 1960 respectively! Leon was also a co-founder of Scientific Anglers in Michigan back in 1945.
A PINKY GILLUM BAMBOO ROD GETS HIGH PRAISE AND A RECORD PRICE
Classic Angling magazine reports that a Harold (Pinky) Gillum bamboo rod, a two tip, 7ft 6” 5-weight, just sold for a record $8500 at Lang’s latest online auction sale. According to Lang’s this has helped to confirm Gillum’s pre-eminent status as the most collectable bamboo rod maker.
Photo per Classicflyrodforum
(Lang’s has a service where you can be provided with on-line pre-auction catalogues. See http://www.langsauction.com/)
By the way, I rate Classic Angling as one of the best fishing reads there is. It concerns mainly collecting and using classic tackle, fishing history and, of course, all the latest news. See http://www.classictitles.com/
PHOTO ESSAY FROM GERHARD LAUBSCHER
Gerhard, executive director of Flycastaway a premier fly fishing travel agency, is one of the most accomplished fly fishing photographers in South Africa. He sent me these words and a heap of delightful images from a recent trip.
I’m back from the USA. What an amazing trip. The tarpon fishing was a little disappointing this season but Montana and Idaho were unbelievable. We got to fish with Rene Harrop for a day on the Harriman Ranch section of the Henry's Fork. What a nice gentleman. Sadly those fish have no respect for a well tied RAB! The fish on the other streams did however jump onto them and thanks for tying them for me!
We got to fish a couple of other rivers as well, most notably the Armstrong Spring Creek which is a stream every angler would love. It is a very technical and also an iconic piece of water. My best fish on the Henry's Fork was a 21 inch rainbow that ate a tiny emerger Rene recommended, probably a size 20.
To see Gerhard’s images follow this link:
http://www.tomsutcliffe.co.za/fly-fishing/friend-s-articles/item/807-gerhard-laubscher-with-a-brilliant-photo-essay-from-a-fly-fishing-trip-to-the-usa.html
FROM DENVER BRYAN, MONTANA-BASED PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER
Thought you might enjoy seeing a couple shots of a 10 pound brown trout we caught out at a friend’s nearby and small spring creek earlier in the week.
HOW GORDON VAN DER SPUY HOPES TO HELP SAVE THE RHINO – you need to read the list of contributing fly tiers here!
Essentially Gordon’s project, together now with www.Flyloops.net, was to involve auctioning off one of his Jock Scott salmon flies and a collection of his dry flies.
But since then many other leading tiers from around the world have donated flies including Hans Von Klinken (Holland), Gary Borger (USA), Agostino Roncallo (Italy), Oliver Edwards (UK), Leon Links (Holland), Lee Wulff (per kind favour of Joan Wulff), Mike Valla (USA), author of Tying Catskill-Style Dry Flies,Robert Verkerk (Norway), Luca Montanari (Italy), Nick Taransky, Australia’s leading bamboo rod maker, Roman Moser (Austria) and locally, Herman Botes (of Papa Roach fame), Tim Rolston one of South Africa’s leading guides, Peter Brigg author of Call of the Stream, a collection from the Durban Fly Tyer’s Guild and Pierre Swartz. I will be contributing a range of DDDs, RABs and Zaks.
Darrel Martin will be contributing a signed copy of his book The Fly Fisher's Craft.
Gordon asks anyone who would like to get involved to contact him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.">This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
To see the progress with bidding and what’s on offer got tohttp://flyloops.net/show_blog.php?blog_id_search=1246
RITCHIE MORRIS ON THE ZAMBEZI
Says Ritchie, a keen fly fisher and accomplished amateur photographer:
Here are a few images from last week’s trip to the Zambezi – Ilombe island area.
Two tigers of 14 Lb were landed, one on a 9 weight by Martin Conradie (above) and the other by Enrico Bossi on an 8 weight (below).
We also caught several other tigers in the 9 to 13 lb range. It was hard fishing, in perfect weather and with plenty cold Mosi’s.
IMAGES OF THE MONTH
This image of mayflies against the late afternoon sun with an angler in the background (Leonard Flemming) was taken on the Witels River, Western Cape Province, by Billy de Jong. He used a tiny Sony DSC-W 17 camera stopped down one full stop, ISO 320 and shutter speed 1/40th. It’s tempting to believe the mayflies were Photo-shopped in, but they weren’t. It remains one of the best and most original and brilliant fly fishing photographs I have ever seen.
Valentine Atkinson took this atmospheric image of a small fishing lodge in Norway.
I took this image of Darryl Lampert near dusk on Bernard’s Dam, Highland Lodge, because I saw tranquillity in the scene and some interesting symmetry in attractive light of a setting sun. Darryl is one of the deepest thinking and most dedicated and determined anglers I know. I have caught him here in a rare moment of repose! Canon 7 D 24-105 mm lens f4 at ISO 1600.
Tom Sutcliffe
