The Mission Fly Fishing Magazine Issue #1

Smallmouth Bass Lose big win small

hatch junkie

trainspotting on the vaal

high 5s

with mark Murray

Keith Rose-Innes Managing Chaos

Issue 01

jan | feb 2017

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“more than anything on this planet, fly fishers love to talk about fly fishing�

Keith Rose-Innes - PG36

The money shot. Keith Rose-Innes and Jako Lucas going for broke Indo-Pacific style.

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ISSUE 1 jan | feb 2017

CONTENTs Cover: Carpin’ in jou ma se City. Photo. Oliver Kruger

Main Features 10 Exposure Photos on The Mission

22 hatch junkie Trainspotting yellows with Herman Botes

38 keith Rose-Innes An in-depth interview with a South African fly fishing pioneer

60 Lose big win small Smallmouth bass with Andre van Wyk

78 High 5s Guide, Mark Murray of Tourette Fishing

regular Features 06 Ed’s Letter 84 The Salad Bar 92 The Reel Deal

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Wands 94 Fluff 96 The Lifer 98

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t u d o r c a r a d o c - d a v ies

welcome to the mission Photos. Oliver Kruger & Nick van Rensburg

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

Mark Twain We all mission. The mere act of picking up your fly fishing gear and heading for the door implies a mission of sorts is on the horizon. Sometimes it’s a small local mission, that stream beach or dam just around the corner.

Sometimes, it’s about going much further afield, to the ends of the earth, up rivers in the middle of nowhere, along endless tropical salt flats, across frozen tundra, into the outback or to an atoll in a distant ocean.

We’ve missioned since we were laaities (youngsters) and we will mission for as long as our knees hold up and we can still see to tie a fly onto a leader.

in inner Cape Town… on a stompie fly.

It took planning, scouting, many coffees, beers and dry runs, but in the ten minutes of chaos between us hooking the biggest carp in the moat and getting frog-marched off the property by bored soldiers leaping to the defense of the nation’s sleepiest national key point – we got the shot. There are few limits to what we will do to catch a fish and get a story. Quite simply, that’s what we are about – The Mission.

than sitting in the garage getting dusty; that the fish-mad kid you were is still in there, desperate for some time on the water.

There’s no doubt you will learn something about fly fishing in these pages, but it’s more likely that you will recognise something of yourself in the words and images of our contributors.

Like Tony Kietzman’s pearls of wisdom from a life of missions, Andre van Wyk’s quest with his friends to unlock the big pre-spawn smallmouth bass of the Western Cape, or Herman Botes falling in deep with the ways of the Vaal, its bugs and smallmouth yellows. Maybe you identify with guide Mark Murray trail-running with forest buffalo in Gabon or daydream like us of having Keith Rose-Innes’s job – a career spent chasing the fish we all want to catch one day.

You will see we are fans of the pioneers, from the guiding companies and their scouts who open up new destinations throughout Africa and further afield to the trout bums, yellow hobos and weekend warriors across our home country of South Africa, honing their skills on their local waters, hell-bent on catching indigenous yellowfish and salt species or our favorite fly target aliens: trout, bass and carp.

Like yours, our missions are the stuff of legend, not because we caught more fish or bigger fish than anyone else (who claims that anyway?), but because to us, in that space and time, we were making memories.

Memories that turned into legends that grew ever more outlandish with each telling.

You know how it goes.

The harder we have worked to unlock a fussy fish sitting in a difficult lie or a species or destination in general, the more rewarding our fishing has been.

The mission becomes the point, more so than the fishing itself. The same applies to where we want to go with this magazine. The mission became the point of our choice of cover shoot for this first issue. Conrad Botes, dodging turds and SANDF troops, caught a Skeletor-like carp down at the Castle

To be clear, we’re not here to teach you how to fish. That’s not something you learn in the pages of a magazine (hint: it’s something that comes to you through hours spent on the water).

Instead, we hope to inspire you to get out there, to make time to fish, to link up with friends or go solo on the spur of the moment, to save and plan missions to celebrated destinations or to figure it out DIY-style. We’re here to remind you that your gear deserves better of you

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Whether you’re a DIY die-hard or a time-pressed adherent wise to the advantage of guides and the comfort of lodges, if you fly fish we salute you for making the time and effort to get out there and mission. We hope you join us on this adventure.

We’re looking forward to the ride and one thing we guarantee is that it won’t be boring.

Welcome to The Mission, a magazine about fly fishing.

Nick van Rensburg

“Memories that turned into legends that grew ever more outlandish with each telling”

The Mission: Carp at the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town Ammo: Pimp suit, cable ties, broom handle, floating net, 3-weight, Stompie fly, teamwork.

Chance of success: 50% “It’s my buddy’s batchelors challenge” w w w. t h e m i s s i o n f ly m a g . C OM

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www.themissionflymag.com

Warren van Rensburg

Free in Print and Online

the

mission fly fishing magazine

Contact the mission The Mission Fly Mag (PTY) Ltd 3 Del Kloof Mansions, 53 Kloof Nek Rd, Gardens, Cape Town, 8001 Info@themissionflymag.com

@themissionflymag

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Editor Tudor Caradoc-Davies on the keys Brendan Body Editor at large Conrad Botes Sales brendan@themissionflymag.com tudor@themissionflymag.com

Contributors #01 Herman Botes, Andre van Wyk, MC Coetzer, Nick Bowles.

Photography #01 Oliver Kruger, Ryan Janssens, Warren van Rensburg, Ben Bergh, Nick van Rensburg, Herman Botes, Matt Gorlei, John Travis, Karin Sternberg, Andre van Wyk, Platon Trakoshis, Alphonse Fishing Co, Tourette Fishing.

The Mission is published 6 times a year. the mission will welcome content and photos. We will review the contribution and assess whether or not it can be used as print or online content. The opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the magazine or its owners. the mission is the copyright of the mission Fly Mag (pty) ltd. Any duplication of this magazine, for media or sale activity, will result in legal action and a warm pair of ears.

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p h o t o s f r o m t h e m issi o n

“Tuviste suerte, pendejo!� You were lucky dickhead! Marcos Hlace releasing a submarine-sized sea-run brown on the Rio Grande in Patagonia, Argentina. Photo by much-traveled Mtubatuba native John Travis. w w w. t h e m i s s i o n f ly m a g . C OM

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Shark-Tail-Soup. Sharks and yellowtail hunting in the sardine bait balls off the cliffs of Cape Point. Photo taken by Karin Sternberg of bee researchers Ujubee (Ujubee.com) as she searched for the southern-most wild honeybee nest in Cape Point Nature Reserve. w w w. t h e m i s s i o n f ly m a g . C OM

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Photo Andre van Wyk w w w. t h e m i s s i o n f ly m a g . C OM

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Care for a real Paddle Tail? Hefty kob caught on fly by Conrad Botes. w w w. t h e m i s s i o n f ly m a g . C OM

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Contents Page: Fight fishing to Big Carp with big poppers is about as much fun as you can have on a fly sistable, Brendan Body with an exmouth queen. Photo - Leonard Flemming 18

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Was it good for you? Exmouth-based South African Jono Shales and a GT take a break to recover after doing battle. Photo Greg Fenn w w w. t h e m i s s i o n f ly m a g . C OM

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Come to papa. A heavily freckled Western Cape rainbow on the Elandspad.

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va a l y e l l o w s

Confessions of a Hatch Junkie w i t h h e r m a n b o t es

The waters and the fish you come back to time and time again seep into your bones and your brain. You develop familiarity with the flow, the reading of the seams and tongues, the movements of the fish, the minutiae of the bugs. For Herman Botes home waters mean smallmouth yellowfish and the heavy hatches of the Vaal.

Photos. Conrad Botes & Herman Botes

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Herman Botes with the world’s least effective fly swat. w w w. t h e m i s s i o n f ly m a g . C OM

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Home water. I guess we all have some.

A place where we spent so much time with the fly rod in hand, we get to know our way around well. A place we feel closest to nature and sometimes ourselves.

I first stumbled onto my home water range back in 1994 when I was invited to fish a section of the Vaal River below the barrage. It’s been 22 years since and I haven’t grown bored with this river and its fishing, which says a lot since I’m ADHD. The place has a lot going on in summer. Nature is out on display and bumping into a family of otters or having the life scared out of you by a likkewaan (monitor lizard) or giant heron is nothing unusual. In winter you find yourself quietly going about the business of fishing in the sombre atmosphere of the dry cold and half-light. Regardless of the seasons or the weather conditions I find myself wandering along this river year round, season after season, year after year. Why? In the past I would’ve told you that it’s because of the great fishing to be had. Now I think there’s something more. Still, smallmouth yellowfish is what started this journey and what continues to draw me back.

The Vaal River below the barrage is a tailwater and as far as tailwaters of the world go, this one is no different. It has an unusually large aquatic invertebrate population – simply put, loads of fish food. This as in other tailwaters results in high fish numbers. The river also goes through flood cycles and dry years, but luckily never dries up. Currently we are on a good wicket with low flows and clear water.

--The highway rolls away almost unnoticed as I cruise out for an afternoon session on an undecided venue. I’ve done this trip so many times, I’m on autopilot while I ponder my options with regards to where I want to fish and how I want to fish. Yes, the fishing’s that good, I can pick and choose. It’s spring after all.

The dust trail of the car is still hanging in the air as I make my way back from paying my entrance fee and exchanging niceties with the land owner. At an out of the way venue I unearthed, a packet of Peter Stuyvesant for Aaron and Liquorice Allsorts for Sweetie are what is required to enjoy a day’s fishing. The water and the fishing at this spot can be stellar. I named the spot “Nirvana”.

Getting to name a spot sounds a lot like surfing. And in a way, fly fishing is.

You escape the drag and lose yourself in nature to have a heap of fun. Like surfing, the experience can sometimes be so great that it results in a heady state of mind for some time afterwards.

Or it can suck.

The afternoon is warm and dry with a slight breeze. I’m excited because it bodes well for fishing. Yellowfish are warm water fish and as long as the water temperatures keep ticking up in spring, the fish feed, hard. The slightest drop in water temperature and you’ve got the equivalent to small onshore conditions at your local break, i.e. it can suck.

After I tackle up and make sure I’ve got water and my head lamp with me, I sling my pack vest and pull my buff

over my cap. I’ve got a thing about caps. I insist on the Simms eight-panel Longbill and I’m convinced they play a role in the cosmic joys of fishing. To this end, I once ditched my cap and gave it to a friend in Kimberley after I had a particularly long run of bad fishing days.

He happily wore it and reported to me that he had some of his best fishing days ever on the magical Riet River. I was at a loss for words.

After all the anticipation during my journey to the river, I always take my time when I finally get on to it. You can tell a lot when you slow down to pick up the pulse and sense the subtle nuances of the river on a lazy spring afternoon.

The river is much like the ocean. It has moods and you could do better when you play along and don’t fish against the run of play.

Since this section of the Vaal is a tailwater, I fish it as such. Meaning I like to get technical, imitative and to some degree complicated. Some of my buddies keep it pretty simple and catch just as many fish. That’s just how I like it.

In a lot of ways, I think fly fishing is an expression of self… Much like surfing.

“I’ve got a thing about caps. I insist on the Simms eight-panel Longbill and I’m convinced they play a role in the cosmic joys of fishing” w w w. t h e m i s s i o n f ly m a g . C OM

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Fight fishing to Big Carp with big poppers is about as much fun as you can have on a fly sistable. Photo. Leonard Flemming 28

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Pleasant surprise. When you order a small and you get a large.

After years on these waters, I pretty much know caddis is the main fare this time of the year. The fact is confirmed as hundreds of small Hydropsychidae caddis and some Macrostenum capense adults flutter out of the grass as I make my way to the water. I’m a bug nut and after spending countless hours in the presence of these bugs, I came up with my own imitations of the caddis’s pupae.

My favorite is the Plaza Pupa which I tie on as my control fly. This pattern was preceded by a very simple and effective little fly called Thing 1, which I tie on as my top dropper. On point I stick on a glass beaded GRHE, just in case the fish can’t make up their mind.

I’m on the edge of a bubbly, pockety run that sparkles in the afternoon sun.

I drop a few casts in some promising looking shallow pockets while standing on the bank like I often do. To me, the big sections of pocket water and runs on this river are like massive playgrounds. I love spending my afternoons in them, slowly probing and dissecting them. Note the operative word is “slow”. I think it’s important to be as inconspicuous as possible. Hell, my friend Gary is sometimes tricked out in head-to-toe camo. He catches a hell of a lot of fish.

After working some water the indicator still hasn’t registered a take and so I change my top dropper to a Tiger Tung.

It’s a great little fly by Charlie Craven.

It pretty much passes for anything small and dark, with a bit of mojo. It’s still

early afternoon before the caddis start to hatch and if anything there should be some blackfly larvae and Baetis in the drift. I don’t bother seining the water column to confirm my gut feeling. A few drifts later a two-pounder lets me know I’m on the right track. Like I mentioned, this river is full up with fish food. Black fly larvae are so abundant, they’ve become a plague that the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry controls with fluctuating water levels – much to our dismay. If black fly leads, midge and Baetis mayflies are hot on their heels followed by caddis and Trico mayflies.

Of course there are a whole lot of other invertebrates, crustaceans, leeches and whatnot in these waters, but as a first class hatch junkie, I indulge the big five.

“I think fly fishing is an expression of self.

I like to get technical, imitative and to some degree complicated” w w w. t h e m i s s i o n f ly m a g . C OM

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whole lot into my own nymphing style.

The result now finds me flicking my home-made yarn indicator across a few tricky currents’ tongues with a 25foot leader while having direct leader contact between rod and indicator as I lead it down stream. There’s no fly line involved. Some will call this voodoo anarchy. I like to think George Daniel will call it “dynamic nymphing”.

After venturing deeper into my playground, I start drifting my indicator along the inside of a current seam next to a deep bucket in the bottom. The indicator ticks and I miss. Next drift same thing. Maybe it’s a rock. On the third drift the indicator quivers longer and a fish of around a pound, pound and a half dashes off. It pretty much hooked itself on the top dropper. Upon its release I’m excited as hell, because a bucket this size with a fish that size means there are quite a few fish in there. And I’m gonna get me some. I fine tune my indicator setting to get better contact and I change my point fly to a small glass bead and flashback PTN, as the water is quite clear – by Vaal standards. For the next half hour plus I’m having a ball, chopping and changing flies to see which ones stand out and fine tuning my indicator rig setup.

When we first started fishing this river the standard method was upstream nymphing with an indicator. Personally, it is my most effective way of searching the water – after all, I’ve had 22 years of practice. In terms of fishing methods, there have been a lot of changes over the years. First up was the controversial

Czech nymphing technique. Then Spanish and French nymphing. Then the whole lot merged into what is currently known as European nymphing. Lately my comp buddies are frothing about the Spaniards with their thin leaders and Perdigons. What’s next from those Europeans? I dread the day the Dutch throw something into the works. It’s bound to be below the belt.

Anyway, these changes in nymphing style didn’t go unnoticed by me. If it’s going to make me fish more effectively, I’m all in. There’s a saying in fly fishing that when you start out, you want to catch a fish on fly – any fish. As you progress you want to catch as many fish as you can on fly. Then, when you’re on top of your game, you want to catch big, clever fish on fly. Well, I’m afraid I’m forever stuck in the “schoolboy with fishing pole on bluegill pond” phase. I want to catch fish, lots of fish, no matter the size. The more frequently I hook ‘em, the better. Did I mention I am ADHD? Having familiarised myself with all the Euro methods and having witnessed my comp buddies vacuum the river on the odd occasion, I moulded the

I’m lost in time. Lost on a clear bubbling river, on a beautiful blue-sky spring afternoon. Fish are coming frequently to hand, as they should. They are not of significance by “Vaal guru” standards, but they give a good scrap and buckle my rod when I get impatient. The fish are pretty. Not prissy-pretty like trout.

But pretty, because they’re in perfect proportion and prime condition, their scales an array of golden silver with tinges of blue along their back and gill covers. When I release them, they look at me with big eyes and remind me of my cats. The adults are a different story. After they’ve almost pulled off your arms and you’ve banged up your shins running downstream after them, the romance is somewhat tarnished when you finally hoist that olive-backed potbellied old rubberlip from the net.

They run big. Five- to six-pounders are regulars. And a 10-pounder is always a possibility. In my 22 years on the river, I’ve only landed two 10-pounders (properly weighed). But I always see a lot of them on social media. I’m sure it’s that “schoolboy, bluegill pond” phase I’m stuck in.

Around 4pm the golden hour sets in.

The afternoon takes on a soft, golden glow and the caddis dance over the water in the soft sunlight. I’m putting longer drifts through a nice run and lifting my indicator every now and then.

Fish start to connect more frequently on the lift and drop. In anticipation of the hatch, I stick Thing 1 and a GRHE back in my rig. The pattern change and the Leisenring Lifts are paying off. “I love it when a plan comes together.” Just after I drop my indicator back to the surface, it shoots underwater and upstream like it does with some fish, but this time I

“What’s next from those Europeans? I dread the day the Dutch throw something into the works.

It’s bound to be below the belt” 32

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“if black fly leads, midge and baetis mayflies are hot on their heels followed by caddis and trico mayflies” w w w. t h e m i s s i o n f ly m a g . C OM

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Gold medal finish, the lucky longbill 8-panel strikes again.

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can tell it’s a good fish. It races across the powerful currents of the wide run and then heads downstream. I’ve got my rod stuck up in the air to keep the disappearing line free and my 5-weight is bent as all hell. I holler cause I can and because I miss the screams of the click-n-pawl reels. They make one of my favorite sounds. I’ve got an old Hardy in my pack, loaded with a 15-foot dry fly leader in anticipation of the evening rise. I eventually swim the fish into an eddy. From the size of its shoulders I can tell it’s a solid fish, not massive, but solid. As I get into the business of netting it, it powers off and pops me.

Yellowfish never give up. They are like the Duracell Bunny. I’m more pissed off about losing my rig than losing the fish.

The hatch is in full swing and the fish are on. Since I have an already built-in sighter in my leader, I omit the indicator and decide to work my way back to the bank while picking at the shallower pockets with direct-line nymphing.

Instead of allowing the team of caddis pupae to dead drift, I lead them slightly higher and faster in the current. In the deeper pockets I get the flies to the bottom and induce lifts to get takes. The fish are small but they are in ridiculous water. Playing “surprise, surprise” in this frog water is one of my favorite ways to fish.

The light is starting to fade. I get a bit frenetic in anticipation of the rise, so I change reels to my dry fly setup. I stick on a big “morphed’ Airhead with a small Plaza Pupa about a foot-and-ahalf below it. The next fish smacks the Airhead and I laugh out loud because it’s in such a ridiculous lie. Did I mention, I love this game? I get more fish while moving across, some on the lift.

The light is fading fast now and the frogs get going. Their to-and-fro croaking reverberates across the river in the stillness of dusk. I’ve hurried along the bank and worked into position below some fish rising to emerging caddis pupae just below a riffle. I force myself to slow down and take a deep breath after my trot. I’ve got a Klinkhamer variant of my own device tied to the terminal end. As I watch the broken

water of the current tongue reflect gunmetal and silver in the fading light, a nose slowly pokes out along the current seam. It disappears as inconspicuously as it appeared. You’d be forgiven for second guessing yourself to the fact that it was indeed a fish. This secret moment in the gloom of dusk is what I dream of. I get my line ready with a measured cast well below the fish. I’m ready. The fish repeats its soft rise. I take the shot and watch the red post of my fly, barely visible, dance perfectly detached down the current seam. And then in a moment when time seems to stand still, a nose slowly rises and sinks over my fly. That slow-mo moment becomes etched in my memory, the drug of a hatch junkie.

I raise the rod and my click-n-pawl reel screams as the fish hauls ass down into the pool. I let it because I’m on 6x and because my Hardy Marquis is playing my favorite tune. It’s a decent fish of around four pounds and I release it quickly to have another shot before the light’s gone. Five fish later it’s dark. I hear jackals in the distance as I switch on my head lamp. There’s big MC caddis flopping on the surface. My headlamp is haloed by hundreds of fluttering small Hydropsychidae caddis.

I’m standing knee deep in a river, in darknesss, in the middle of nowhere – choking on caddis. With the barbel out in force, the wading back in the dark is a bit hairy. They say being scared often is good for your psyche. I guess that’s why there’s a fat smile on my chops when I break up at the car. Also, because it’s been a good afternoon.

The caddis are choking the inside lights of the car. They’ll be taking the trip home with me, them and the funky smell of wading boots.

I’m sitting on the tailgate in the cool darkness. The frog-and-cricket choir is in full swing. The river as always murmurs in the background. I watch the fireflies flicker above the water. I could stay the night. After all, it feels so right.

It feels like home.

“That slow-mo moment becomes etched in my memory, the drug of a hatch junkie” w w w. t h e m i s s i o n f ly m a g . C OM

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profile

keith rose-innes managing chaos

Keith Rose-Innes is that guy. The guy catching the fish you dream about. The guy who travels to the places you would give a nut to visit if only there was a market for such things (your nut). The guy you thought you might want to be if only career counsellors had been a little more open-minded. Keith is all those guys and more. But first and foremost he is a fisherman. Many of the species we now see as standard flats targets were made popular by either him or one of the earlier Alphonse guides, either when he was with FlyCastaway or more recently under Alphonse Fishing Company. Many of the world’s premier saltwater destinations – Alphonse, Cosmoledo, Astove and Poivre – are destinations that make up the Alphonse Fishing Co portfolio. That’s his office.

To make things worse, he’s also friendly and approachable.

He makes me sick.

Not all jobs are created equal. At least that’s how it seems. Quite often what you want now is incompatible with the career path you chose then. For every guy wondering whether he should have studied a B.Com instead of a B.A and dreaming of diving into vats of money à la Scrooge McDuck, there’s another guy wondering if sifting through Excel spreadsheets and waiting for that annual week in a timeshare at Plett was what he was put on this planet for.

For every person thinking they should have taken that job offer even if it meant moving to another city, there’s another one debating whether they compromised on their quality of life. Sometimes it feels like we’re in some kind of whack-a-mole zero-sum game where the moment you give more to one area, another suffers. Most of us are balancing scales and spinning plates on some kind of multi-armed treadmill hydra of affluence

and poverty, ambition and stress, time off and fuck-all time at all.

Most of us.

If you’re a fly angler with even the vaguest interest in salt, you’ll have seen Keith RoseInnes before. He’s there at launches, at the film fests, in the adverts and in half of the videos of extreme guides in extreme destinations.

To most of us Keith Rose-Innes looks like the guy who has it made. The guy who makes you question your life choices, damn your luck and ask the Flying Spaghetti Monster for a Mulligan. Sure, there may be issues in his life

“KEITH IS THE GUY WHO MAKES YOU QUESTION YOUR LIFE CHOICES” that are nobody’s business but his own (I bet he cries in romcoms), but from the outside things look peachy because he has one of the most enviable jobs in the fly fishing world. Or maybe it’s more about what the job sounds like. For most of the year he lives on Alphonse Island in the Seychelles, one of several pristine outer atolls in one of the most beautiful countries in the world… He runs a bunch of island lodges and atolls, including Alphonse, Astove, Poivre and Cosmoledo, overseeing one of the biggest and most professional fly fishing teams on the planet.

Interview. Tudor Caradoc-Davies Photos. Alphonse Fishing Co Portrait. Ben Bergh

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Chatting to him, not only did I develop massive life envy, but I found it next to impossible to avoid an alternate commentary developing in my head. Why? Well, it’s hard not to when you listen to what he gets up to.

“The owner of the Ponoi is a good friend of mine, a Russian guy who I guided while working out there and who ended up buying it [as you do]. Very wealthy guy [no shit]. We do these wacky trips every three years. We’re going to Siberia. He’s got a 200-foot vessel, has nine Kevlar jet boats and a helicopter on the roof that he has sent up for us [I need to reevaluate my friends]. He pays for everything, business class flights, jets, about 100 staff looking after us [I really need to reevaluate my friends]. He invites you because he wants to fish.”

See what I mean?

Friends with benefits aside, on the surface Keith is just another dude. His life is just like yours and mine, save for a few major differences in environment and application. But, through a serendipitous combination of luck, timing and fishing genes and an ability to take advantage of opportunity, it’s as if the entire trajectory of his life, each twist and turn, event and even setback, was pre-ordained to be as fishy as possible.

LIKE YOU HE HAD MENTORS Keith learned how to fish (like a cormorant on speed) from three people. First up, at the age of five, he began fishing with his grandfather, Harry Stewart, a very well known fly fisherman who ran Troutbeck in Zimbabwe and founded Stewart’s Fishing Flies and Hairy Fairy Flies. Then there

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“I fished for and caught bonefish. That’s where it all started” was his father, who is an avid ski-boat fisherman.

He had a boat in East London and it was from him that Keith got into bottom fishing and game fishing.

“I grew up in King William’s Town so every single weekend was fishing. I spent my whole youth fishing Piri and Guru dams. At times my father would take me there twice a week. I’d finish rugby at 4pm, he’d be waiting for me, we’d jump in the car to get to the dam 25 minutes away. We’d fish the evening rise. I don’t fish for trout much nowadays, though I do fish for salmonids like taimen (shame).

Keith’s last fishing mentor was a guy called Mike Pautz who was a world champion rock and surf angler. It was while working for Pautz in his shop in King William’s Town (as a barter for getting to fish with him) that Keith went deep into the Border rock and surf scene, becoming both Border and Junior Springbok captain.

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LIKE YOU HE HAS A DARK PAST Fly fishing is swamped with purists, but if we’re honest there are other forms of fishing that we can learn a lot from (save for the dynamite guys and gill net pros… Screw them). Keith did his time doing all aspects of fishing, from rock and surf, to deep sea, pap gooi (coarse fishing for carp)… Everything. “All of that is very important in building your background. Those different facets teach you about reading water and that’s what it is really about – reading water. You learn one thing in the salt that you can use in the fresh, and vice versa. I went through my whole childhood fly fishing, but also gooing pap and rock and surf fishing.”

LIKE YOU HE TOOK HIS CHANCES In his senior year at school, Keith was offered the opportunity to join his father and some of his friends on a trip to the Seychelles. He was not invited for the deep sea side of things, but that suited him fine. “They had hired a boat to go to St Joseph’s. The deal was that I was going to go on land while they fished off the boat. They would drop me off each day with some water and some sandwiches. It was a game-fishing boat and I wasn’t paying and it was not what I wanted to do. So I went ashore with a 2:1 gear ratio Daiwa salmon reel, a New Zealand Kilwell 8-weight rod with an 11-weight CPR big blue fly line, that barely fit through the guides, and the flashiest flies ever, and I fished for and caught bonefish. That’s where it all started. I remember thinking, ‘The Seychelles is unbelievable, but there is nothing going on with regards to fly fishing.’ I didn’t have a lightbulb moment. Fly fishing was not really a viable career at that stage

outside of the USA. I went back to finishing my schooling, then went to Cape Town to study advertising, while still guiding.”

LIKE YOU, HE’S WORKED HIS WAY TO THE TOP After finishing his minor foray into advertising Keith went to the UK and started working at a larnie fishing/outdoor gear shop called Farlows.

Farlows is basically a nursery for fly guides, many of them South African. To this day when guys come to Keith wanting to guide he directs them to Farlows as a basic yet vital stepping stone into the industry. For him it was key to a proper career in fly fishing.

“I was in the UK, working for Farlows and guiding in the Seychelles whenever I had breaks. Then I got this opportunity to go and guide in Russia on the Ponoi. That opened up a whole off-season for me. On top of the guiding in the Seychelles, I was now meeting all these people in Russia and at Farlows, so I started a company called Fly Guide. We took the first fly fishing trip to Farquhar on a boat called MV Illusions. Nobody had taken trips there, there was no guesthouse, nothing. Very rustic trips, just me and a Belgian friend guiding eight people, but slowly from that start, it grew. Three years later I met Arno Matthee who had been guiding at Alphonse Island, we guided together at Farquhar and on that trip decided to start FlyCastaway. He had a company called Castaway and I had a company called Fly Guide so we put the fly in front of Castaways and we had FlyCastaway. I sold out four years ago and then went on to start Alphonse Fishing Company.”

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LIKE YOU HE TRAVELS FOR WORK “Commuting” takes on another meaning for Keith; the boat ride he takes with guests from Alphonse to the uninhabited atoll of St François is a world away from the usual rat-race scrum.

“You’re across there in 35 to 40 minutes, which gives you time to rig your boots. And the same thing on the way back, take off your boots and have a beer.”

Then there are “work trips”. Keith spends 200plus days out of the country, constantly flying between the different destinations he either manages or guides at. “I’ve been to numerous places in Russia for salmon, grayling, trout, nelma (like a sheepfish), taimen, lenok, all those salmonid species. I’ve fished the east coast of Siberia in Russia, the Tugor river system which has the biggest taimen in the world. I’ve fished all over Africa, the whole East Coast from Mozambique to Tanzania, Mauritius, St Brandon’s and all the Seychelles islands for many years. I’ve been to Cuba six times, Bolivia for dorado, Angola… I went to the Tanzanian rivers right at the beginning when the Tourette guys found it. My problem is that I have been so focused on the Seychelles that I spend most of my time there. I’ve never had the time for Patagonia and New Zealand [poor bastard].”

LIKE YOUR CLIENTS, SOMETIMES HIS SUCK Imagine going all the way to places like Astove and Cosmoledo, but you actually don’t know how to cast. That… That happens. “We get the most difficult clients sometimes too. Not often, but you do get them. Some guys see the movies of these incredible destinations and think that you basically will just go out there and the fish will jump on the end of your hook. Yes, it will

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“Nobody had taken trips there, there was no guest house, nothing” happen at our destination for bonefish but it’s not going to happen for our other species. A lot of the guys rock up and think they will just fish for bonefish the whole week but by day two they have caught 20 to 30 bonefish and they see the other guys catching different species and now they want to have a go. But they can’t cast and if there’s a bit of wind… It’s a concern for us.

You need to practice your casting because this is not like casting a trout rod. It’s a bigger rod.

You don’t even have to cast far, you’ve just got to cast it slightly accurately. The most important and difficult thing to get into the guest’s head – while the fish is there with all the excitement – is the ability to listen to what your guide is saying.

He will tell you to ‘cast it two rod lengths in front’ or to ‘cast it 30cm in front’ or cast to the right or the left or, ‘wait, don’t cast yet, he’s going to turn’. It’s about managing the adrenaline of the guest with them being able to hear you and to do what you say. A frequent visitor to Alphonse, Henry Gilbey, summed it up perfectly. He says it’s about managing chaos.”

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“That’s what it is really about - reading water.

You learn one thing in the salt that you can use in the fresh, and vice versa”

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LIKE YOU, HE KNOWS HIS SHIT “Over the years I have learned it’s important the way we take care of these ecosystems. In the old days it was about catching fish. I’m lucky in that when I started my guiding we were already releasing fish. You don’t realise the impact you place on the ecosystem by just walking there.

In the Seychelles we don’t allow guys to walk in areas where new coral is, or walk in areas where fish are breeding. It’s been wise – managing an ecosystem for the long term instead of the short term. In all of these places, it’s about responsible fishing and sustainable ecosystems. Without fly fishing there wouldn’t be these places, it’s impossible. Conventional tackle wouldn’t have been able to create this culture of the fly fisherman where all they want to do is protect the ecosystem. When the guide explains you can’t take the fish back, you can’t hold it this way, you can’t take it out of the water for this long, they understand it. When you’re a guide and you explain this to clients, it’s sort of like a virus in the way that this mentality spreads.

“A good example is Alphonse Atoll. We started running the operation in September 2012 and purchased it in 2013. I’ve been watching the catch stats. We’ve caught between 14 000 and 16 000 fish every single season, all the time.

In the last few seasons with our catch rates on permits, triggers etc, it’s gone up. So we don’t get any dips. It’s constant. That’s sustainable fishing. We have figured out that we can handle 12 rods on St François, that’s it. We haven’t gone above that. We rotate the spots, we close areas off, we close the lodge for four months so everything rejuvenates and through that we have constant catches all the way through the

season. We don’t get any spikes or dips other than from bad weather or maybe a combination of bad tides or wind. Otherwise it’s constant.

And that is the model. Same thing with the Ponoi in Russia. They have the same amount of fish coming in and out the rivers.

“There’s so much data nowadays and the world is becoming smaller so people have realised that if you protect these areas now, they will be worth a lot of money in future to the communities and they will be there for our families. A guy like Murray Collins behind Alphonse does it purely for conservation reasons and because he loves the Seychelles and how pristine it still is. He, his brother and father are the guys that asked me to join them to start the business. It’s purely about conservation and keeping these areas pristine. We’ve got guys doing bird monitoring, turtle monitoring and tortoise rescue – buying tortoises that are kept in pens on Maher and bringing them back.”

LIKE WHAT YOU DO, PEOPLE UNDERESTIMATE HOW HARD THE JOB IS “Everyone goes through a stage in their life when they don’t want to guide any more. That’s a pivotal moment in your guiding career, when you decide whether you’re going to do it or give it up. It hit me in my seventh year. I was lucky that I was moving around quite a bit. A change of scenery is almost like a change of heart. It gets to a stage in a season where you will feel jaded but luckily the positives overwhelm the negatives. It’s the inability to get away from what you’re doing. You’re stuck on an island, away from home for eight months, with the girlfriend back home and you’re not going anywhere.

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That can become overwhelming.

“Although my time is now mostly spent running the organisation, I’ve been guiding for almost 20 years now. Full-time guiding for 15 to 16 of that. It’s nine or 10 months of the year. Guiding in Russia, then off-season in the Seychelles. We have the longest season in the world there for 9 to 10 months. Guiding is an easy job if you’re not tired. The longer you guide, the better you get at it. The hardest year is your first year and probably your third year, and once you get over that hump and you start experiencing and enjoying how far you have come and how easy it is for you to catch fish, you start to focus more on client experience versus only refining your fishing skills. The hardest things about this is obviously that you are dealing with weather, the people and the fishing. It’s a very hard job.

You can have the best fishing and luck doesn’t go your way: the guy lifts the rod, or he misses the cast or the hook comes out, your engine can break, you can hit a piece of coral and it can go from being an amazing day to the worst day of your life.

“The hardest things about guiding are: 1. The long periods you spend away from your family and civilisation; 2 To manage all the different variables; and 3. Staying positive through all this and ensuring your guest has a good time.

“Many of my best days I ever had guiding were days when we didn’t even catch a fish but we still had a great time, telling jokes, trying different things, missing fish, laughing about it and saying, ‘Tomorrow’s going to be a better day.’ That’s what it’s about – managing the situation. And that’s why South Africans are so good. They do understand that. It’s not always about the results, as in fish. You should measure your results by how happy your guest is. The more you do it, the more you travel, the more talking points you have and the easier it is to discuss and have a conversation about things, because fly fishermen love to talk fly fishing.”

And that right there is the great equaliser.

More than anything on this planet, fly fishers love to talk about fly fishing, because it’s in the talking that the dreams become plans and the plans become adventures and the adventures become memories and the memories grow in legend and the legends become the thing you bore everyone to death with when you’re old enough for adult diapers and to nail Trivial Pursuit history wedges. Whether or not you will ever make the mission to get out to Alphonse, Poivre, Cosmoledo or Astove is immaterial.

It doesn’t matter if your fly fishing ambition remains focused on flinging stompie flies at carp and caddis larvae at yellows. Just like you and me, Keith gets it.

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Dynamite comes in smallmouth packages. Pound for pound, smallmouth bass fight harder than most of their competitors as Platon Trakoshis knows all too well.

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S p e c ies

Lose Big, Win Small S m a l l m o u t h b a ss

Smallmouth bass will test both you and your tackle. In these moody, bad-ass bastards, Andre van Wyk finds his freshwater soulmate.

the currents. I look around to see if anyone is watching me and saw that perfect cast. Yup, I’m feeling that good.

I’m feeling pretty good… It’s a Wednesday, or a Thursday, I’m not sure which one, but it doesn’t really matter because it’s a weekday, and I’m not at work.

Of course no one is watching me, why would they be? Everyone is at work, well everyone except me and Conrad Botes, who is fishing 80m up-current from me and he’s far too focused on his own fishing to give a shit about me standing there feeling impressed with myself.

I’m feeling good.

The crisp new 7-weight in my hand feels like the rod I’ve been looking for for ages… It feels like it wants to play, make me feel good, make me forget that at best I’m a mediocre line caster on a good day, and it’s working.

I’m feeling good.

Mid-thigh deep, in a cold flowing inlet, fresh spring-time, rain-fed water is pushing at my legs, mercifully enclosed in some highend Gore-Tex made in Bozeman, Montana, probably designed for harsh Northern winter conditions. My South African blood is thankful. We really are pussies sometimes.

I’m feeling good.

Sending the 250 grain streamer line into the air, I make two false casts and send it dead across the swirling tannin-stained flow. The little Clouser I tied last night flies out straight and true and lands with a rather pathetic plop 25m out and is immediately swallowed by

Turning my attention back to the matter at hand I’m briefly distracted by my surroundings. Massive, rocky mountains are painted against an azure sky in the distance.

It’s still and the early afternoon light softens their inhospitable façade just enough to make me momentarily forget the absolute lashing we got in the same place less than two weeks ago. Three hours of fruitless casting in gale-force winds under muddied skies. It was enough to make a man wonder why the fuck he thought this was a good idea in the first place.

But I’m feeling good now, all memories of wind batterings are behind me as I watch the sinking head disappear from view, dragging that Clouser with it down into the dark rocky depths. I throw a mend and pretend briefly that I’m steelheading in the Pacific Northwest as I let the fly swing a little in the current. I start my retrieve – strip-strip-strip.

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Oink Oink. A tired pig of a smallmouth takes a breather after putting a serious bend in Andre van Wyk’s Orvis Helios.

Halfway back the fly stops dead. I set the hook hard and feeling solid resistance and a thump-thump-thump through the cork. Oh yeah, now I’m feeling good. I strip hard to gain line and pick up any slack and I’m met with even more solid resistance. Too solid. Fuck. Somewhere down there my Clouser has found itself a little crevice to hide in. I try a few angles, throw some slack, nothing works. I straight stick and “pop”, my 15-pound leader comes back to me trailing nothing but a frayed end. Fuck.

I look up to see if Conrad’s noticed, relieved that this time he’s not watching.

I dig out my fly box and pull out my fifth Clouser for the day. I tied 12 last night, sure they would last me at least three or four sessions. Four down already and I haven’t been here more than half an hour, nor moved a fish.

I get that line in the air again and put out a cast. Oh yeah, I still got it. Feeling good again I watch the line shoot out

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over the dark water and pay a little more attention this time. No looking around to see who is admiring me, no admiring the bloody mountains surrounding me or trying to think of flowery adjectives to describe the bastard things. Throw a mend a little earlier, and begin my retrieve a little sooner. I wanna keep that bloody fly out of the stones. Stripstrip-strip. Almost at the end of my retrieve, two strips before I’m about to lift and recast, my fly stops dead again.

Instinctively I strip set and put a bend in the rod. Solid again, fuck! But then that solid moves. Just a little at first and hope springs eternal in my fisherman’s heart. Yes, yes yes yes! The 7-weight bucks hard in my hands and seconds later a large, and very pissed off bronzesided smallmouth bass is in the air right in front of me, rattling his gills and shaking his head like a pitbull with my little Clouser pinned in the corner of his jaw.

I hear a whooping from upstream and

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look up to see Conrad with a fist raised in the air.

Oh yeah, I’m feeling good again. _______ Smallmouth bass are a species a little left of the mainstream here in South Africa.

These cold-water North American transplants have a relatively small range in South Africa, limited in the most part to streams, rivers and a few dams in the Western Cape, and a few rivers in the Eastern Cape, and perhaps a few higher dams on the KwaZuluNatal escarpment. Unlike their lazy, larger, and larger mouthed cousins the largemouth bass, which are spread over most of our fine land, the smallie finds itself often forgotten, underappreciated and misunderstood.

My introduction to these fish came while fishing for trout on the beloved Cape streams. A KZN transplant, I grew up on

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largemouth bass on farm dams along the sugarcane coast, I knew nothing of smallies.

On my first outing on the Cape streams, my dry fly was sucked off the surface by an eight-inch fish that turned out to not be a trout, but rather a beautiful, if somewhat drab-coloured, red-eyed smallmouth. The fellow I was fishing with cursed the damn thing. “Fucking bass, they’re destroying the trout. Chuck it on the bank!” I looked at the beautiful little fish in my hand and decided to let

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it accidently fall out of my hand back into the cool stream. I was new here, I’d been invited to fish with a guru on the streams. I didn’t want to piss in his cornflakes, but I couldn’t just kill that fish for being a fish I wasn’t looking for.

Over the next few years I focused on trout. Tiny flies for tiny fish on tiny tippets using tiny rods on tiny streams.

I avoided the smallmouth I knew were there, in favour of the salmonids that were by all accounts finer fish, more worthy of a fly angler’s time and efforts. I

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crossed paths with a few unintentionally, and while I’d become a fierce defender of the trout and its domain, the fact that these little bass pulled harder, and often times saved the day when their snooty spotted brethren were being pricks, meant that I could never bring myself to kill one. After all, we put them, and the trout, here.

Fast forward a few years, and I start seeing pictures on the interwebs of proper smallmouth bass being caught on fly. These weren’t the little six and

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“smallies are travellers preferring colder, rocky, flowing waters to the soup-warm weed-choked stillwaters so loved by the largemouths�

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“Oh the places you will go.” Unlike their lazier, swamp-loving bucket-mouth brethren, smallmouth bass love fresh, moving water like medium-sized rivers and the inlets to dams.

eight-inch dry fly stealers I was used to encountering on the streams, these were proper fish. Fourteen inches, 16 inches, some even 20 inches and up…

Proper fish.

Around that time I made the acquaintance of two anglers who have since become good friends who changed my view on these fish, and have put me into something of an obsessive spin with them. Conrad was one of them and it was his goateed face and orange Simms cap I’d seen so often in those pictures of big smallmouth in beautiful waters. The other was Platon Trakoshis, who I’d met through chasing trout, and soon learnt his first love was actually bass, in particular smallmouth bass.

Timing is everything. And smallmouth bass are no different. But unlike their largemouth cousins, smallies are travellers preferring colder, rocky, flowing waters to the soup-warm weed-choked stillwaters so loved by the largemouths.

Putting as much as 20km of travel in a day, and up to 100km during their migratory spawn, these fish are movers and as such those

who chase them follow suit. Conrad’s obsession with these fish has led him all over the Western Cape, put hundreds of kilometres under his boots, and under the pontoons of his float tube, trekking into remote and isolated waters, inaccessible to all but those with a willingness to hoof the hard yards to access points, and float themselves down unchartered waters in a tricked out tractor tyre in pursuit of these fish.

What I learned, over tying vises and bottles of wine at Conrad’s kitchen table, and rummaging through Platon’s endless fly boxes filled with countless smallmouth patterns, was that timing and a willingness to sweat is essential for smallies. Rainfall, ambient temperatures, time of the year, fly patterns, communication with addicts in the know, I learned to pay attention.

Well, actually I mostly learned to listen to Conrad and when he says go, you go.

and fast action 7-weight, I can’t keep its head up. One hears of the power of these fish, but it’s tough to understand until you are hooked into a three- or four-pound model in a fast current.

There is no blistering run or crazy turn of speed. What there is, though, is a dogged determination one usually associates with saltwater species like snapper or trevally. They quite simply do not give up until properly spent. This fish is giving me a working over. I finally get it under control and manage to slip a hand under its belly in the knee-deep water.

I’m feeling really fucking good.

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Conrad has made his way over to me, and I can see his delight in seeing another angler converted. He high fives me, and gives me his trademark, “Fuck yeah dude!” I’m feeling good.

Couple pics and I set it free back into the currents. I check my leader and I’m right back at it.

The smallie lands with a crash back into the water, and bores down into the current harder than I expected. A lot harder. Despite a 15-pound tippet

Another four Clouser Minnows later, I’m connected to my second smallie of the day, this one is bigger than the first one and I’m at the point now of knowing

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exactly what I want to do with my life.

I want to catch smallmouth bass all day, everyday. I look up and see Conrad bent double on his fourth or fifth or sixth fish of the day.

Cradling this fish in my hands I notice the beautiful subtle blues in the fins and gill plate. The white of its belly, and the bronze sheen in the flanks, subtle darker bars marking their way down the sides. It’s like holding a piscatorial brick of muscle… Angry muscle. There is none of the soft potbellied lethargy of a largemouth, nor the smooth sophisticated slime of a trout. This is the tattooed punk who competes in

triathlons in its spare time, and listens to Slayer and Motörhead, who smokes Camel plains and will swear in front of your mother while chatting up your married sister. This is a “fuck you” fish. I think I’ve found my soulmate.

Eleven fish later I’m out of Clousers. Ten of them to the dreaded rocky bottom beneath the current that the smallies love so much, and two to fish that hit so hard on the swing they popped the tippets. Fuckers.

The sun is now low in the sky, and I sit down on the rocks to roll a joint, and watch Conrad take another three slabs

out of a run in the last rays of early spring sunshine. I’m feeling good, real fucking good. I’m back to admiring the beautiful mountains around me, thinking up flowery adjectives again to describe them and waxing lyrically to myself about my new-found love.

Looking into my now-empty fly box, where 12 lovingly tied Clousers lay in neat rows less than four hours ago, dragging on the joint, I smile.

Sometimes you gotta lose big to win small.

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g ui d es

High 5s A r a p i d f i r e c at c h - u p w i t h T o u r e t t e Fis h i n g h e a d g ui d e M a r k Mu r r a y .

Photos. Tourette Fishing

5 FISHING ITEMS YOU DON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT BEFORE MAKING A MISSION? 1.My Patagonia Fly Fishing vest frontsling pack. Man, this pack makes my fishing missions so much better. I am a bit of a neat freak so having this pack makes my life a breeze. It keeps everything neatly organised and easily accessible.

2. My Canon 7D Mark II camera.

3.Pro Hunter manufactures small general-purpose scissors. They are very simple but so useful. They cut wire, plastic, braid, flyline… You name it and it will chew through it with ease.

Ask anyone who’s fished with me and they will tell you about my blue scissors on a lanyard around my neck. In fact, I have them scattered all over! My car, my fishing bag, my running pack, to name just a few.

4. Smith Chroma Pop polarised sunglasses.

5. Good-quality waterproof watch. This might sound useless to some but not knowing exactly where you are tidewise etc has proven lethal for me when fishing.

5 FISH ON YOUR HIT LIST 1. Right at the top of my list would have to be redfish. They are the reason I started fly fishing. I remember as a youngster I used to watch Jose Wejebe on Spanish Fly sight fish for them in the marshes of Louisiana. I was just like, “I need to do that!”

2. Pumpkin seed sunfish. Yeah that’s right! Tiny, aggressive and very colourful. I will fly to the USA just to catch one of those. I’m that guy.

3. Those massive stingrays they get in Angola. I remember an old fishing

article naming them rough tail skates.

Not sure if this ray is the same kind they get in the Western Cape but it got me excited! My friend Edward Truter is still getting into the whole ray-fishing idea but I will have him converted one day.

4. Striped bass.

5. Those massive largemouth bass they get in Lake Ray Roberts, Texas. I know to a lot of people bass is more like a swear word than a fly target species, but I love catching them on fly.

5 BANDS TO LISTEN TO WHILE ON A ROAD TRIP I’m really big into trance and progressive, especially the live recorded stuff during the 2000 to 2004 period. So any Tiesto, Armin Van Buuren, Paul Van Dyk, Rank 1, Signum live sets will keep me psyched during the journey. For those who are not familiar with Capetonian producer Nate Raubenheimer you need to get on it straight away!

5 LEAVES NOT TO USE WHEN TAKING A BOSKAK IN GABON Why take a boskak when you can AquaTurd?

5 OF THE MOST UNDERRATED SPECIES IN MY BOOK 1. Spade fish, also known as batfish.

I really love catching them on fly. We always try and get our guests to fish for them behind the mothership on the Nubian Flats but no one ever shows any real interest. That’s until the first guy gets reefed on his 9-weight on the first run. They are so much fun.

2. Vundu catfish. Where I guide in Tanzania we are blessed with some really big catfish and most of the time

you can sort of sight fish to them. Most guests obviously come to target the big tigerfish, but these cats are just savage. Imagine tiny shallow rivers, fast flowing water, and monster cats (100 ounds plus). Surely this would get anyone excited? Or maybe it’s just me.

3. Jack Crevalle. Wow, if you think GT’s are strong, then you have never bumped heads with these trevally along the coastline of Gabon. They might not be as dirty when it comes to finding reef like their Indian Ocean cousins, but damn, they will give you a proper run for your money. Run after run after run, deep into your backing...

Add this fish to your list!

4. Smallmouth yellows. This is a bit different, as there aren’t many anglers in South Africa that would call a yellow underrated. However, I think the greater fly fishing community around the globe needs to know how amazing these fish can be. Especially when you are sight fishing to them with dries.

5. Smallmouth bass aka The Prince of the Shadows. Enough said.

5 THINGS YOU ARE LOVING RIGHT NOW 1. ECHO Switch Rods! They are so versatile and have so much application in South Africa. They make long casts in the surf and still waters so pleasant.

You can roll cast in tight situations then use the same rod to quickly Czech nymph a set of rapids before banging another long cast in the next big pool.

It is a must. My fishing within South Africa is going to be dominated by fishing with switch rods over the next few years, especially along the coast, and as an alternative to float tubing still waters.

“Why take a boskak when you can AquaTurd?”

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Squattin on the hog, Mark Murray admires his own work in Gabon as his clients get in to giant tarpon, African threadfin and Cubera snapper the size of boerbuls. w w w. t h e m i s s i o n f ly m a g . C OM

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“Keep it simple! We are not going on a self-supported, three-week hike into some battlefield�

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2. My Salomon Sense Pro 2 trail running shoes. For those who don’t know, when I’m not guiding/fishing, I’m busy running up some mountain, or flowing through some forest trail somewhere in Africa. I love running and being outdoors so much. One of the kiffest runs I actually did this year was back in March while guiding in Gabon. The guests were sleeping after another crazy early-morning session and my legs were just itching to go for a run.

So I ran on the fringe of the forest next to the beach for about an hour when I came across a whole heard of forest buffalo. It was so cool to see them just parking on the beach (sitting in the shallow water like they were a bunch a people on their December beach holiday) while the nesting African grey parrots were gossiping away in the forest canopy. I sat there for probably 30 minutes before I made my way back to camp.

3. Yoga, Try this after a long day’s work.

4. The TV series Shameless.

5. Tofu.

5 COMMON MISTAKES THAT MOST CLIENTS MAKE 1. Loads of clients carry way too much gear with them. Backpack, waist pack, three rods, 10 spools of tippets, 5 000 flies, heavy bulky boots, necklace with more tools than most dentists use in their practices. Keep it simple! We are not going on a self-supported, threeweek hike into some battlefield. More often than not a small box of flies, two to three spools of tippet/leader and a spare rod is more than enough. I often see guys really battling to walk in the rivers/saltwater flats because of all the heavy gear they are dragging along.

2. Practice your casting before going on a trip. Even if you are a great caster.

This will make your trip so much more pleasant. Often I see guys only nailing casts on the second or last day of their trip which could have made for a much more enjoyable experience.

3. Make sure to read the recommended tackle lists before going on a trip. You will be surprised how many guys come with the wrong stuff. eg: small Bonefish Charlies to catch 20-pound tigerfish in Tanzania, for example.

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4. Managing their expectations. I know it’s really exciting going on your dream fishing trip, and yes, I get crazy excited as well, but make sure to keep your expectations realistic. I have yet to find the destination where you smash fish from 8am to 5pm, every day, all season long.

5. Have faith in your guide. He knows the fishery pretty well, and is there to help you get the best possible fishing for your time on location. He’s not gaining anything from you not catching. Remember that.

5 GO-TO FLIES FOR SALT 1. Dhalberg Diver 2. Conrad Botes’s Sponge Bob 3. Clouser Minnow 4. Gurglers 5. The DMA (Dropshot My Ass) 5 FLIES THAT TO LOOK AT MAKES NO SENSE, BUT THAT CATCH FISH ALL THE TIME I only have one and that’s the Girdle Bug. I’m not sure what it does and why, but it’s deadly!

5 FLIES TO PACK (IN THE SMUGGLER KIT UNDER YOUR DRIVER’S SEAT) TO COVER MOST SPECIES 1. Ed Truter’s Mud Monkey 2. Dahlberg Diver 3. Clouser Minnow 4. DDD 5. Girdle Bug 5 FAVOURITE FLY FISHING DESTINATIONS ACROSS SOUTH AFRICA 1. Baviaans Kloof, Eastern Cape 2. Kouga River, Eastern Cape 3. Kromme River, Eastern Cape 4. Seekoei River, Eastern Cape 5. Umzimkulu River, KwaZulu-Natal YOUR LAST 5 CASTS WERE TO… The neighbour’s cat. I was teaching my girlfriend to cast on the lawn (she is actually really good, April Vokey beware!) when the neighbour’s cat arrived. Let’s just say casting a bunch of hookless feathers to inquisitive cats can be really exciting. But before that I did cast to tailing carp in the Umzimkulu River…

Man, those fish are just so addictive.

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“make sure to keep your eXpectations realistic”

It’s not all work and no play. Here Mark Murray gets into a big Tanzanian tigerfish, with fellow Tourette guide Stu Harley manning the net.

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the salad bar Loop Volvo, IKEA, Skype - Swedish brands have a reputation for design and efficiency. When it comes to tackle the same applies and Swedish tackle company Loop’s new range of rods and reels maintain the standard.

The new Opti fly reel range with its waterproof and saltwater-resistant Power Matrix drag system promises big things anywhere along the range of models from small streams (Creek and Dry Fly), to medium weight water (Runner, Strike and Speedrunner) to the big ‘uns (Megaloop and Big).

The Evotec CAST (Colour, Action, Sequence, Tempo) series comes in medium, medium-fast and fast depending on preference and application from small streams to heavy salt and salmon. Visit Mavungana (www.flyfishing.co.za) for more info.

Xplorer fly boxes Leaking flyboxes with peeling foam and broken clasps? Revamp your fly storage with the two new boxes from Xplorer. The Air-loc fly boxes which store up to 234 flies feature a waterproof, rubberized seal so even if you get as wobbly as our magazine designer after a few beers and bail into the deep, your CDC will stay fluffy and that’s what’s important in life. Fluffy CDC. From R159 to R210.

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The Silicone insert fly boxes are what you should go for if you tend to rip up the foam inserts on normal fly boxes. With easy to insert triangle slits, they retain their shape and are more durable. Available in three sizes. From R159 to R210. www.xplorerflyfishing.co.za

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i n f o @ t h e m issi o n f l y m a g . c o m

Salomon Speedcross 4 Nobody is suggesting these should replace your proper wading boots, but with their ridiculously grippy tread and substantial heel cushioning, if you are going on a trip they are the perfect second pair of footgear to pack (along with some trusty slops). R2 299 www.capeunionmart.co.za

Ahrex Hooks Scandinavian in origin and new to South Africa, Ahrex hooks have been brought into SA by S.J Roberts the man behind the popular Fly Tying South Africa Facebook page. Available exclusively from The African Fly Angler online store (www.theafricanflyangler.co.za), the black nickel Texas Predator jig style hooks and the Predator hooks currently available are best suited to streamers for trout, bass, tigerfish and saltwater species.

Nautilus X-Series A word in your shell-like, new reels just in from Nautilus. The X-Series (marketing department’s love the mystery of X) boasts a schpiel that promises a reel that’s both strong and light. No surprises there, but the lightness in this reel seems to have been facilitated by an almost skeletal design with a high ventilated arch and exposed sides to the spool, while the fact that it sports the sealed Teflon and carbon fiber SCF-X drag system suggests this reel will live up to the hype about its strength. Fred Davis of Feathers and Fluoro (feathersandfluoro.com) swears by the things so we’re looking forward to testing them. Available from Mavungana (www.flyfishing.co.za)

Xplorer tippet spool holder Fish are rising for bugs like shoppers on crack on Black Friday, but you’re buggering around looking for the 6x in the bottom of your pack.

Simplify matters with the Xplorer tippet spool holder which will keep all your tippet together in one easy to manage stack. Designed to work with Xplorer or Rio tippet spools. R220, www.xplorerflyfishing.co.za

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ThE salad Bar

WadE aLbuLa REEL Proudly Seffrican and harder than Willem Alberts in his prime, the Albula should also share ‘The Bone Collector’ nickname with the Bok no.7. It does however share the Latin name of bonefish, the reel being specifically designed with this favourite flats species and their incredible runs in mind. Weighing only 250gms, the Albula is an anodized, large arbor beast designed to hold 250 yards of backing with an 8-weight line, yet is smooth and strong enough to turn fat bones away from coral bommies or reef or, in exotic freshwater destinations, it will bend belligerent tigers or dorado to your will. www.wadereels.com RRP: R5 000.00

smIth oPtICs Calling your product the Guide’s Choice is ballsy, but with Smith Optics it’s backed up by the confidence they have in their product. The sunglasses of choice for many competitive anglers and guides, for this Guide’s Choice model Smith have factored in the requirements of their hardest-wearing customers. With a style featuring wider temples and an aggressive wrap to protect the eyes from excess light, as well as megol nose and temple pads, a detachable sunglass leash and 8-base ChromaPop™and Techlite glass lenses, these sunnies are designed to be worn day-in and day-out while fishing hard.

RRP: R2 999, 00 www.smithoptics.com

sKuLLCandy baRRICadE If you set up camp for long enough, there will be a moment when you will want to sink into some laid-back tchoons. Skullcandy’s new Barricade Bluetooth speakers are adventure-ready, impact-resistant, IPX7 waterproof and with an 8-hour rechargeable battery. As at home in your living room as they are in the great outdoors, what’s not to like? More info at www.skullcandy.com or www.luksbrands.co.za

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thE tooL Caddy “Drawers are where things go and retire and if they don’t retire they will expire by the time you find or need them.” So says designer of The Tool Caddy Jimmy “the Shark Man” Eagleton.

His rotating design features a fine cork carousel section designed to house your scissors and other fly tying tools as well as pens, beads and whatever else in a configuration that makes sense to you. There’s also a stand and a plate built from perspex and flexiglass that holds everything from your flash material to your bulldog clamps and jars filled with sculpin heads, dumbbell eyes etc. Sit and spin! Price: TBC. www.retroflystudio.com

m us t h a v es

payday Wild Coolers “Bulletproof,” “a lifesaver” and “essential” are just come of the superlatives associated with the early reports we have heard about WILD coolers. Designed to the highest standards, these rotation moulded coolers can keep beers cold for up to 10 days (though why your beers would last that long is beyond us). Each cooler comes with a stainless steel bottle opener (so you don’t have to use your eye socket), anchor latches, frost lock, a built-in tape measure (for successful catch and release), partition slots, tie-down slots, dual haul handles, Tornado drain plug and more features. Available in 40l (R4795), 60l (R5995) and 80l (R6995) sizes, they are ideal for shore-based or boat fishing. Pretty much indestructible, we classify this as once in a lifetime ‘investment gear’ that you pass down to your crotchfruit instead of a shiny watch.

Available from Mavungana (www.flyfishing.co.za)

GT – A Flyfisher’s Guide to Giant Trevally by Peter McLeod “Violent”, “savage”, “incredible strength”, “endearing lisp.” If Mike Tyson were a fish, he’d be a GT. Tackle-shattering, pound-for-pound all in fighting powerhouses of the flats, GTs both fascinate anglers and destroy their wet fishy dreams and gear. Addiction is best dealt with in the open which is why author Peter McLeod of Aardvark McLeod put together GT – A Flyfisher’s Guide to Giant Trevally his new collectable book dedicated to this incredible fish.

When asked about his obsession with targeting these heavyweight sluggers McLeod said, “GTs have captured my heart. All trevally species offer the fly angler a huge test of skill and endurance, but GTs will pluck an angler’s soul from his body and push your tackle to destruction. They are beautifully pugnacious.”

Full author interview with McLeod at www.themissionflymag.com GT – A Flyfisher’s Guide to Giant Trevally is available from Mavungana (www.flyfishing.co.za) at R890.

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fodder

Beers & Beats The Beer Recognize Poison City? The official beer sponsor of the F3T (Flyfishing Film Tour) which came to South Africa for the first time in 2016, this Durban craft brewery has two stellar grogs on offer at present. There’s The Bird, a light-malt, thirst-quencher session lager and The Punk Rocker, their English pale ale. With a Weiss, a dark lager and an Imperial pale ale in the works, we’re putting in an advance order with this surfing/fishing crew.

Stockists at http://poison.city

The Beats

beastie boys ill communication

joy division substance 77-80

TALKING HEADS LITTLE CREATURES

Fugazi 13 songs

the clash sandinista!

Roky Erickson the 13th Floor Elevators

tribe called quest We got it from Here…

metallica ride the lightning

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g o o d St U f f & g I v E awayS

shOrTCasTs FoLLoW … JasPER PÄÄKKÖnEn on Instagram (IG: jasperpaakkonen). The Finn makes his living (and is better known) as Halfdan the Black in series 4 of Vikings, but on Instagram the Patagonia and Vision ambassador identifies first and foremost as a fly fisherman. Judging by the images from the Lakshadweep islands off India with the Solid Adventures outfit, the man can fish.

subsCRIbE … to the Mavungana Flyfishing Loyalty programme. In much the same way that brands like Discovery and Makro dig deep into your spending patterns, know what you like and offer you products that suit you, Mavungana Flyfishing are doing the same in fly fishing.

Tracking your spending patterns, (whether your deep, dirty secret is squirmy wormies or next-level nymphing), once you have signed up and collected a card in-store, you will be among the first to hear about new products, special offers, events and promotions. www.flyfishing.co.za LIstEn … to the Fish On The Brain podcasts, specifically episode 29, “South Africans Might Be My Favourite”, where host Tim Evans talks to Protea anglers Christiaan Pretorius and Nick van Rensburg. Christiaan waxes seductively, “If you see a fish who’s got needs, certain needs and you can give her those needs, she’s going to take your fly.” www.fishonthebrain.com staRt … Tying your own flies. Whether it’s you or your ADHD laaitie who needs it more, there is something incredibly Zen and calming about tying your own flies. You’ll suck at first like you did when you started fly fishing but you will get better with practice. And when you catch fish on your own flies the satisfaction will be immense. The Wapsi Fly Tying Starter Kit or Deluxe Fly Tying kit, both come with a vise and a range of basic fly tying tools and materials as well as an instructional handbook to get you started. The Deluxe kit just has more materials. From R1 695 www.xplorerflyfishing.co.za Tel 031 564 7368 email Jandi@netactive.co.za

WIn sWag WIth oCEan souLdIERs & thE mIssIon! Hoodies, Ts, truckers and snapbacks - how does $300 worth of the new Ocean Souldiers OSC Apparel range plus free, registered first class worldwide shipping (worth $50) sound? We thought as much. Between building a camp in Fiji, running charters and bringing out an apparel range, the boys at Ocean Souldiers have been very busy of late. Their apparel, made from sustainably produced 100% organic cotton and sporting one of our favourite species Caranx (GTs) and a skeletal stoner, is the business. Now you can win a fair chunk of it.

to WIn:

Instagram a photo of you catching and releasing a fish • Follow @OceanSouldiers and @themissionflymag on Instagram • Check out the Ocean Souldiers shop - http://oceansouldiers.myshopify.com • Tag @OceanSouldiers & @themissionflymag in your best catch and release pic.

• Use hashtag #oceansouldiers in the pic - this way we can review the entries.

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The freshest, new tackle, books and DVDs just offloaded at Mavungana FLYFISHING Joburg and Dullstroom!

GT - A F l y f i s h e r ’ s G u i d e t o G i a n t T r e v a l l y b y P e t e r M c L e o d Loop Evotec Rods & Loop Opti Reels Nautilus X-Series Reels Patagonia Packs and Slings Fulling Mill Custom Flies Get a Mavungana Flyfishing loyalty card and earn instant rewards!

M a v u n g a n a JHB Illovo Square, 3 Rivonia R o a d , JHB , G a u t e n g , 011 2685850

www.flyfishing.co.za

The Mavungana Flyfishing Centre Main Road Dullstroom, 1110, SA,013 2540270

t h e r ee l d e a l

my old donkey w i t h MC C o e t z e r

Almost 30 years old and with over 30 saltwater species notched, MC Coetzer’s Ross IV Reel has stood the test of time You know you’re getting old when you google your favourite fly reel only to come up with hits on eBay and a site that specialises in the sale of vintage fly reels. Vintage my ass. That search put an end to writing about the technical specs and stuff that I don’t understand anyway.

Back in the early 1990s I did a twoyear stint guiding on Bazaruto Island in Mozambique with Flyfishers Unlimited. Guiding back then wasn’t the same as it is now. Today’s guides have prominent profiles on social media and the best guides can pick and choose their tackle sponsors.

Back in the day we were paid just over a thousand bucks a month and getting tipped by guests was as rare as a trip off the island.

We had only two perks… The one was that we could fish as much as we

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wanted to, and the other was that we could buy Thomas & Thomas rods and Ross Reels at cost. Andrew Parsons and I started a fuel company that supplied the lodge and fishing operation with fuel and our access to “free” fuel meant that we spent insane hours on the water. Long hours on the water meant your tackle really got tested to their limits and it was the reels that took particular strain with no reel lasting more than a few months before corrosion turned it into an expensive paperweight.

The first Ross Reel I bought was a Ross Saltwater IV Reel. It was a bit of an unknown reel in South Africa and it struggled to establish itself in the market because it used a synthetic material called Rulon for the drag washer at a time when virtually all reels came out with cork drag systems.

Nobody trusted anything other than cork and to this day fly fishers are sceptical of any synthetic material in drag systems.

Now, 20 years later and with literally many thousands of saltwater fish caught on it, the Ross still performs like it did on day one. The external nylon parts have faded over time but there isn’t a speck of corrosion to be found anywhere and the drag is as smooth as silk. I think it’s been about 10 years since I’ve opened the reel up for a service but it gets rinsed after every trip and the backing gets washed every few years. I’ve never seen the end of the backing while a fish was attached to the front end but that’s not surprising when you consider that it holds about 400m of 50-pound gel-

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spun backing. If a fish can take all of that, he’s welcome to keep it.

Like all fly fishers I’m maybe a bit of a tackle slut, but I don’t pay much attention to branding, as long as the rod or reel does what it is meant to do and does it well. I now fish with Ross, Abel, Tibor and Shilton reels but I find that I reach for the Ross when I expect to get stuck into something of substance on a medium-weight rod like a 10-weight. Ten-weight rods are generally used as a kind of in-between stick when you need a bit more power to present bulky flies, or you need the pulling power to stop strong fish at close range, or handle something that strips a lot of line. In a flats fishing context this essentially translates to anything stronger than a bonefish and with less raw power than a big GT. The reel you stick on a 10-weight must carry at least 300m of backing, have a smooth drag under light tension and a heavy drag when you have to stop strong fish at close quarters.

Over the years the combination of a 10-weight and the Ross IV have probably landed more than 30 saltwater species for me and these include some special fish like longfin tuna, couta, yellowtail, milkfish, permit, parrotfish and lots of different kingies. When fishing my home waters on the Western Cape estuaries, our best chance at a really good fish is the dusky kob that grows to well over 100 pounds. The average size is probably closer to 60cm and you definitely cannot throw a 12-weight for the amount of time we spend on the water. That’s why the 10-weight Sage with the Ross IV reel is my mainstay for this particular application. It’s just a matter of time before one of my fishing buddies latches onto that kob of a lifetime and I know that if I am the lucky one, that the Ross IV will not disappoint me. I’ll send you the pictures when I land it…

Distributed by Xplorer Fly fishing - www.xplorerflyfishing.co.za Email: Jandi@netactive.co.za or call 031-564-7368 for your closest dealer.

wands

THE MISSILE THOMA S & THOMA S E XOC E TT W I TH N I CK b o w l es

Nick Bowles, the South African owner of Ocean Active in Dubai, recently put the new Thomas & Thomas Exocett range to the test. Here’s what he found when fishing for queenfish in the shadows of skyscrapers.

After fishing the Exocett 911-4 with Neville Orsmond of Thomas & Thomas and the Alphonse Team in Florida in July for tarpon and jacks, we now have the 910-4 for our queenfish in Dubai and the 912-4 for the sailfish, GTs and other trevally species in Oman. I really enjoy the fast action and quality of the rods in the Exocett range. The cork is solid and just gives the first impression of a rod that has been put together with pride. They are very light and the action is fast and you can comfortably load the rod with minimal effort.

I find the 910-4 quite forgiving. I recently had novices on the boat and they both caught two queens each and when I asked for their feedback on the rods their comment was that they felt very easy to cast and almost like a “spring”. When I asked what they meant they said it felt like the rod helped get the line out with a small action. Bear in mind I did have a Scientific Anglers Sharkwave Titan line, so it was a shooting head of note. Regardless, the action is fast and loading and casting a full line is quite easy. What I enjoyed about the rod is that there is a nice parabolic action – when the queens get down deep and the fight is straight up and down, the rod loads into the bottom section towards the butt and will lift the fish with minimal effort and no pressure on the body.

When we started out fishing for queens in Dubai we used 8-weight and 9-weight rods, but although the queens are not massive and the fight is quite clean I found that we were breaking a few rods as the rods got high sticked. Queens have a broad profile and with a bit of current are quite difficult to lift. Then we also get a bit of wind in the afternoons and are mainly casting 1/0 Clousers, which have a bit of weight. With this we started using the 10-weight rods and with a bit more backbone and power this has transformed the fishing for our clients and us. I was using another branded rod last season and we ended up breaking six rods, not all rod fault but it was becoming an expensive problem and also getting rods fixed from Dubai was a major effort and cost. So when we got the 910-4 rods to test we were obviously very happy as anyone is with nice, shiny, new toys.

Now that I have been using them for a bit and caught a few fish, I have found that the Exocett 10-weight is a fantastic rod as it is light, it casts very well and long and it has more than enough power under the hood for our fish. We mainly use Abel reels but have started to use Hatch too. What I have done is spooled up a Hatch 7+ and Abel super 8 with 300 yards of Braid PE5 and a floating line. The reels are light and when combined with the rod feel the same as an eight to nine rig, but they have the power of the weight-rig. So it’s easier for clients to handle. For us this is most probably as close to perfect a setup we have found so far for the queens.

“It casts very well and long and it has more than enough power under the hood for our fish” 94

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Kick the bucket list!

Life’s too short to never give yourself a shot at your dream fish.

Dream it, plan it, do it with Mavungana FlyFishing. why fish with us?

Whether it’s a far flung bucket list destination or local trout stream, as guides we have been doing this day in and day out for over 30 years. We are also South Africa’s best and biggest shop, fly fishing is both our job and our passion, this is what we do.

International fishing Salmon, Peacock Bass, Sea-run Brown Trout, Golden Dorado, Tigerfish… we have fished, guided at and managed operations all over the world. With experience comes relationships. We’re lucky enough to call the lodge owners friends and we have priority on the prime weeks at the very

M a v u n g a n a JHB Illovo Square, 3 Rivonia R o a d , JHB , G a u t e n g , 011 268 5850

best prices. Join us at our favorite time of year when we personally host a bunch of like-minded anglers or let us organize a trip that suits both your timetable and budget.

Local fishing Whether it’s battling the breakers in the hunt for GT at Kosi Bay, rafting the Orange river on a quest for largemouth yellows or presenting a beetle at Sterkies - doing it three to four times a year since the 90’s means you learn a lot. From the prime time, to knowing where and how you should be fishing, join us and let us share what we know to unlock the best fly fishing in South Africa.

www.flyfishing.co.za

gear up Established in 1997 as a guiding business and later branching into retail Mavungana Flyfishing now has two stores, one in Joburg and our flagship store in Dullstroom, the largest dedicated flyfishing store in South Africa with over 400m2 under roof, with a large grass casting area, full time fly tyer producing custom flies, leather outdoor product factory and a pond brimming with pet bass and trout.

Mavungana Flyfishing Dullstroom owns its own trout waters and has exclusive access to a number of well-known private properties on a guided basis. Both stores stock the widest range of top international brands, offering expert advice to our customers.

The Mavungana Flyfishing Centre Main Road Dullstroom, 1110, SA,013 254 0270

FL U FF

John Barr’s meat whistle W I TH CONRAD BOT E S

My brother Herman and I have got this standing annual smallmouth bass trip.

Every spring or early summer we’ll hit some part of the Olifants River system, eager to smash some trophy smallies and always happy to bag a few Clanwilliam yellowfish along the way.

For me, the most fascinating part of preparing for the trip is the fly-tying and pattern research that precedes this mission. Herman always excels in this department and inevitably comes with a box lined with new patterns that the smallies cannot resist. Unsurprisingly, I spend the first couple of mornings of the trip tying a bunch of Harry’s patterns that proved hot the previous day.

Or easier still, I’d convince him to tie them for me.

I remember a few years ago Herman showed me a bunch of new flies.

Something that fascinated me more than the new patterns and what they looked like, were their names. Psycho Prince. Moose Turd. Montreal Whore.

And then there was Kelly Galloup’s fly patterns. I never tied any, but hell, they sounded like nothing could resist them; Butt Monkey. Sex Dungeon.

Barely Legal. Stacked Blonde. I mean, come on! What fish could swim past a Stacked Blonde! And they look every bit as good as the sound; hackle, rubber, marabou, fur, flash, you name it; it was all in there.

A year later we were back on a remote part of the Olifants for our an-

Take out the Meat Whistle and score big with fat pre-spawn smallies. nual smallie spring bash. It was early season and we caught the tail end of a frontal system. We had to deal with lots of post-frontal run-off, high water levels and fast flow velocity. I was battling my balls off one morning to get my fly into the deeper pocket water where I knew the smallies were holding. Herman walked over and handed me a good-looking pattern with lots of marabou and zonker. Tungsten conehead on a jig hook, mmmm, very nice!

“Tie it on a 14ft leader and drift it through that eddie under an indicator” he advised. It wasn’t long before

the indicator quivered, I lifted the rod and came tight into a fat pre-spawn smallie. By the end of the afternoon session it not only accounted for a good number of smallmouth bass, but a clanwilliam yellowfish to boot.

Back at camp I couldn’t stop raving about this new fly. “Dude, we gotta give it some crazy-ass name like those intrusion streamers, man. How about The Homesick Mole?” I said.

“Because, you know, nothing goes down like a Homesick Mole! Waddaya think?” Harry laughed and replied “No can do brother. It already has a name; it’s called John Barr’s Meat Whistle”.

“hell, they sounded like nothing could resist them; Butt Monkey. Sex Dungeon. Barely Legal.

Stacked Blonde. I mean, come on! What fish could swim past a Stacked Blonde!”

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the lifer

tony kietzman t h e c o l o ssus o f r h o d es

Artist, botany enthusiast and veteran fly fishing guide Tony Kietzman has caught more fish than most of us have had warm dinners. But, as he tells The Mission, these days it’s less about catching fish than it is about going fishing.

The first fish I can remember catching was a goby in a rock pool using a small crushed snail for bait. Much later Martin Davies introduced me to fly fishing at university.

I have called many places home.

I was born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), lived all over the Transvaal, Eastern Cape, Joburg, Cape Town and finally Rhodes. I suppose only Johannesburg and Rhodes really made me feel that I belong.

Rhodes is the kind of town where everyone knows your business sometimes before you do, and then not necessarily the truth.

I have had many different jobs. Tourism guide, scientific field research assistant, trainee factory manager, teacher, then self-employed as a film editor, decorative painter, fly fishing and flower guide, artist and I worked in environmental rehabilitation. I guess that I ended up teaching anyway.

At the moment, a typical day goes as follows: wake up, coffee, shower, emails/water plants/draw, breakfast, then more of the same, or go fishing.

As a rabid botany enthusiast my favourite plants are the Wurmbeya eliator (pepper and salt flower), the Huttonea (an orchid species) and the diascia.

The thing I am probably most proud of

“Fish have become far less important than the venues. I feel that I don’t really need to catch but certainly need to go fishing” Interview: Tudor Caradoc-Davies Photos: Warren van Rensburg

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is having made it this far. At 30 I would not have expected to last this long.

Perhaps the best party trick I have ever seen was someone having a case of wine in their car … When we ran out.

The best advice I have ever been given is to save money. Cash is freedom and I didn’t listen. Other good advice was: If it doesn’t work for you change how you look at it.

For me mental pursuits seemed to come easier than physical ones.

The more you put into anything the more comes back. With age comes confidence and it all seems relatively easy. Focus is the issue.

My artistic process is to find an image, then the concerns with problems encountered in previous work and how to overcome them become the challenge or inspiration. Then I let the picture take over, rather than the image I started with in mind.

What I get out of fly fishing has changed over the years. Fish have become far less important than the venues. I feel that I don’t really need to catch but certainly need to go fishing.

If I could change one thing in fly fishing, it would be the environmental damage to the places we fish.

Looking back on my life, if there was one thing I would do differently it would be to be more financially responsible and save. And to travel more. I wish I had the confidence to follow art at an earlier life stage, I suppose that I had creative jobs anyway.

The last fish I caught was an early season yellow in the Kraai River.

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“The more you put into anything the more comes back�

Tony Kietzman on his home waters - the rivers and tributaries of Rhodes in the Estern Cape.

Photo. Warren van Rensburg 100

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