Join Andrew Fowler on the latest leg of his Mooi chronicle
I have become a bit of a habitual poacher. But this only happens when I fish lower Riverside. It’s that club sign on the lower boundary fence you see: It is blue, but it is like a red rag to a bull. The water below is rather good too. The river there flows through a rocky section and then through a dolorite poort (there is no decent English name for a poort). Just below that is a big pool that I had been eyeing when Terry and I fished up the Stillerus piece. Bob Crass has this labelled temptingly as “Five Pounder Pool” in his 1971 book, “Trout fishing in Natal”. We had taken a look through the nchi shi, and I had decided it should be fished from the opposite bank, and then we veered off and walked up the track back to the road, so in fact we had missed this last piece, and I suppose you could say I had unfinished business.
So Roy and I walked down a bit, and while Roy sat in the veld and sorted out a new leader and fly, I waded across and went down to try that same big pool. Unfortunately there was a yellow billed duck there with her tiny ducklings. When she saw me coming she sent them off under an overhanging bush and then proceeded with one of those broken wing acts, right down the length of the pool.
Birds seen during my stay.
Wattled Crane
Crowned Crane
Grey Heron
Giant Kingfisher
Yellow Billed Duck
Black Duck
Coot
Dabchick
Spurwing Geese
Egyptian Geese
Cape Vulture
Bearded Vulture
Orange throated Longclaw
Hadedas (of course)
Cape Wagtail
Turtoe Doves
Black crow
European Plover
Blacksmith Plover
Giant Eagle Owl
Yes: I know these are the old names. I promise…..the birds won’t mind.
I sat it out beside the pool, giving things a chance to settle, while she circled nervously on the pool below. I started off with a deep nymph about ten minutes after her act. Surprisingly the trout had settled down, because after a few minutes I had one follow the fly up from the depths, and I saw it turn in the deep green water. Then as I worked up the pool I had a take, and up near the top, when I was right opposite the hiding ducklings, a pretty ten inch fish took the deep fly, and then I lost another.
I joined Roy at the pool above. He had had a few casts in there, but said I should go right ahead. On the first cast a fish took. It is all a bit of a blur now, as to which ones I landed and when. All I can say is that it turned into a “champagne day”. Tom Sutcliffe once wrote about “Champagne days on the Mooi”. This was one of those!
After taking and losing several good trout in the poort pool, we walked up over a shallow rocky section. I said to Roy that this water was best skipped, and that we should head on up to some of the deeper water, but as we walked I saw this little run. It was calling me, and there was a flat stone leading from the short green spring veld, straight into the water, like a red carpet. So I stepped in and threw the nymph into the sweet spot in the neck of the run. The indicator darted forward within about a second of my delivery and an eleven inch trout was to hand.
As we walked on I spooked one or two, caught another in the tail of a pool that I had decided I would leave for Roy, but was idly chucking a fly into while I waited for him to catch up. Just below the drift on Riverside, I spooked a fish of about fourteen inches, from a very shallow slow section, but it shot out from under the grass at my feet. Isn’t that typical of a brown!
By the time we stopped for lunch under a couple of large gnarled Nchishi trees on the north bank, I was in a carefree, satiated, and fulfilled state of mind. I lay there in the soft green grass on one elbow, digging out hunks of bully beef and balancing them on a salticrax before dispatching each of them hungrily in a shower of crumbs, and I got to thinking that PD would have loved this. PD and I have had a handful of such “champagne days” (As Tom Sutcliffe called them in his first book) on rivers together, and I wished he were there with Roy and I. PD has a deep appreciation for these things, and as he and I leapfrog up the river, with each passing he will give me a commentary on the fish he caught, or saw, or spooked. That commentary will include details of the strange place the trout was lying, or how it hunted for his fly after he had whipped it out in front of the fish, or how close to the bank it was holding, or maybe just a detailed description of the hesitancy of its take. PD and I have done rivers together for enough years that we fall into an easy pattern and pace. Our dialogue on the day will encompass an assessment of the outing as it unfolds, and I knew that had PD been there that day, he would have been brimming over in appreciation of the fact that these browns were very much “on the prod”, a state of affairs as special as it is rare.
After lunch things slowed down a bit, as they often do, but the stamp of good fly fishing was already upon the day, so it didn’t matter a bit.
As I walked up the river, I saw Brett, the farmer, approaching on the opposite bank in his landcruiser with Biscuit and Benji, the two dogs. He was driving, and I was walking, in open ryegrass fields on our respective sides of the river. He was working….checking out a new fence, and looking to collect leftover materials, so he wasn’t looking my way. As we drew up opposite one another, I stepped forward into the shade of a willow, and waited for his attention, to greet him. He didn’t look my way, so I called his name. Instantly I saw him swing his head around in surprise and his eyes scanned the riverbank looking for me. It turns out that he hadn’t seen me at all. After we had chatted and gone our separate ways, I instinctively waded back into the shade of the same willow, and commenced casting up the next run, figuring that Benji and Biscuit hadn’t disturbed it any more that that clever duck act earlier. And then I got to thinking how much sense it makes to use shade, and drab clothing when fly fishing. Brett had not been able to spot me at all, and yet I was actually in plain view. So when other anglers mock the idea of choosing your clothing colour, as they are sometimes inclined to do, just give them a smug look, and then ignore them. You and I know! Oh, and if you don’t already do so…position yourself in the shade or against a steep bank or beside a bush too. You will be amazed at how effective that can be.
From where we had had lunch, all the way up to the pump station where we ended up, I saw evidence of the good work that Brett Moller has done in clearing the river of wattle. What remains are all young trees (regrowth) that can be easily felled and dragged out by hand. Much of the upper Mooi is like this when it comes to wattle. From Reekie Lyn right up to Game Pass, there are wattles, but largely young ones. Of course the passage of time alone will change that, unless someone is routinely taking out trees to stem the tide. There is currently no incentive, encouragement, or financial merit in doing that. An entire trout fishery is in the hands of the goodwill of a few landowners, who have no guidelines, laws, support group, hand-outs, or gripping reason, to keep the place clear. When the landowners are in a good economic cycle, and if they know enough of how much we fly fishers treasure this asset, then they might do something about wattle. If they fall on hard times, or if fly fishers don’t overtly display their appreciation of this asset, then they probably wont do anything. Tasmanian fly fishing author Greg French is an ardent conservationist with whom I can identify. He writes extensively about “advocacy”: the state of affairs in which fly fishers use, enjoy, and uphold the integrity of their fisheries. By advocating the enjoyment of our rivers by fly fishers, we are contributing to the conservation of those same rivers in a very powerful way.
As Roy and I approached the final stretch of our beat we encountered rising fish in a pretty pool. A few mayflies were coming off, but there were more caddis. Roy gave them a try with a generic dry but he was struggling to get his cast to straighten out. At some point he insisted on stepping aside and allowing me to have a go with my CDC and Elk. I had been watching Roy’s cast to try to work out what the problem was. Firstly, and in his defence, when I stepped forward I found that there was a sneaky headwind coming down the pool, that we were not encountering where we stood. That said I was explaining to Roy that I thought his backcast was lower than his forward cast. In other words he was not casting at the fish, but at a point 6 foot above their heads. His cast to that position was as good as you need, but of course a whispy tippet descending six, or even four foot in a headwind, has as much chance as a dandelion at making its target. “Shoot it in there Roy” was what I was thinking to myself as he battled that headwind. “Punch it!”. But of course as often happens in the great leveler that is fly fishing, I made a few such deliveries when the headwind stopped abruptly , or I had the angle too fine, and the result was a fly slammed onto the surface.
I had much of my success, both on this, and other days, on a fly called the “Troglodyte”. This is a simple nymph, tied on a jig (upside down) hook. The hook is one made of a fine wire, is very sharp, and is barbless. The tail is a few strands of black squirrel tail, which is particularly durable. The body is dark or black “V-rib” , which retains no air and sinks quickly. Under the thorax is a small tungsten bead. Over this bead is a wrap or two of peacock herl, to largely hide the bead. A second, larger and visible bead sits up front on the upturned part of the jig hook, and just behind the bead is a half or one turn of very sparse black cdc. The fly’s main features are its dark colour and fast sink rate. I fish it in a #16, 14 or 12 to represent baetis and heptigenidae nymphs. It really is a killer!
As we moved up, we found ourselves shading our eyes with an outstretched hand, because the sun was setting directly upriver. This made our tiny dries invisible to us. When you don’t know where your fly is, you are at a serious disadvantage. You don’t know when to mend, or strike, or even when to lift off to cast. Added to that the wind would pick up, and the rise would end in about as much time as it takes to photograph and release a trout. Then the wind would die, and we would be back to throwing white dots at sheets of silver. I read into Roy’s trudging pace along the river bank and I asked him “Are you tired?” to which he nodded, with a little smile that said he had been found out. Then the sun set, and it got cold, and it was all over. What a special day, with a special friend!
Later that evening Roy made a comment that had me thinking. Roy has lead his fair share of berg hiking trips in his time. He mentioned that as troupe leader he always liked to hike at the back to make sure everyone was OK, and nobody got left behind. That struck me both as the epitome of servant leadership, and as the mark of the man. For whatever reason I had found myself ahead of Roy for much of the day. Sometimes we don’t recognize that someone is in fact quietly leading us.
As the trip progressed I realized that I was running out of days. When looking at the map and measuring up, I realized I would have to skip some river. I reckoned it made sense to miss some stretches that I fish often anyway. With this in mind, I made no attempt to fish Upper Riverside. I had however planned to fish the Tendela section with Trevor Sithole. As luck would have it, that morning dawned cold, with a light drizzle, carried almost horizontally on a strong wind. Trevor had been up early at work, and would only have the morning with me anyway. I very reluctantly called it off. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat at the hands of nature.
Read more from Andrew at Truttablog HERE