In October of 2016 the Andrew Fowler took an eight day break from “civilization”, stayed in a cottage largely on his own, and did nothing other than fish his way up the Mooi River
Part 1
There was an hour or two on the Bungalow water, when my stick catch rate was at an all time high. In fact it was exceeded only by the number of times I caught brambles. At one stage a wayward bramble bush stuck to the back of my legs, and tangled in my net at the same time, such that each time I took a step it ripped at my flesh. I also lost more flies than I think I ever have before. I lost an entire tippet, fly and indicator about a minute after I had tied them all on, in a mad hatter's tangle of gum tree sticks, brambles and fury, during which, I confess, I may just have sworn. A little.
OK, a lot.
But then there was a golden moment.
It came after I had to skip and skirt around about five pools to get ahead of the duck family that kept scooting ahead of me.
It came after I got sweaty and had no space in my pack for my jacket, so had to walk back to the pickup to deposit it.
It came before I ventured far upstream and found the worst riverbank wattle infestation I have ever laid eyes on .
It came before lunch, and before it turned cold.
It came, as golden moments are want to do, completely without warning.
It wasn’t the first fish I had seen. I walked just about on top of a small fish earlier. Then around mid morning, I was splashing through ankle deep water, when lo and behold, there was a bow wave that proceeded all the way up into the great big pool that I didn’t know lay ahead. This one gave credence to my recent theory that big fish often live in a big safe pool in which they just sulk, and that they then go on hunting trips up and down from that safe haven, and thus are most often caught in surprisingly thin water in close proximity to such a safe pool.
Walking onto Trout
When I have fished the eastern cape highlands, or the western cape, trout have been relatively plentiful, and their holding or feeding positions largely predictable, with just a few surprises thrown in. This allows you to avoid stepping on unexpected fish and spooking them for a reasonable portion of your fishing day. On our KZN brown trout streams, and this was particularly so following the drought that preceded my trip, Trout are few and far between. At least that is true for the middle and lower sections of our streams: The mountain streams generally have more fish in them. Add to this the fact that our browns are often in less than perfect clarity water, and as a result are not easy to spot. So the difficulty then is that you need to move on upstream past all the empty water, but you don’t know which sections are devoid of fish. So you walk, at a medium pace, trying, against all hope to spot fish and then you spook one, and that opportunity is gone. So what is the answer? There isn’t one. Crane your neck. Peer into likely spots. Fish the spots that instinct tells you must have fish in them. Spook a lot of fish, and build up a mental database of where they were. Over time this will aid you in deciding which spots are worthy of a careful cast. But accept that you will never perfect it. Ever.
And then a half hour later was my moment. I was standing fishing a promising pool. Do you call it a pool? I don’t know. It was deep, but the water was gliding through it at a discernable pace. It was one of those perfect spots, with a run at the top end, a few boulders scattered about the bottom, causing the water to channel in a way more interesting than in a big bland pool. Then it had some fallen trees on the far side. There I stood, drifting a deep nymph, trying to combat an obscure side current and a sneaky eddy, and all the while trying to peer into the depths of the water, that was made difficult by the strong upstream wind that ruffled the water, not to mention the passing clouds that rendered everything grey and silver. When suddenly I was staring at a great big brown trout. A cock fish. The wind had briefly abated, and the sun broke through, and like an actor appearing on stage, my fish was there. He was uncomfortably close to me…right there almost at my feet. The sun shone into the water, and presented him to me, like manna from heaven. He opened his white mouth and took something. At about that moment….that long moment, I realized that he was very close to where my fly was. Very close. In fact I will never know if what he mouthed was my fly or something next to it. I just know that I did a slow motion slip strike that amounted to nothing, and like sand running away through my fingers he descended back into the depths just as the wind resumed and obscured him from my view forever.
“So how big was he really?” you ask.
Well he was beautiful, and he was a golden yellow fish, with overly big spotty flanks, that glowed in the sunshine in that moment. He was deep and broad, and proportioned more like a stillwater fish than a skinny river fish. And his jaw: It was big and sweeping, and even though it was October already, he clearly hadn’t yet lost his winter kype entirely. And he was suspended there almost motionless…his head held in one spot while his tail and pectoral fins worked almost imperceptibly to hold him where he wanted to be.
That is how big he was.
So when I moved upriver and lost a small fish, and took photos, and tried a deep spot, and arrived at those horrible wattles, and stopped to make coffee and all those other things; all I could do was think about that haunting moment and that haunting fish. I traipsed back across the bare mealie fields in the rain just before dark, and waded in below the same spot and worked a Zak through there with more care and skill and determination than you can imagine. And before that: Just after I had seen him, I sunk back into the grass on my haunches, and rested him, and then tried him with an Ed’s hopper, and a Troglodyte, and a GRHE, and every other pattern you can imagine.
And as I made my way back to the pickup, and drove back up to the cottage on Reekie Lyn, and showered and changed and sat there alone drinking hot soup, with the rain drumming on the tin roof; all I could do was think about that haunting moment and that haunting fish.
And that was day one of my fly fishing meander from the Bungalow waters, to the Berg. That would be the Trout Bungalow stretch on the Mooi River, which, by my reckoning, would be twenty seven kilometers downstream from the point where I estimated that any self respecting fly fisherman would declare that he had run out of river.
I made that estimate while pouring over maps in the lounge at home. Scanning back and forth and measuring up and plotting and scheming. And I calculated that if you could fish three kilometers of trout river in a day, then this here stretch , all of which I had access to, would only take me nine days to fish from bottom up. Nine days. “Imagine that!” I declared to my wife. And she said “Don’t imagine it, do it!” So I did.
Bless her soul.
Andrew is a long time friend of ESF. Check out his excellent blog that also includes details of his book "Stippled Beauties: Seasons, Landscapes & Trout
