There is just not much that is conventional about any of it, too many contrasts that keep it from being classified. Wading Patagonia style freestone channels and sight fishing, for three species of Tigerfish. Bouncing between tippets from 5X to 80lb in a session. Nymphing braided runs lottery style for fish species never caught on fly before. Throwing huge flies for big nile perch, but then retrieving them cautiously and stealthily, gently trying to coax an eat out of something that could fit your head in its mouth. In the dark. With 50 hippos letting off steam somewhere in front of you. Everything you love about fly fishing are the only things you will recognise about it here, because there is just no template for fishing like this. Catching fish this big, in water this small, at night, on foot, in big game country. With this many moving parts, the permutations for what is possible are limitless. Nowhere else can match this for sheer accessibility to nile perch on fly, and it is an astounding fishery without even con-
sidering them. Lines, flies, leaders, approaches, retrieves, it’s all open for experimentation, adaptation and invention with glorious rewards at stake. The Tigers are absolutely electric and borderline impossible to handle on a rod. The barbs are subtle, spooky and abundant. The perch are just an enigma. These and everything else are the open book of entertainment that face you every day on the Faro. A FRAGILE EQUILIBRIUM My early season quest for elephants, and the season-long pursuit of perch distil down the equation to its simplest formula. In many ways they are the Faro, the two mega faunas dominating the spheres of land and water that define the valley. They sit balancing atop the rock solid foundation of ecology that is needed to support healthy populations of anything this big, starting with the multitudes of earthworms whose activity and casts have bizarrely shaped almost every square meter of undisturbed terrain, performing services that have allowed every subsequent level in the ecological hierarchy to thrive.
