The Mission Fly Fishing Magazine Issue #43

ISSUE 43 JAN/FEB 2024

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LOST BOYS, THE FEATHERS AWARD, TIGERS OF MTSITSI GORGE, CULLEN ASHBY, SLOW LANE SLOVENIA, BEATS & MORE

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W W W . T H E M I S S I O N F LY M A G . C O M ISSUE 43 JAN/FEB 2024

CONTENTS Cover: Alphonse Fishing Co. guide Cullan Ashby sports a beatific smile as he releases a milkfish. Photo Brian Chakanyuka

22. THE FEATHERS AWARD We’re back with the winner of the best fish caught on fly on the African continent in the last calendar year, and we have a spectacular new trophy to boot. Points are awarded for size, difficulty, rarity and novelty, so who wins bragging rights for last year?

44. WAKANDA FOREVER Even if the weather’s been crap, sometimes you’ve just got to go. In Iain Rennie’s case that means flying off in a Piper Cub to a remote beach for some salty soul searching.

50. THE TIGERS OF MTSITSI GORGE Truly wild places where you are just as likely to get chomped as your fly is, still exist. That was what Gareth Tate and mates were looking for when they went deep into Big Five country in search of tigerfish that had never seen a fly before.

58. CRUISING IN THE SLOW LANE Striking a balance between enjoying a holiday with his young family and targeting marbles, Gerald Penkler experiences Slovenia at a different pace.

70. LOST BOYS Remote destination guide teams experience pressures a little different to your average First World working schlub.

A decade on, we chat to the crew who were behind the scenes in paradise on Farquhar around 2013.

86. WHAT’S IN MY BAG Jet-setting photographer and filmmaker Si Kay takes us through the gear he swears by plus he shares a few hard-earned travel rules, tips, and tactics.

REGULAR FEATURES 18. Chum 24. Wish List Fish 28. Troubled Waters 34. High Fives

96. Salad Bar 102. Pay Day 106. Fluff 110. Lifer

Ewan Naude releases a sawfin from a pristine Western Cape stream. Photo. Leonard Flemming. Read about these underrated fish on our Wish List Fish page (page 24).

T&T Ambassador Alec Gerbec on the Snake River Wyoming

the next generation Ask a group of experienced anglers to name the greatest dry fly rod of all time, and the T&T Paradigm is sure to be mentioned more than once. Over twenty years later, we’ve followed the same inspiration that made the original into a legend to create a new Paradigm for the 21st century.

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Makhangoa Community Camp - LEsotho * W o r ld c lass sight f is hing * B r eathtaking s c enery * E x c l u s ive lodge ex perienc e * F u l l y Guided and C atered

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T U D O R CA R A D O C - DAV I ES

SOFT POWER RANGERS

I

n international politics, soft power is defined as the ability to co-opt rather than coerce people and states to play along with you. It involves shaping the preferences of others through appeal and attraction rather than force. It’s perhaps an odd thing to think about while watching Scandinavian fly fishing films but hear me out.

Towards the end of last year, Swedish filmmaker Rolf Nylinder, Markus Lemke of Lemmel Kaffee (a Swedish coffee brand, hugely popular in Scandi fly fishing circles) and Norwegian musician Håvard Stubø of Jazz and Fly Fishing visited Southern Africa for a fly fishing and film screening tour. At screenings in Cape Town, the African Waters’ Makhangoa Community Camp on the Bokong River in Lesotho, and in Johannesburg, Rolf showed off a new film, A Not Too Steady Flow of Mayflies. Then, after each screening he and Håvard got up and spoke to the audience (without PowerPoint presentations or any other clutter) about their world.

While Rolf’s films are legendary and his fans legion, you could argue that the Q&A session after the films was just as good. It helped that Håvard and Rolf have a sort of understated comedy dynamic going on, but it was fascinating to see them compare notes with the crowd.

They spoke about how alien our fishing is to them, describing the three to four months a year that they get to fish in near constant sunlight and mayfly hatches.

They dived into entomology, drinking in cabins in the snow, allowing mosquitoes to bite you (because to fight them is futile), and how if you come to Swedish Lapland

and ask Håvard where to fish, he will send you to various places mainly to see how they are fishing for his own trips.

Throughout it all, there was so much we all had in common despite how deeply different our countries are.

Backed by Swedish Lapland Tourism, the trio were ostensibly here to promote the region they are from (plus their coffee brand), while also getting to experience our fly fishing. They definitely did the latter, experiencing the Cape streams and the Bokong River in Lesotho. As for the former... They did promote Swedish Lapland but in a way that was so relaxed and so natural, they barely seemed to be trying to do anything at all. And therein lay the appeal. We are so used to having every product or experience thrown at us as the ultimate this or the best that, that when you get hit with a very soft sell, it can be incredibly powerful. Even to call what they did a sell is a stretch, because there was no strategy or artifice and no goal to sell. They just do what they do (fish and film) and then chat to people about it.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to be said for the classic fly fishing films and their film fests with high octane fish porn films, giveaways and influencers. They’re a calendar highlight in fact. But this low-key, low-fi approach to cultural exchange was just as, if not more, impactful in my view and I’d like to see more of it happen both within South Africa and globally.

Bushveld yellowfish nuts on tour to the Cape, golden dorado DIY guys on tigerfish safari across Africa, striped bass obsessives comparing notes with dusky kob jobbers – bring it.

This magazine is home-grown, hand-rolled and smoked into being by a bunch of real humans, completely AI-free.

If you enjoy what we do and feel you would like to support us in some way, get some The Mission merch from our website, buy us a beer/coffee on Patreon (patreon.com/themissionflymag), or just send us an email telling us how amazing our jaw lines are at info@themissionflymag.com.

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“So tell us again G-pant, how many fish did you klap with this refined Flash Clouser?” The Tigers of Mtsitsi Gorge (page 50)

EDITOR

Tudor Caradoc-Davies

ART DIRECTOR Brendan Body

EDITOR AT LARGE Conrad Botes

CONTACT THE MISSION The Mission Fly Fishing Magazine for Soutie Press (Pty) Ltd 25 Firth Road, Rondebosch, 7700, Cape Town, South Africa

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CONTRIBUTORS #43 Leonard Flemming, Cullen Ashby, Iain Rennie, Gareth Tate, Si Kay, Arno Laubscher, Vanya Hackel PHOTOGRAPHERS #43 Brian Chakanyuka, Leonard Flemming, Jean Tresfon, Dr Alan Whitfield, Ryan Daly, Jazz Kuschke, Nick van Rensburg, Cullen Ashby, Cameron Musgrave and Kyle Reed, Iain Rennie, Gareth Tate, Christian Fry, Frans Louw, Gerald Penkler, Suzanne Penkler, Brad Hyman, Jako Lucas, Kyle Reed, Scoty de Bruyn, James Topham, Si Kay, Fly Fishing Nation, Vanya Hackel, Siw Hermanstad/ Stuenes

tudor@themissionflymag.com

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 SOUTIE PRESS (PTY) LTD. ANY DUPLICATION OF THIS MAGAZINE, FOR MEDIA OR SALE ACTIVITY, WILL RESULT IN LEGAL ACTION, AND YOU BEING REINCARNATED, TAKEN BACK IN TIME TO 2013 AS A FARQUHAR GUIDE HOUSE RAT.

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@THEMISSIONFLYMAG

Home of th e World’s Best Fly Fishing Alphonse Island | Astove Atoll | Cosmoledo Atoll Farquhar Atoll | Amirante Islands | Providence Atoll

reservations@alphonsefishingco.com www.alphonsefishingco.com www.bluesafari.com Alphonse Fishing Co, is part of the Blue Safari Seychelles collection.

CHUM

G U I D E S C H O O L , F E S T I VA L S , A PA R A - R A B V I D E O , A REEL WORTH SELLING YOUR KIDNEY FOR, A N D T H AT D A M N C AT F I S H GET YOUR... ...BEAST ON with Ahrex’s new Bob Popovics-designed hook. For this long-awaited model, the Danish hook gurus collaborated with the OG of Beast/Fleye design to develop a hook for the biggest flies. The SA290-Beast Fleye has an oversized hook-eye, allowing for heavy shock tippet, while its big brother, the SA292-Beast Fleye Long, has a longer shank. Chemically sharpened with small barb, it has an A-steel finish and is available in size 8/0 to 4/0. ahrexhooks.com

Got the hook? Now learn how to tie the flies, with our step-by-step video of Andre van Wyk – seen here in his safe space, nekkid atop a bed of bucktail – tying The Beast. www.youtube.com/c/ TheMissionFlyFishingMagazine

TAKE PART IN THE INAUGURAL... ...LADIES’ FLY FISHING FESTIVAL. The inaugural Ladies’ Fly Fishing Festival will be held later this year in KwaZulu-Natal from 11-14 July. Co-hosted by the Women in Waders crew and the Natal Fly Fishers Club (NFFC) on the best NFFC stillwaters, teams of four will battle it out for a spread of prizes and bragging rights. Entry costs R4 500 per angler and includes three nights shared accommodation, packed lunches, dinners, goodie bags, and two days’ fishing. A portion of the entry fee goes to the NFFC Roy Ward Fund dedicated to the restoration of local rivers. Secure your spot by emailing womeninwaders@gmail.com.

“BATTLE IT OUT FOR A SPREAD OF PRIZES AND BRAGGING RIGHTS.”

DROOL AT THE... ...T&T INDIVIDUALIST REEL BY HERMIT VALLEY REELS. Thomas & Thomas are known for their rods, but they are partial to the odd collab too (Whistlepig Whiskey and Ball & Buck spring to mind). For these stunning trout and salmon reels, they roped in reel maker Mauro Tosti of Hermit Valley (hermitvalleyreel. com). Handmade deep in Italy’s Apennine Mountains, they sport classic looks updated with modern materials like aerospace aluminium. The trout models are bi-directional click and pawl, with the correct tension to prevent line overrun.

The salmon model has a sealed multi-disc drag with the smoothness and power to handle the fish of a lifetime. thomasandthomas.com

“HANDMADE DEEP IN ITALY’S APENNINE MOUNTAINS.”

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CHECK OUT... ...OUR SBS PARA-RAB VIDEO WITH GORDON VAN DER SPUY. The Feather Mechanic, aka Gordon, popped into our office to demo tying that iconic Cape stream dry fly, the Para-RAB (praise be unto RAB originator Tony Biggs and Para-RAB modifier Philip Meyer). It’s a fantastic fly that has been fished all over the world to great effect and with Gordon as the instructor it’s a superb tie. themissionflymag.com

“A FANTASTIC FLY THAT HAS BEEN FISHED ALL OVER THE WORLD.”

SIGN UP FOR... ...MAVUNGANA FLYFISHING’S GUIDE TRAINING PROGRAMME. Reckon you can fish like an otter, but don’t know where to start to become a guide? Then, young padawan, Mavungana Flyfishing’s hands-on guide training programme may be just the thing for you. You’ll get upskilled in everything from retail exposure and trout habitat enhancement in Dullstroom to mastering photography, piloting drones, and guiding on exclusive streams.

In Clarens you’ll learn drift boat handling on the Ash River, plus you’ll spend time on Sterkfontein Dam and the Vaal River.

Tackle tigerfish on Pongola and learn powerboat navigation, while on the Orange River and Cape streams, yellowfish and trout await. Then there is also saltwater skill honing on the Garden Route for leeries, kob, and grunter. flyfishing.co.za

“RECKON YOU CAN FISH LIKE AN OTTER, YOUNG PADAWAN?”

BLOCK OFF TIME FOR... ...THE RAPTURE OF THE RIVER FESTIVAL. Hosted around the town of Maclear (Nqanqharu) in the northern reaches of the Eastern Cape, this two-day river festival held from 25 to 27 April has been going since 1996 for good reason. Will The Rapture actually ensue?

BEATS LISTEN TO… …OUR ISSUE 43 BEATS MIXTAPE. Old school, new school, this mix has it all from The Doors to Pokey Lafarge, Eels, Cake, Blind Melon, Peter Gabriel, Courtney Barnett and Iris DeMent Press play

Well, considering the region is wild trout nirvana with over 1 000km of river, we’d be surprised if you didn’t think you’d shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to heaven. Entry fee is R2 500, and includes three hearty suppers, two lunch packs and reduced accommodation rates. For bookings or more info, contact maclearffc@gmail.com.

THE BABER SCOPE YOUR FISHING FUTURE ACCORDING TO YOUR STAR SIGN AS READ BY BABERMAN, THE LEGENDARY GRUMPY CATFISH. Aquarius (January 20 – February 18) Look, I know this is a little weird, but then the Ancient Greeks who came up with this shit were both odd and high on temple shrooms half the time. I have news for you Aquariusssess. Despite the aqua part of your name hinting at you being connected to water (aqua-man, aqua-turd, aqua-rium. Etc.), Aquarius is not a water sign, but actually an (insert air quotes) air sign. That means that in 2024, you need to learn to cast long distances with some proper double-haul instruction. We’re talking Rajeff-ian measurements of fly casting distance. Why? Who knows, but I wager there’s a large fish waiting at the far end of that cast. If you make it.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20) You’re probably wanting to hear how 2024 will bring you epic fishing or that those pills you bought after calling the number on a traffic-light poster (0800-Dr-Ezekiel-Erection-Savers!) have cured your relationship troubles, right? Sorry, but the entrails have spoken and 2024 is going to be a great year for you... financially.

Whether you invest in Perdigon futures, bluegill penny stocks or aggressive Hucho shorts (not the latest range from Howler Bros), by the end of the year you will have enough cash for an hour on the River Test.

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®

THE FEATHERS AWARD 2023

C

lash of cymbals and thunderous crescendo of drums! Dancing hippos and a chorus of fish eagles!

The call went out, signal fires were lit (and smoked in some cases), and entries flooded in for The Feathers Award. Here’s what’s new and who stood out from the 2023 selection.

THE TROPHY After four years as a concept in the steel trap of our minds’ eyes, the award now exists in the form of a stupendous brass sculpture trophy. This was a collab between editor-at-large Conrad Botes (conradbotes. com), who happens to moonlight as one of South Africa’s best artists, and sculptor Otto du Plessis of Bronze Age Foundry (bronzeage.co.za). Winners of the award will be immortalised by having their names and the year they won added to the trophy’s base.

THE ENTRANTS So... Who gets the glory?

The judges took note of: • The impressive fin length of Brett Wood’s longfin jack caught at African Waters’ Sette Cama setup in Gabon.

As African Waters guide Mike Dames said, “Our first comments were not over the size of this fish (which was special) but rather the junk in the trunk. This Caranx fischeri truly was taking their common name to the extreme. If Roland Ward trophy status were given to fish, this longfin would be top of the record books.”

• MC Coetzer’s near-death experience catching an impressive giant African threadfin when his schedule 5 meds went wrong while wading through surf at night to a sandspit with nothing but Zambezi sharks, dark thoughts, and shadowy voices for comfort. Judge Andre van Wyk said MC nearly died (or thought he was going to die!), and that’s always worth a vote.

• Pieter Snyders’ noteworthy achievement of a largie triple up. Judge Leonard Flemming says, “To whack three largies in one session and one of them looks especially good, that’s special.”

• Elite Protea rock and surf angler Rob Kyle, who is also deadly with a fly rod, caught a massive chiselmouth. Leonard Flemming says, “Very few people have actually caught them. I have had the opportunity to fish for them and realise how hard they are to catch on fly.”

THE WINNER While we had some impressive entries across the board, 2023’s Feathers Award stood out for the fight going on at the top end of the table. Ultimately, though, it came down to two fish.

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Jimmy Eagleton’s ocean sunfish (Mola mola) targeted and caught on a “dry fly” and Franna van Zyl’s dorado caught on foot in the PE/Gqeberha area.

Jimmy says, “Ever since Peter Coetzee got a sunfish on fly, I have tried to get one for years. After seeing a video clip of how sunfish eat bluebottle jellyfish off the surface, it all happened exactly like in the video clip with some input from Wikus van der Walt explaining the finer details of a drag-free drift. The execution with a 14-weight wasn’t that pretty, but the sunfish’s head came clear out the water when it sucked the fly from the surface. When it went airborne and landed on its side, I literally felt the loud thump in the little dingy that the sunfish was towing around the West Coast. This fish could just very well be a dry fly trout angler’s wet dream.”

What kind of mad man sets out to target a Mola mola on dry fly and actually pulls it off? As Dre says, “Mental fish, from a truly crazy bugger – one of the few that actually goes out to attempt (and succeed at) doing shit everyone else only ever laughably thinks about.”

For novelty and effort, Jimmy’s fish would probably win in most years, then... Just as we closed the entries, Franna’s dorado from the shore came out of nowhere.

Franna’s partner, guide Viv Dames says, “It was a bit of a batshit crazy morning. The water was super-flat and once we spotted it, my friend James, Franna and I were throwing everything we could at this fish swimming in the shallows.

Bucktails, shiver sticks, you name it, but no interest.

Then Franna said, ‘Holy shit, I brought my fly rod!’ He took one little cast and it was the only thing that made that bull turn around and get excited. Boom! He landed it about an hour later after fighting it like a legend on his 8-weight fly rod with a 20lb leader and a size 4 fly. He is freaking chuffed. Day made, season made, year made. He’s never seen a dorado before so he is super-stoked. As tempted as we were to eat the chicken of the sea, we tagged it and released it. It was totally a right place, right time kind of thing, but Franna fought it so well.”

As judge Ewan Naude says, “Catching a halfdecent saltwater fish on fly in SA is difficult enough let alone a trophy pelagic sight-fished from shore.”

A big fish, rare or unheard of in the area, caught on foot, against the odds... The Feathers Award winner for 2023 is Franna van Zyl. Sorry Jimmy.

For the full stories behind each entry, visit themissionflymag. com/the-feathers-award

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A big fish, rare or unheard of in the area, caught on foot, against the odds... The Feathers Award winner for 2023 is Franna van Zyl.

“MENTAL FISH, FROM A TRULY CRAZY BUGGER – ONE OF THE FEW THAT ACTUALLY GOES OUT TO ATTEMPT (AND SUCCEED AT) DOING SHIT EVERYONE ELSE ONLY EVER LAUGHABLY THINKS ABOUT.”

Leonard Flemming with a fantastic sawfin.

WISH LIST FISH

CLANWILLIAM SAWFIN SMASHING DRY FLIES, NYMPHS, AND STREAMERS, LEONARD FLEMMING SAYS IF YOU VISIT THE HEADWATERS OF THE WESTERN CAPE’S CEDERBERG OR TANKWA REGIONS, CL ANWILLIAM SAWFIN DESERVE YOUR ATTENTION. What: The Clanwilliam sawfin is an indigenous, serrated cyprinid with a characteristic long, slender snout that’s got humans properly confused. The fish has undergone several taxonomic changes, and although it has a “sister” species, the Cape whitefish, in the same province (South Africa’s Western Cape), and closely resembles the common European barbel (Barbus barbus) and Andalusian barbel (Luciobarbus sclateri), it doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere in international established genera.

Hence the genus name has changed from Barbus to Pseudobarbus, and more recently to Cheilobarbus. Currently the full temporary Latin name is Cheilobarbus serra. Scientists predict that it may change yet again in the near future.

Where: Found in the Olifants/Doring River systems, from the Tankwa Karoo near the Northern Cape border, right across the Cederberg range to the Citrusdal and Clanwilliam area, the Clanwilliam sawfin is

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truly widespread. It is especially abundant in the upper reaches of the main stem rivers, as well as many tributaries that join the Olifants and Doring. It is sometimes found surprisingly high up in the catchment areas of these rivers and is also stocked in several private dams such as at the Bushmans Kloof Wilderness Reserve.

Why: It is a near-threatened fish species and any interest and positive awareness about this wonderful sportfish can only do it favours.

How: Clanwilliam sawfin are superopportunistic feeders. Although one will often find them foraging for food along the bottom in the deepest parts of resilient pools where they will readily take nymphs either sight-fished to them on a long leader or dangling under an indicator, they may also smash a big streamer (like a Woolly Bugger or Zonkertype streamer) from time to time, or even rise to sip in dry flies. All you need is a

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3- to 5-weight outfit, depending on the size of the river or dam, matching floating line, and a good variety of flies (#12 to #18 nymphs, #6 to #10 Woolly Buggers, #6 to #2 Zonker streamers, and lastly any and all dry flies). Carry tippet material from 7X to 3X fluorocarbon for sinking flies, and 5X to 4X monofilament for dry flies.

Who: You will need to DIY this species. A CapeNature angling licence (specifically the recreational fishing permit for dams and rivers, capenature.co.za) is required to fish freshwater systems in the Western Cape. Then, you also need access permits and permission from the local CapeNature officials to fish the specific nature reserves or the farmer’s consent when crossing private land to a dam or river. Bushmans Kloof (bushmanskloof.co.za) provides guided fishing for these fish in their main dam and in the Boontjies River on their property, which is a wonderful experience I can really recommend.

“ T H E F I N E S T S H I T H O L E S P E C I E S I N T H E B E S T S H I T H O L E D E S T I N AT I O N S .”

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WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS I F Y O U ’ V E B E E N AT T H E C O A S T T H I S S U M M E R A N D G A Z E D A B S E N T - M I N D E D LY AT A S TA G N A N T E S T U A R Y, Y O U ’ V E P R O B A B LY W O N D E R E D I F, H O W, A N D W H E N E S T U A R I E S SHOULD BE BREACHED OPEN TO THE SEA, A N D H O W T H AT W O U L D I M PA C T Y O U R FAV O U R I T E A N G L I N G S P E C I E S . W E E X P L O R E THE SUBJECT WITH SCIENTIFIC EXPERTS AND ANGLERS.

By Matt Kennedy.

Photos. Dr Alan Whitfield, Jean Tresfon, Ryan Daly, Jazz Kuschke, Nick van Rensburg

ESTUARIES AND ESTUARINE FISH First we turned to Dr Alan Whitfield, a leading estuary expert in Southern Africa, who broke down the protocol and logic behind estuary management and the impact that closed estuaries has on fish.

South Africa has 258 functional estuaries, of which 182 are temporarily open/closed estuaries (TOCEs). This means that for part of the year, after the wet season, they are open to the sea, fully exchanging water and allowing the passage of nutrients and organisms. When the rainy season ends, the flow of inland freshwater is slowed and eventually the estuary closes off, with the sea forming a sand berm at the mouth, thus preventing any further water exchange. As the rainy season starts again, rivers come down in flood, and the estuary tops over the sand bank and creates an outflow channel, which then drains the system. “It’s like pulling a plug out of the estuary,” says Alan.

When nature takes its course, breaching usually occurs during the wet season.

For most of South Africa, this is during the spring and summer, from September to March. The Eastern Cape experiences winter and summer rainfall, and in the Western Cape it rains in winter, May to August.

Most of the fish in these estuaries are marine species that are spawned at sea and then recruit into estuaries during post-larval and early juvenile stages. Adult breeding of many popular angling species normally takes place in nearshore marine waters. Alan says, “The larval offspring – fish in the first phase of life – are no more than 10mm long. They can’t swim but rather drift in the ocean, spending about a month at sea. They then move either directly into an open estuary, or a TOCE that is open, or migrate into the surf zone and move laterally along the coast until they hit an open estuary.”

Where an estuary is closed, sea-side larvae can sense freshwater seeping out through the beach from inside a lagoon. These little fish will hang around the surf zone in high concentrations, waiting for the system to breach. In some cases, larvae will be swept into a closed estuary by riding a wave big enough to wash over the sand berm into the estuary, without breaching the system.

“The timing of a breach and marine spawning is ideally congruent,” says Alan. “If an estuary was artificially breached and drained of its water at the wrong time of year, then there may not be enough water for a proper spring breach, which needs to coincide with post-spawning juvenile fish recruitment, and ideally is strong enough to scour out accumulated sediments and organic matter from the stagnant system.”

On the subject of spawning, there is a general misconception among many anglers that marine fish breed in estuaries.

Rather than delivery rooms, estuaries function as nurseries for developing marine fish. That prize leervis of yours was likely a sub-adult, as most adults occur at sea. Soz. Alan says, “The larvae and early juveniles come into estuaries.

They spend two, three or even four years there before returning to the sea where they spend most of the rest of their lives. There are exceptions, like adult grunter, which often return to estuaries after spawning.

“When you have a flood, many adult fish, and particularly the ones that have reached sexual maturity, return to the sea because that is where spawning takes place. They don’t want to be trapped in an estuary. The worst thing that can happen is for a growing population of fish to be locked into an estuary for more than five years without any marine connectivity.

Maturing fish locked in an estuary cannot spawn, so they start reabsorbing their gonads.”

REABSORBING THEIR… WHAT? No, it’s not just because the water is cold. Gonad reabsorption is one version of how fish perform “skipped spawning”, often due to unfavourable environmental conditions like temperature, poor nutrition, or closed access to the sea. Alan says, “The energy saved during gonad reabsorption likely improves their chances of survival until a future spawning event. The downside is that a successful spawning event is forgone for that individual.” Think of it as an involuntary vow of celibacy that ends with a big flood. Like most of your sex life.

In South Africa’s Western Cape province, winter is wet. In larger systems such as the Breede River Valley, regardless of rainfall, a big enough tidal prism will keep the estuary open.

Smaller systems tend to be closed in the dry summers and will only open towards the third quarter of the year, when they’ve been filled up from winter rains.

“The late winter rain is really the straw that breaks the camel’s back, forcing many of the estuaries to breach in early spring,” says Alan. “Although the rainfall regime in the Western Cape is different to KwaZulu-Natal’s, the opening periods are similar.

This is ideal and timely for fish recruitment, which is mostly a spring and early-summer phenomenon.”

To the delight of anglers and anyone who cares about healthy ecosystems, Alan says, “The late-winter storms that hit the coast in 2023 from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth were extremely timely. That flood event would have forced many estuaries open, scoured them out, and will result in excellent recruitment for this coming summer.”

TO BREACH OR NOT TO BREACH… IS THAT THE QUESTION? An artificial breach involves sending large yellow machines onto the beach to dig open an estuary mouth. This has a variety of consequences – good, bad, predictable and not.

“When the natural functioning of the freshwater system has been interfered with to such an extent that an estuary cannot function under a naturally regulated cycle, that could warrant a breach,” says Alan. Interference includes damming of freshwater systems, draining rivers for agriculture, unchecked development, or the overall cascading effects of climate change.

While there are a few schools of thought, the main opposing opinions around forced breaching are either we need to fix what we’ve broken, or we need to leave well enough alone.

As Alan explained, based purely on rainfall regime, sometimes an estuary is artificially breached at the wrong time of year. “Water needs to accumulate during the closed phase so that the flood event and breach can scour sediments and accumulated organic matter out of the systems, as well as combat potentially eutrophic scenarios where excessive growth of filamentous algae can proliferate, smothering submerged plant beds such as eelgrass.”

Even with the right motivation and reasoning, artificial breaching can go wrong. For example, there are pollution issues from low-lying developments in many TOCEs. Alan says, “E. coli levels rise in these estuaries because of leaking septic tanks and French drains that don’t work when the water table rises. The local municipality will put pressure on the respective authority to breach the estuary and supposedly get rid of the pollution. However, if the berm is breached when the water is too low, you do not get proper scouring of sediments out of the estuary. And what’s worse is that the system will not reset in the same way as it would reset if a proper flood came through the system, hindering the natural cycle for seasons to come.”

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East and West Kleinemonde TOCE mouth phases: closed (top), breached (middle) and closing (bottom).

Here’s a list of well-known systems and their history with breaching.

BOT RIVER Alan says, “Under certain circumstances, systems can become hyposaline, where the salinity is too low for marine fish to survive and would probably not have occurred in a natural situation. A good example of this is the Bot River, whose flow is compromised by the many dams and farms that are extracting freshwater from the system. Were these obstructions not present, the Bot’s estuary berm would be breached on a more regular basis. The question is, in what is a totally artificial situation, do you just leave it, allowing all the marine fish to die from low salinity and lack of marine connectivity? Or, do you implement an assisted breach, which is also artificial, but it’s trying to keep the system in balance between connectivity and the open/closed phase?”

EAST AND WEST KLEINEMONDE These two neighbouring estuaries in the Eastern Cape are good examples of where forced breaching could have done a lot to help. Alan says, “Recently, the East estuary was open to the sea while the West estuary remained closed, and is still closed. Both estuaries are home to growing populations of dusky kob. Dusky kob reach maturity when they’re 1m long, and need to spawn at sea at this point. When the West Kleinemonde estuary didn’t breach, news travelled fast, and soon that population of mature kob was wiped out by anglers.

We know from historical records that South Africa’s dusky kob stocks are 95% depleted – we’ve only got 5% left. This could have been a good reason to breach that system artificially.”

Alan says that a situation like this would still require a scientific justification, and that water levels would need to be sufficiently high to facilitate a realistic breach. “I don’t think the height of the lagoon behind the berm was sufficient even for an artificial breach. So, it might not have been feasible. However, one could justify an artificial breaching. The West Kleinemonde had not breached in five years and all the marine fish sitting in the system need to get to sea to breed.”

UMHLANGA RIVER During the KZN riots of July 2021, fire fighters combatted arson at an agro-chemical warehouse, which resulted in toxic runoff into the uMhlanga River system via stormwater drainage. Alan says, “Everything downstream in the estuary was killed and, to help get rid of the pollution, the estuary was breached artificially. This slowed down the accumulation of those toxic chemicals into the sediments of the estuary. A breach was justified, regardless of the time of year, to prevent further fish kills in the future.”

GREAT BRAK RIVER The Great Brak River estuary on the Garden Route is one of Jazz Kuschke’s home waters. Being a conservation-minded angler, and with a major in geography, he’s penned many pieces on estuaries over the years and since his teenage years has seen and understood the changes to his local waters better than most.

Jazz says, “The mouth is mechanically opened, year after year, at the wrong location. The natural and more efficient mouth point would be via the path of least resistance, a flow that would leave the current river bend as an oxbow lake.” He’s resigned to the fact that it’s not a popular opinion and that unfortunately, “It seems that making a pretty beach for holiday homes is given priority over proper estuary functioning.” His personal leaning is towards a balanced management of these systems. “We’ve messed with these systems, their catchment areas, flows and drainages, and we’ve built on their banks. It’s a bit like the elephant populations in the Kruger National Park. We have to protect and nurture them and grow the population, but the other side of the coin is having to cull some animals to save the veld.”

ZANDVLEI As highlighted in The Mission Issue 29 in Richard Wale’s “Open Secrets”, Cape Town’s Zandvlei, a highly modified estuary, has had its fair share of turmoil, although the leervis fishery is making a turn for the better. As a local angler who is highly involved with the system’s conservation and management, Richard explains their approach.

“The main purpose for the forced breaching here is to prevent a flooding of the houses in the marina. The mouth is kept open during winter so that the persistent rains do not cause a rise in water level. At the end of the rainy season, the mouth is closed, and managed throughout summer, where it is breached once a month during the second spring tide. This allows ‘fresh’ saltwater to push up into the system, maintaining salinity concentrations. Without this, the vlei would warm up too much. Combined with high nutrient levels, this can result in an algal bloom, which is bad news for anything with gills.”

ST LUCIA The St Lucia estuary and lake in KwaZulu-Natal, which accounts for 50% of South Africa’s estuarine surface area, was (yes, past tense) a major nursery for many marine species, including dusky kob and spotted grunter. It was closed and isolated for almost two decades until a forced breaching in 2020. Marine scientist Dr Ryan Daly explains that many factors made this important estuary uninhabitable.

“Previously,” says Ryan, “the Mfolozi River pumped straight into the St Lucia system. Then the river was channelised to combat flooding of sugarcane farms and a new mouth was created near Maphelane. During the extended closed phase of St Lucia, high temperatures and drought caused the lake to become hypersaline and it almost dried out. As a counter, St Lucia was reconnected to the Mfolozi River, where freshwater floods resulted in massive sediment deposition, accelerated reed growth and fragmentation between the lakes and narrows.”

Alan adds, “St Lucia was a very important marine fish nursery area and could no longer provide that function because the connectivity was broken. There were two schools of thought in the scientific community. The one said, ‘No, too bad, that’s a natural process,’ which it wasn’t because it had an artificial layer on top of it – agriculture, developments, dams, canals, etc. In the other camp you had a few others, including me, who said, ‘We’ve intervened with this system a lot. We agree that trying to restore natural functioning, including breaching regime, is the ideal. However, there comes a point where an assisted breach is justified.’ In this case the two decade-long loss of estuarine-marine connectivity was the trigger and so that was the reason for supporting the artificial breach of St Lucia at that point. It doesn’t mean to say that we will automatically support another artificial breach at any time in the future.”

Although the long-term consequences of the forced breaching at St Lucia will only be known through active monitoring and management, the short-term benefits (e.g. recruitment of bull sharks and mullet) have been encouraging.

Overall, the solution to your local estuary may be different to what needs to happen several hundred kilometres up the coast at other estuaries. Alan’s take is that “estuaries should be treated like individuals, each with unique characteristics, problems, and solutions. We should not be dogmatic. We need to be flexible, but the flexibility mustn’t compromise the long-term health of the system.”

HIGH FIVES

CULLAN ASHBY Z I M BABWE ’ S FI NEST, C ULL AN A SHBY, GUIDES EVERYON E FROM H O L LY WOO D STA RS TO O LI GA RCHS ON INDIAN OCEAN FL ATS OR PRIST INE AT L A N T I C SA LM O N RI VE RS . BETWEEN CHEAP BEERS AT A VIC FALLS BACKPACKE RS O N A BRI E F VISIT HOME, WE MAN AGED TO GET HIM TO A NSWE R O UR BURNIN G QUESTIONS. Photos. Cameron Musgrave, Kyle Reed, Brian Chakanyuka

5 best things about where you guide?

1. The beach bar on Alphonse Island on a Tuesday night.

It usually gets quite loose, especially if a couple of guides are taking it easy the following day.

2. Tomba beat on the Ponoi River in Russia. Something enchanting about the place; renowned for holding some of the river’s biggest fish.

3. The banya (sauna) at Ryabaga camp on the Ponoi.

No better place to unwind after a full day of battling the elements in the Arctic circle.

4. Lollipop Wreck on St. François Atoll. I’ve had some of the most incredible sessions out there over the years.

Brandon Poole even saw a ghost there once.

5. Paulie’s Island on Astove Atoll. Caught my biggest GT on fly standing on that cliff. There are some giants that swim by there. Burnt into my memory.

5 bands to listen to on a road trip?

1. So Kindly.

2. Ben Böhmer.

3. Rüfüs Du Sol. 4. Crazy P. 5. UB40.

5 people you would like to guide or fish with?

1. My old man in the Seychelles. The best fisherman in the family debate is yet to be settled plus he’s the reason I got myself into this mess!

2. Keith Rose-Innes and Devan van der Merwe on the same skiff. The wealth of skill and knowledge is unmatched in the Seychelles – add a case or two of beers and you’re in for one hell of a day regardless of the fishing!

3. Nick Bowles. Every time I have this man on my skiff, magic happens. I would not recommend going one-forone with him on beers, though. He has the constitution of a black rhino.

4. Mike Dawes. Probably the most talented saltwater angler I have had the pleasure of guiding. Would love to spend a day chasing permit with him on his side of the world.

5. Lionel Messi because he’s the GOAT.

5 indispensable flies for saltwater?

1. Pillow Talk.

2. My Flexo. The ones I pinch off Kyle Simpson’s desk when he’s not looking work pretty well, too!

3. Yousuf Crab.

4. Flaming Lamborghini.

5. Alec Gerbec’s Reaper.

5 things you are loving right now?

1. The smell of the first rains after a long dry season in Zimbabwe.

2. The Springboks’ Rugby World Cup win.

3. Packing the bags for the Seychelles season. T-minus two days!

4. Stacy, my Land Rover Defender 300TDi. 5. Shoestrings Backpackers bar. The cheapest drinks and loudest music in Victoria Falls.

5 fish on your species hit list?

1. Rooster fish off the beach in Mexico.

2. Tarpon. I would love my first to be caught in Africa.

3. Goliath tigerfish.

4. Atlantic permit.

5. A +1m marble trout in Slovenia. They do exist. I had one pinch a 15” rainbow off the end of my 4-weight last year.

My eyes almost fell out of my head.

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“BLANK ON THE BEST SALMON RIVER IN THE WORLD? SURELY NOT?”

5 DESTINATIONS ON YOUR BUCKET LIST?

5 FAVOURITE DESTINATIONS GLOBALLY? 1. The Seychelles Outer Islands.

2. The Ponoi River, Russia.

Arguably the best Atlantic Salmon fishery in the world.

3. The Zambezi River. My home waters. The place where it all started.

4. Slovenia. A hidden gem.

5. Spain. Cheap, amazing food, highly underrated fishing, and some of the nicest, most generous people I have ever met!

1. Mexico 3. Gabon 2. Bolivia 4. Australia

5. New Zealand

5 items you don’t leave home without before making a mission?

1. My Canon R6. I really enjoy documenting my guiding/ fishing. There’s no better way to do it than through the lens of a camera.

2. A tin of Zam-Buk. I am lost without the stuff; pure magic for cuts, insect bites, chapped lips, you name it.

3. A pair of pliers with good cutters. I have an old secondhand Orvis pair that ninja/ex-gillie Dave Marshall gave to me during my first season in the Seychelles back in 2017.

They are bulletproof and still cut braid.

4. A spare Buff. My pet hate is having a wet Buff and I usually end up swimming more often than I’d like.

5. My Garmin inReach. Thankfully I am yet to press the SOS button, but knowing it’s there does keep my mind at ease, especially on exploratory trips. The text and GPS functions are used daily.

5 of the most underrated species in your book?

1. Spangled emperor.

2. Bohar snapper.

3. Carp. Preferably the ones that eat dog biscuits off the top.

4. Nembwe. Awakens my inner child.

5. Golden trevally.

5 indispensable freshwater flies?

1. PTN. 2. Branko Killer. A very special parachute fly designed by good friend Branko Gašparin. A must-have for anything and everything Slovenia.

3. Red-eyed damsel.

4. Ponoi Nail/Hammer. Goes against everything that a traditional Atlantic salmon fly should be. It gives me great anxiety if my clients decide to fish anything else.

5. Zany Zambo. If you emptied my tigerfish fly box into the river and filled it with these I wouldn’t even blink. FCFB (Fuck Clousers Fish Brushflies).

5 most difficult guiding/teaching experiences so far?

1. Fellow Alphonse Fishing Company guide Graham Hayward and I managed to sink the same skiff three or four times in a single week while on a live-aboard trip in the Amirantes last season. No guests were onboard, and no one was hurt. We learnt a lot about ourselves in a short period of time.

2. Trying to convert a two-handed Spey caster into a single-handed saltwater angler. It is usually much easier the other way around – bonefish it is!

3. The ultra-neap – a tide that, for no apparent reason, stops water from coming onto the flats. Said to be manifested by Satan himself.

4. Flats blindness. When you can see everything but nothing.

5. The Ponoi Skunk. “Blank on the best salmon river in the world? Surely not?!” It happens to the best of us, and you better have your wallet handy because there’s a bottle of vodka on the guide’s table and guess who’s paying?

5 best things you have picked up from guiding?

1. Being able to travel the world. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would have the chance to travel to, let alone fish, some of these incredible destinations at my age. Guiding was my only chance and we’ve been in love ever since.

2. The fishing comes second. Looking after people is a skill, it’s the difference between being a good guide and being a good fisherman. Some of the best days I have ever had on the water we caught little to nothing. Some of the worst days I’ve had we landed a fish of a lifetime.

3. Go slow, go far. At the end of the day, most of our clients are out here on holiday which is something that is easily forgotten. Save the intense days for the guys who are after it. You often find that slowing down your approach entirely will give you just as many chances anyways. This goes for everything, not just the fishing.

4. Maybe means no. You constantly have to remind yourself of where you are. Taking risks in remote places is not a good idea. Whether you are jumping the surf line with the skiff, taking a boat through a sketchy set of rapids, or making a call on an ocean crossing, there are only two answers: Yes we can do it, or no we can’t.

5. It’s a team sport. Guiding these isolated destinations is no easy feat. We are away from family and friends for very long periods, have little time to ourselves and are somewhat disconnected from the real world.

If someone’s having a bad time or not being at team player, it can be felt immediately and often brings the rest of the team down. It takes a special kind of person to survive out in these places. I take serious pride in being involved with some of the industry’s leading operations.

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“CARP, PREFERABLY ONES THAT EAT DOG BISCUITS OFF THE TOP, ARE UNDERRATED.”

5 worst things you have picked up from guiding?

1. A perpetual raccoon tan from having a pair of sunglasses glued to my face 24/7.

2. Crocs are actually quite cool apparently.

3. I can open a bottle with pretty much anything, teeth included (sorry Mum).

4. Russian tot measurements. I thought Zimbos could drink!

5. Hobbit feet. Wearing wet boots for more than nine months of the year is unhealthy, kids.

5 shower thoughts that have occurred to you while fly fishing?

1. I wonder if that fish would have eaten if I was on the bow?

2. Did Stu Webb really see a crocodile on Astove, or is he still lying?

3. Permit are blind.

4. Permit don’t take.

5. Has anyone ever broken a Cross Current GLX? 5 things outside of the fishing that make where you fish so special?

1. Age, race, country, religion. None of which matter.

Getting to work with a group of like-minded guys from different backgrounds, all passionate about the same thing, is something special.

2. It costs an absolute fortune to fish with us out at these exotic destinations. As you would imagine we come across people of all shapes and sizes. I have been lucky enough to meet some incredible people and make some incredible contacts that continue to help me along the way.

3. The conservation effort. I take my hat off to the amount of time and money spent to look after these fisheries. It is awesome to be involved and play my role as a guide in the various tagging projects and studies. Not only does it teach us how to fish responsibly but it also protects these amazing places in the long term.

4. The wildlife. It’s something that we unfortunately take for granted on most days. It is so easy to get lost in the fishing but we are truly blessed with the amount of birds and animals that we have the chance of bumping into out on the water.

5. My salary might not look too shiny on paper but backto-back seasons between places like the Seychelles and Russia is a great way for someone my age to save money.

5 things you would take up if you weren’t always fly fishing?

1. Spend more time with my family.

2. Go to university like I was meant to (sorry again Mum).

3. Anything to do with old-school 4WD vehicles, overlanding and 35” tires – take my money.

4. Learn to fly a helicopter.

5. Hunting. I did my fair share when I was a youngster but have not had the chance to pick up a rifle since I left school.

5 essential ingredients for an incredible mission?

1. The Alphonse guide team.

2. A case of SeyBrew, preferably two, three if I’m not guiding the next day.

3. A Bluetooth speaker.

4. 12-weight fly rod.

5. A tuna carcass – if you know you know.

5 things about fly fishing that you may never understand?

1. Permit.

2. Why Atlantic salmon and other anadromous fish take flies.

3. Why South Africans reel with their right hands.

4. Permit.

5. Permit.

5 common mistakes that most clients make?

1. No striking on the flats. Please.

2. Gear maintenance. You’ll be surprised at how many anglers pack their reels away at the end of a week in the salt, only for them to resurface that same week the following year. No wonder your drag has ceased.

3. 12 o’clock is straight off the bow of the boat. Not the tip of your rod.

4. No beer no bite.

5. Mistaking me for Ricky Fowler, I don’t even play golf.

My last 5 casts were at Shackleton’s Lodge on the Zambezi River in Zambia looking for tigerfish and the elusive nembwe.

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WA KANDA

EV EN IF THE WEATHER’S BEEN CRAP, S OM ETIMES YOU’VE JUST GOT TO GO. IN I A I N RENNIE’S CASE THAT MEANS FLYING OFF IN A P IP ER CUB TO A REMOTE BEACH FOR S OME SALTY SOUL S EA R C HING. W W W. T H E M I S S I O N F LY M A G . C O M

FOREVE R

L

eaving the smog behind and flying low level over the trees, we can see the coast of Wakanda ahead. As we pull up over the coastal dunes we send a WhatsApp back home to let those that need to know that we’re nearly there, then we drop down to low level again. There’s no cell signal in Wakanda, yet another big positive of this magical location. Working our way up the beaches we check out various spots we’ve eyed out on Google Earth.

There is the odd Wakandan fishing party who have driven up the beach throwing bait and chugging beers. We are looking for a more deserted spot. We decide to run north, sus out all the possible locations, then fly back to the one we like best. With the wind thumping, the little Cub is fairly dancing about.

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After a couple of passes we choose a spot that has a nice flat section of beach without too much cross fall and an easy approach with a good go-around option. It also has some decent fishing prospects as well as a sheltered area with big casuarina trees to camp under. Running low down the beach I drag the high flotation bush wheels along the surface feeling for loose sand or hidden rocks.

Satisfied that all is in order we circle around for a pretty straightforward landing. Once down we busy ourselves pulling the plane up to the trees above the storm tide marks, a hatchet takes down a few saplings and we soon have a camp. With the necessary out of the way we stand looking out to sea, neither of us really wanting to voice the obvious. The sea is dirty, proper muddy, chopped-up soup. Wakanda has had continuous rainfall for months,

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some of the highest on record. Our proximity to a series of large estuaries, all of which have been blown open by surging flood waters, is not going to help us one bit.

We agree that even if it’s just one decent fish caught on fly, we will consider this mission a success. Any species will do. We just need to catch something. With more positive vibes than a gap year student at a yoga retreat we rig up and head for the surf. High tide is pushing in, but we don’t let that dampen our enthusiasm. Crazy Charlies on and off we go. A couple of casts and I get dumped by a chocolate-coloured wave. A few more and I try a lighter coloured fly. Hours later and I’ve been through nearly every fly in the bag kindly sent to me by a fly tying friend of a friend (@flydreamingkzn on the ’Gram). Neither Dodge nor I have had a twitch of the line, much less a bite. We retreat up the beach, brew some Earl Grey tea with a solid dollop of condensed milk and reconsider our tactics. More positivity; it must have been the tide that stumped us on the earlier session. Reinvigorated by the brew I decide to walk up north on my own while Dodge has a crack closer to camp. Beautiful, deserted beaches stretch away ahead of me, not another person for literally miles. I throw a cast from time to time as I stroll along.

An old shipwreck pokes out of the sand. Eventually I turn and fish more carefully back to the camp, methodically assessing the sets and tide. Long before I get there, I can see Dodge has given up and is relaxing in our beach lounge (a driftwood log and some other flotsam) with a beer in hand. Soon I follow suit.

Watching the sun slip below the horizon, we crack a bottle of sacred Scottish amber liquid, Jura Journey. We toast life and living, while the skies morph into various colours, eventually fading to black as the show ends. A simple camp dinner fit for kings cooked up and eaten, we make ourselves comfortable. The gurgle of the bottle recharges our tin mugs, Dodge passes me a cigar and lights one for himself. There is something healing in being so truly disconnected from the world, no sign of the metaverse, no algorithm predicting our thoughts and trying to sell us anything, free of the trap of social media we voluntarily throw ourselves into. An hour or two later lying on the beach, the bottle significantly lighter, we watch satellites wandering overhead, a blanket of stars pricking holes in the cosmos, the waves play base to our chatter as we dive into life and death, love and agonising heartbreak, loss and ambition. The hours tick by as we come up with solutions to the world’s problems and our own, trying to let go of the things we need to and refocus on the things that matter (a process I call “broga”: broyoga). Eventually we clamber sandy and salty into our sleeping bags (along with some unobserved sand fleas) and fall asleep to the sound of a tender breeze wandering through the casuarinas and the gentle sighing of the waves. The earth spins gently around its rotational axis.

The next morning, we lie in our sleeping bags under the wing watching the gloom give way to pinks and light yellows. Sunrise over the sea is something truly special. A quick breakfast out the way and we set off to make the most of the low tide. I would like to say full of enthusiasm and positivity, but as the sun rose, we could see that Neptune had not arrived cleaned the sea overnight. If anything, it looked worse than the day before. The bricks are standing clear with deep pools sheltered from the still angry surf, and also the odd spot where one can get out and manage a cast over the shore break. Despite the sea colour, our whiskybased theorising has given us a foolproof plan to smash this morning, or so we try and convince each other. Breathing in the cool morning air I wander down the beach ignoring the salt chafe in the nether regions from the day before. The soothing sand crunching under my bare feet, I strip line and start to fish the deep pools on the land side of the bricks.

Starting at one end I make sure to work the whole area before heading further down the beach. Dodge is on the rocks casting out over the drop off. We split up and enjoy the solitude. Methodically I work through different fly patterns, sizes and colours, waiting for the magic combination to reveal its self. The wind is getting up and I’ve taken a Clouser or two to the shoulder blade. I decide to head back up the beach and try from the bricks. I put a loop of line over the reel handle and without thinking pull the hook up to an eye, not quite there I tug gently to bend the tip of my rod just a smidgen… Snap. The tip section is now two tip sections.

I want to beat myself with the vigour of a flagellant from the 1300s. I can’t believe I’ve done something so stupid.

The only thing I’ve achieved is to guarantee Dodge some truly excellent fishing while I shall no doubt have to stand and watch like the guy at a bar watching his heartthrob dance with the local jock. Head down and grumpy I head off to where I can see Dodge silhouetted against the surf, 9-weight in hand deftly casting to the starving fish no doubt queuing up to throw themselves at his feet.

“Man, you won’t believe it,” Dodge begins. “I was getting into these little wave garrick, great little fish, lots of fight for their size and actually rather pretty. After a while I decided to try something different and switched to a popper… On about my third cast I saw this torpedo screaming up behind the popper, a further split second of vigorous retrieval and this grey mass just smashed the popper, line went tight instantly and I got a glimpse of a truly massive fish. I didn’t have time to think of anything, fortunately the hook was well set because it was off at a speed I’ve never experienced. I wound up the drag, terrified I was going to lose it. Reel screaming, I didn’t know what to do other than hang on. Next thing there was this massive bang and my reel just exploded. Bud, I don’t even know what happened. All I know is I’ve got reel pieces everywhere and this big fish heading for Australia.

Then, a nanosecond later the inevitable, the line tangled, my rod bent hard and with a twang the line snapped.

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It was gone. Now I don’t like to claim without knowing for a fact, but that was a GT. I hadn’t even considered the chance of catching one, much less rigged and prepped for it.”

I offer my condolences, share my own rod-breaking mare and we take stock. Small wave garrick aside, Dodge and I are sitting at a solid zero after two days of hard fishing.

Eventually we agree that the mud-coloured choppy water is not going to yield no matter what we try. We pack up our camp, push the Cub down onto the beach and give the prop a heave to start the engine (no electrics in this old WWII trainer). I run through some pre-takeoff checks then pour on the coals. The nearly 100hp four-cylinder engine roars to life and we start rolling. Skimming along the beach she hops into the air. We climb a couple of hundred feet and cruise down the beach for a while looking at spots for the inevitable “next time”.

Cruising along in our own world, I contemplate our trip. By our earlier definition it’s a failure. Or is it? Is one of the things that draws us to fly fishing the lack of certainty? We live in a world which we try and make as certain as possible, we’ve got specialists in reducing

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“WE CLIMB A COUPLE OF HUNDRED FEET AND CRUISE DOWN THE BEACH FOR A WHILE LOOKING AT SPOTS FOR THE INEVITABLE ‘NEXT TIME’.”

risk, minimising deviations from the norm, everything is quality controlled and standardised. Fly fishing isn’t. It’s at the opposite end, nothing is guaranteed, nothing is continuously the same, quality control doesn’t live here.

Perhaps the draw of fishing is the very likely chance of failure, the uncertainty, the uncontrollability, the untamed nature of it all. Is that what actually draws us in? I think about it more, would I have been as keen on this trip if everything had been guaranteed? Well no. If I wanted guarantees I could put a pond in my garden, fill it with fish, feed them pellets and any time I wanted to catch I would just wait until feeding time and drop a pelletshaped fly in. Maybe the perceived failure of this trip is actually its success?

The wind is still pushing, and unfortunately right on the nose. Along with a solid overcast it makes for a slow, uncomfortable trip home. We climb up to just below cloud base and as we cross the border our phones start vibrating as messages, WhatsApps, DMs and missed calls start pinging. Somewhere the algorithm grins, we’re back.

THE TIGERS OF MTSITSI GORGE IF IT FEELS LIKE IT’S ALL BEEN DONE BEFORE, THINK A G A I N . T H O S E T R U LY W I L D P L A C E S ( W H E R E Y O U ’ R E J U S T A S L I K E LY A S Y O U R F LY T O G E T C H O M P E D ) S T I L L E X I S T. T H AT WA S W H AT G A R E T H TAT E A N D M AT E S W E R E L O O K I N G F O R ( T H E W I L D N E S S , N O T T H E CHOMPING) WHEN THEY WENT DEEP INTO BIG FIVE C O U N T R Y I N S E A R C H O F T I G E R F I S H T H AT H A D N E V E R S E E N A F LY B E F O R E .

Photos. Gareth Tate, Christian Fry, Frans Louw

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or me, nothing beats the African wilderness.

We have it all. Extraordinary, wild, untouched spaces where biodiversity still thrives, blissfully unaware and cut off from the perpetually growing pressures of mankind. I have dedicated my life to the conservation of some of these spaces, including some of our region’s most threatened species and habitats.

Through my endeavours I have been flung into some of the wildest landscapes in Africa. As I work, I always keep my eyes peeled on the water below and the fly fishing potential that each site may offer.

I have come across pristine water systems: wild rolling rivers, meandering streams, lakes, and wetlands that hold remarkably rich aquatic life. The booming populations of large fish are enough to make anyone with a fly rod quiver at the knees. In many of these systems, the fish remain somewhat uneducated and have, without a doubt, never laid an eye on a fly. So when the opportunity arrived to fish one of these places that very few get to see, let alone fish, there was no question that I’d be joining. I admit that I did have prior knowledge. My local Slowveld chinas Frans, Simon and Christian were among the keen crew, with Doug, Grant, Chris and Weber also playing a vital part.

The approach road took us along an almost un-drivable, impossibly rugged and rocky pass winding down the valley. One border crossing, one blown-out tyre, one aardvark hole leading to one flipped trailer, and 20

anxious beers later, the thick woodland bushveld finally broke open to reveal one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever seen. There it was, the mighty Mtsitsi River. My mind immediately started to short-circuit. Clear, cool water snaked and cascaded through rocky outcrops, pooling and bubbling, running into gorges, across sandy flats and into a myriad of braided channels skirted by baobabs and 300-year-old ironwood forests clinging to the slopes. The giant, ancient baobabs stood like sentinels watching over this place, seemingly lost in time.

As we approached, dinosaur-sized crocs slithered and disappeared into their watery underworlds. Fish of all sizes and colours darted and flashed in the rapids. Hippos grunted, baboons barked, fish eagles called. My heart was full. It was pretty challenging to have to set up camp for the first night, seeing the river flowing just 15m away, along with the vivid memories of the large fish I had seen in this river system some years before.

We tend to get completely fixated on the Big Five and the charismatic terrestrial creatures of Africa, but if you adjust your lens to see what’s happening underwater, your mind will be blown. Our African aquatic ecosystems hold an unrivalled diversity of life and my brother Russell, a rather fishy character, has helped to reveal this world to me.

He has taught me so much about the remarkable plants, insects, frogs and fish that call this liquid realm home. In my opinion, these animals make the Big Five seem, well, rather boring.

“ONE BORDER CROSSING, ONE BLOWN-OUT TYRE, ONE AARDVARK HOLE LEADING TO ONE FLIPPED TRAILER, AND 20 ANXIOUS BEERS LATER.” W W W. T H E M I S S I O N F LY M A G . C O M

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Tigerfish have always fascinated me, although I haven’t had too many opportunities to catch them. For years I have lived vicariously through other fishers’ stories. Crocs aside, tigers are certainly the prime aquatic representatives among the many toothy, dangerous creatures that roam the landscapes of Africa. They have earned their reputation for a willingness to take flies, for their ferocious strikes and acrobatics. They also tend to be found in remote, beautiful places, teeming with other wildlife. They were the reason we were here and why I had spent months planning, countless hours behind the vice and yet more reading articles, and watching hundreds of YouTube videos.

So, let’s get to the fishing. Where do I start? Perhaps with, I’ve never fished this hard in my life before.

If largies are a fish of a thousand casts, then, at first, these tigers were fish of five thousand. Three days in, several blisters on soggy feet and hands, and fifteen gazillion casts later, I hadn’t landed a single tigerfish. One or two had, with great hesitation, mouthed at my fly, but there were no commitments and no hook-ups.

Like a true fisher, I blamed the weather. Despite a promising start, the first few days saw a massive storm roll in and settle in properly, a complete surprise for this time of the year in the region. October is usually “suicide month”, with dry, convection-oven conditions the norm, and temperatures regularly soaring into the 40s [Celsius]. In concert with some extra-grumpy protests from the resident hippos keeping us away from some of the prime pools, a steady drop in the barometer gave these fish lockjaw. In between periods of being bogged down in our swamp of a camp, we would split up and try take advantage of the gaps in the rain to fling flies, serenaded by a chorus of happy bushveld rain frogs.

We were fishing into the most epic runs, pools, and rapids I’ve seen in a while. But to no avail. Every evening the fishing reports were equally grim and our spirits were sinking along with the fireplace that now stood submerged and bleak. Some were even now talking about going “conventional”. Weakness was starting to show. On the third night we got the karate juice out to warm our spirits and tied some seriously flashy flies under our mozzieplagued headlamps. Maybe it was the brandewyn, maybe it was the flash Clousers, but something sparked a marked change in the atmosphere. Energy, excitement and hope emerged in the thick, humid air. We could feel that sunny, hot weather was on its way. Tiger weather.

I rose early, partly because of excitement, the unknown, and the epic adventure that lay ahead, but also because of the incessant high-pitched cries of a Piet-my-vrou (redchested cuckoo) calling from his nearby baobab perch.

This bloody bird must have started calling at 3am. Pietmy-vrou, Piet-my-vrou. Piet-se-p@#$. The clouds cleared

Bycatch #1 redbreast tilapia

to reveal the first welcoming patches of blue sky seen in days, followed by a brilliant sunrise.

It was also the day of our move closer to Masende Gorge, where we hoped fishing conditions would improve. By 7am, it was already a scorcher and, as they say, “If you’re not sweating balls, the tigers won’t be biting.” Our balls were sweaty. One more puncture, some jaw-grindingly rocky game paths, and we had arrived and set up camp.

Soon we were perched on a large sandy bank above the river with a view down the valley into the gorge, already spotting our fishy quarry swirling in the shallows. We split into two teams and headed off at a semi-sprint armed with fly rods, wet socks and jocks, and big-fish dreams. We did not see the other group until nightfall.

I stopped buggering around. I packed away the streamers and wet line and decided to focus on bringing up a beast from the depths, fishing a large, noisy surface fly.

This is what I did for the rest of the trip, and for good reason. Increasingly, large fish started to show interest in the surface flurry, with swells, fins, and boils becoming a regular feature behind the poppers that were thrown into deep pools and runs. The fish were waking up from their slumber. I was, however, yet to hook one. Some excitement erupted when my mate, Christian, a seasoned aquatic-bug nerd, hooked into and landed a large barbel that came out covered in fresh bite marks, likely from an even larger tiger. We then heard Frans’s screams 100m upriver as he did damage to some sizeable tigers taken on a flashy bright pink Clouser.

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Something was definitely changing. With a bit of backbone from the 9-weight, I placed a cast right across the river into dark water under a grove of overhanging matumi trees, against a steep, deep bank. Strip, strip, and bang. A small explosion set the line in my fingers alive, ripping out the free line onto my reel in what felt like milliseconds. I set the hook (or so I thought) and felt the weight of this fish as it took off at speed for the reeds in the opposite direction. I leaned back, applying pressure. This was a big fish. No jump yet.

Just as my heart rate settled, the line suddenly went slack and the fly came shooting out, leaving me flat on my arse.

Defeated. As quickly as it happened, it was over.

I was not giving up, and the adrenaline gave me a new surge of energy. I made my way up to a promising pool that I’d eye-balled the day before, unfishable at the time due to an aggressive hippo bull that kept chasing us off.

This time, he was not on duty, and I made my way to the top of the long deep pool, where the current ran over big boulders. It looked fishy as hell. On the second cast I brought the popper through the current, the line arched and with an explosion on the surface from a small torpedo, a fish inhaled the fly.

A few runs and jumps later and I had the tiger in hand.

I could not take my eyes off this fin-perfect river beauty and watched in awe as it swam off, heavily striped with vivid reds and oranges flashing off its large, deeply forked tail fin. I was finally off the mark. A subsequent cut-andpaste cast across the current, and an even bigger explosion erupted on my fly.

I could not believe the speed of the take. This was a much bigger fish. It took me straight into my backing, fingers cut deep again by the fly line, and I could not believe my eyes when this fish came out the water. It was shaped like a gas bottle and could barely lift itself out of the water during its acrobatic displays. It landed with a ga-dooompf, like a breaching whale. After three more jumps and a few more runs, I could feel it was defeated. I finally got it to the bank and it was a beast. As I relaxed, I made a rookie mistake and gave it some slack. Right before my eyes, the fly casually popped out and floated to the surface. Funnily enough, as I watched her return down to the river floor and disappear, I was content.

“ONE BORDER CROSSING, ONE BLOWN-OUT TYRE, ONE AARDVARK HOLE LEADING TO ONE FLIPPED TRAILER, AND 20 ANXIOUS BEERS LATER.”

We limped back to camp as the sun dipped below the valley, hippos prepped themselves for their night shift and the nightjars began their evening songs. After a quick scrub in the river, avoiding the crocs, most of us were back at camp about to drown our sorrows, when Simon and Doug appeared against the dimming horizon, looking buggered, but excited. They had news. These two Slowveld farmer legends had scaled a vertical cliff, climbing roots to gain height, and made their way to a part of the river that most of us had skipped due to the sheer mission and craziness it took to get there.

Bycatch #2 sharptooth catfish W W W. T H E M I S S I O N F LY M A G . C O M

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With bleeding shins and ripped pants, the whites of their eyes now showing and with beers in hand, they began to describe the events of their day. They’d found untouched water and big fish… tiger Valhalla. Although they’d both caught good fish, each of them had had their tackle pushed beyond its limits, losing a handful of “bus tigers” that they just could not subdue. Their immediate plan was to return the next day with heavier leaders and bigger flies.

They invited the rest of us to join. We’d gazed upon the thorny cliff, the cuts and blood, the pythons that were seen slithering the slopes, along with the time and effort it had taken to get there. Most of us, after some thought, politely declined. Despite the aches and pains and a broken toe from six days of frolicking over the veld and rocks, I knew I had to go along, my mind imagining those tanks cruising the clear current, waiting to inhale a fly.

The next morning we were up early. It was our last day.

After a coffee and a boskak [Ed: poop al fresco], watching a pod of hippos doing the same, I put on my soggy socks and shoes, and packed my bag. This time we were all armed with 30lb leaders. I knew we had a three-hour mission ahead of us before we could even assemble and rig up our rods, and I started to prepare mentally. Simon is somewhat superhuman and walks at a semi-running pace so we had to keep up. We got to the base of the cliff within an hour, and then had to scale a cliff heavily coated by gigantic stinging nettles and thick thorny bush.

We managed to follow a path made from the day before, side shifting slowly along the ledge, 30m above the crocinfested waters below. On the other side, after a steep rocky descent, the gradient finally levelled, and we made our way along hippo paths through stunning, thick riparian vegetation. Fresh buffalo spoor had our senses on edge as we battled through the tangle. Not for the faint-hearted.

This place was incredible. Massive trees stood proud along the river as it coursed through beautiful bedrock riffles, flowing against steep, deep ledges. The river was teeming with life. All sorts of fish species danced in the rapids, and I couldn’t believe the size of the Labeo.

“Keep your wits about yourself,” Simon smirked as I took a solo path to fish a section of river on my own. Crawling on all fours at one point under the low tree branches, I came across very fresh croc belly prints where one had been sunbathing. I finally found a gap in the bush and reeds that opened up to a shallow rapid running over cobble stones. I could not believe what I had stumbled upon. There in the clear current, I saw the white belly of a large dead barbel, one that had been bitten in half.

On guard, a few centimetres behind the dead fish, was

a rather large tigerfish with a long body and an oversized head. On closer inspection the barbel had tiger teeth bite marks all over it and this fish had been gorging itself on the whiskered snack. Now it was waiting in the current to defend its prize from other fish.

Hands trembling, I made a bow and arrow cast to the tiger a few feet away from me, trying not to spook it. One twitch of the fly and all hell broke loose. The hook set well in its hard bony mouth. The fish took to the air trying to dislodge the fly and spent more time airborne than in the water. Somehow, during the fight, the fish managed to wrap my line around a submerged stump and I was now fighting a fish via the log. Line still peeled off the reel and burnt my fingers.

Luckily, my excited yelps had called Doug in and he stood by as the fish screamed about the pool. I finally got it closer to the bank but it was still wrapped up and I couldn’t get it close enough to tail. We had both seen the Godzillasized croc a few pools below us, and neither of us was keen to get near the water’s edge. The fish was clearly tired, however, but also at high risk of snapping my leader that was now firmly connected to the log. It was a catch-22 situation, and in a split second, I made the decision to jump into the water and grab the fish by its tail. A potentially stupid call, with many flat dogs certainly watching the commotion, but I managed to grab it and pulled as hard as I could, snapping the line that was wrapped around the log. I quickly jumped back to the bank and gazed upon my prize. A perfect striped water dog, mean and prehistoriclooking, with an oversized head and teeth, full of battle scars. I was beyond stoked that I had what I’d come for.

That evening we made a huge fire and drank until we were merry. I was beyond content that I’d experienced the true potential of this magical place. In terms of exploring the 70km of river, we had not even touched sides. Given the unforgiving landscape and dangerous wildlife, you would need months to truly grasp the potential of this mighty, wild river. Not many fish were caught on this trip, but the sheer raw beauty and the large fish lost will have me daydreaming about this river for the rest of my life. I know I’ll return some day. For now, I am happy knowing that while we are busy with our rat race lives, the Mtsitsi River flows to its own beat, cut off from the chaos. Hippos and fish eagles call, the trees stand guard, and the tigers dance in the rapids.

Gareth runs the Birds of Prey Programme at the Endangered Wildlife Trust. Check out their vital work at ewt.org.za

“A PERFECT STRIPED WATER DOG, MEAN AND PREHISTORIC-LOOKING, WITH AN OVERSIZED HEAD AND TEETH, FULL OF BATTLE SCARS.” 56

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SLOVENIA

CRUISING IN THE SLO LANE STRIKING A BALANCE BETWEEN E N J O Y I N G A H O L I D AY W I T H H I S Y O U N G FA M I LY A N D TA R G E T I N G MARBLES, GERALD PENKLER E X P E R I E N C E S S L O V E N I A AT A D I F F E R E N T PA C E .

Photos. Gerald and Suzanne Penkler

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rack. I froze as the solid chunk of limestone in my left hand budged under the weight of the dad bod. Having circumnavigated most of the gorge pool, my luck had run out. The wading boots scrabbled about, refusing to stick onto the faint seams. A panicked glance towards the water a few metres below. Blue, clear, deep. Cold. There was but one way out. Jump.

Splashing and sloshing onto shore, I chuckled. Ah, the enjoyment of adrenalin and adventure. It was one of our last days in Slovenia, and a solo fly fishing day for me. A chance to get out of the slow, relaxed lane of the previous weeks.

A rough and tough fishing mission.

Two weeks prior we had headed into the unknown.

Instagram makes Slovenia look like a fly fishing fairyland.

It’s not only the mystical marble trout finning in crystal clear rivers. It is also the forested mountains, tall mountain peaks and glaciers in the distance. There is fairly good information about Slovenia, things to do and about the fishing. The real unknown for us was how we would manage exploring and fishing in this fairyland with a three-month-old baby and a three-year-old toddler in tow. The first hurdle was a 1 200km drive from the Netherlands.

“Keep your eyes on the road!” Winding along a mountain pass in Italy my focus strayed at the first glimpse of water.

Water so clear that you cannot quite estimate the depth, where fish appear to float, and stealth is critical. An hour later, after crossing the Slovenian border, stopping on a

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bridge we got our first sight of the Soča River. The blue water snaked up the valley of forests and mountains. The Soča needs no introduction as one of the crown jewels of Slovenia. However, there are scores of other rivers and tributaries too.

From the Soča bridge viewpoint, I spotted one trout feeding hard in the middle of the river. As my eyes adjusted, another pale shadow took shape, and then another. Before long I could clearly make out at least seven pale fish, all feeding on the sand. At the back of the pool, from under a rocky undercut, a huge head appeared. Fleetingly it paused, and then drifted back out of sight. I had no doubt. This was a marble. A big one. Tired from the long trip, but excited and energised, we hopped back into the car for the final leg of our journey.

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The introduction of brown trout has had a devastating impact on the marble population. Not only do browns and marbles hybridise, but the hybrids also reproduce. So after browns were introduced it did not take long for pure marbles to exist in only a few isolated areas. The Fisheries Research Institute of Slovenia and the Tolmin Angling Club started a very successful programme of breeding and stocking genetically pure marble trout. Today, with continued management, the marble trout is no longer threatened, and the population continues to expand.

Marbles get big and grow fast. The historic record stands at a behemoth 55lb and 120cm. It is said that they could attain 150cm. Today, fish of over 80cm are considered trophies.

These big fish are not found sipping mayflies off the surface – they are masters of ambush that lurk in and around structure

or boulders. Any unsuspecting grayling, trout or goby that gets too close is fair game. Streamers, up to massive 20cm pike flies, are used to target the bigger fish.

There are three big challenges to catching a real trophy.

Firstly, you need to find them. They are few and far between in big rivers. Secondly, you need to get a fly down to them.

These rivers are surprisingly fast and in deep runs getting and keeping a big streamer down in the zone is difficult. In these areas, either very fast sink tip or very heavily weighted flies are used. Lastly, marbles need to be in an eating mood and not sulking or digesting under a rock. Higher and less clear water in early season is a prime time, but conditions are unpredictable. Later in the season, heavy rain can be your friend. The increase in water level and a reduction in clarity also tends to get marbles more active.

“HIGHER AND LESS CLEAR WATER IN EARLY SEASON IS A PRIME TIME.” Despite the excitement of seeing those fish, we did not fish the next day. Instead, we settled in with some walks, which were perfect opportunities to scout the rivers and access points.

Driving back from a morning walk, the baby let out the warning shot – a hungry grunt. The timing couldn’t be better, as we were near an access point on the Soča. While he was topping up, I clambered down to a steep section of river – deep, fast, and interspersed with big boulders.

Climbing through some undergrowth and onto a big boulder, I saw it. Sitting ahead in a reverse eddy and in the shade of an overhanging tree was a dark shape. A good marble. I watched it for a while as it patrolled a small area.

The big boulder next to it looked like the perfect place to intercept it.

Later, hiking down from one of the many waterfall viewpoints, we could see the magical blue waters of the Soča. This part of the river was open, sandy, and looked particularly kid friendly. After spotting the third rainbow it was settled. Let’s come here tomorrow.

Everything was packed and ready to go the night before.

Even the child carrier was adorned with floatant, tippet spools, nippers, and forceps. The kids, however, had other plans as they eroded hour after hour of sleep. By 4am, we fancied another slow day. I was glad I hadn’t booked my online licence yet. The fishing licences typically cover several rivers and tributaries but they are not cheap at 6090€/day, so we wanted to make the most of each fishing day. While there are discounts for multi-day licences, there is unfortunately no family friendly half-day option.

Finally, on day four, we were on the water. A couple of grey shadows hung almost motionless in the stream. Confident of instant action I cast out a dry. They ignored all my dry presentations. Switching to a small nymph, however, brought immediate success. A small rainbow. Another fish moved into the same lie. It too ate the nymph, and I handed the rod to the small, eager hands reaching up. She was in her element, expressing all the squeaks, enthusiasm and energy of a three-year-old. Shocked at the sight of us, the trout woke up and bolted downstream in the fast current, drag singing for a few metres. The rod went flat, but she held on. Crank, crank, with a bit of help it was in the net.

After a few curious pokes, strokes and prods, the rainbow swam back into the current.

We came to a new pool with several trout holding off the main current. The nymph made a light plop, and we watched the trout. A slight move to the left, a flash of white from

“WITH MYSTICAL MARBLE TROUT FINNING IN CRYSTAL CLEAR RIVERS, FORESTED MOUNTAINS, TALL MOUNTAIN PEAKS AND GLACIERS IN THE DISTANCE, SLOVENIA LOOK LIKE A FLY FISHING FAIRYLAND.”

A stunning Slovenian marble trout. While the browns and rainbows are easier to come by, marbles are first prize.

the mouth, and Suzanne set the hook. After a quick battle another rainbow flowed into the net. Five more followed in quick succession. Chuckling, we commented that we may have stumbled on a freshly stocked area.

Continuing upstream, baby in a sling and toddler in the carrier, we saw a fish hugging the edge, but actively moving left and right. It looked like a brown. Could it be a marble? I would need to wait as the kids needed a break, some food and drinks.

From the shade of the picnic spot, I tied on my favourite dry fly for brown trout, a big bushy CDC pattern that has worked very well for me. After a few rusty casts and drifts, one finally landed in the zone. That cushioned edge between fast and slow water. The fly drifted over the fish without a reaction.

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fishing followed by an active recovery day served us very well over two weeks.

Rain had converted a small feeder stream into a very fishylooking run. It was only knee deep, but fast and ice cold.

Peering upstream and into the mottled shade, something moved. A slight shadow was holding to the right of a sandy seam. With the baby snoring in the sling around her middle, Suzanne flicked out a dry fly. Once, twice, thrice with no response. A new fly received the same treatment. A few more changes and the fish moved upstream. We stood on the side, waiting and watching. The baby awoke and needed food. While waiting, something splashed. And then again it rose noisily, intercepting a small mayfly hatch. A few minutes later, it was fooled by a small CDC mayfly. After a furious bolt upstream it stopped, made a U-turn and bolt back downstream. A thick marbled head flashed past my legs and towards a submerged tree. Pulling as hard as I dared, the fish slowed and then veered away from the tree.

As it started to calm down, Suzanne and the babbling babe waded into the river with the net. The marble darted left, throwing Suzanne off balance. In slow motion I watched as simultaneously the net cartwheeled through the air, hands grabbed me, and the marble disappeared into the tree roots. We went back a few days later, but the water was tame, ankle-deep, and Mr Marble was nowhere to be seen.

The Soča and many of its tributaries are well stocked and you see many rainbows in the pools. Often you could walk up to them without the need for stealth. While these are great for family outings or a novice, it felt a mismatch with the wild surroundings and clear water. If you are after a challenge, the marbles are far more wary and elusive.

On one of the days, Suzanne dropped me off at the spot where I had seen the good marble in the Soča. I peered over the top of the big boulder in anticipation. The shade and reverse eddy were empty. Somewhat deflated I decided to stake it out for a while, retie my tippet and enjoy the scenery.

But after the fly had floated a good metre behind the fish it suddenly turned, chased it down and ate it with a splash.

Zigging and zagging, diving and dipping, it tugged and pulled. “This is definitely not a rainbow,” I thought as some light brown colour flashed. Could it be a marble? Closer and closer it came, until finally those unmistakeable marbling patterns, dots and lines emerged. The first marble trout.

An evening glass of wine eased our tired shoulders and legs. Fishing, and especially wading in fast currents, with a child in a carrier or a baby in the sling is hard work. Despite limiting the amount of gear, the wiggling toddler, carrier, water and gear came to a shade under 25kg.

The next day was a rest day. Again, time to explore the area, stock up on supplies and take it easy. Family siestas in the shade were particularly revitalising. This cadence of active

“MARBLES GET BIG AND GROW FAST.”

A little bit later, I saw a familiar shape rise from the deep and hold in the shade. From a closer vantage point, to the side behind a big boulder, I watched. I hoped that it would repeat its circular patrol. It was not long before it came into view. Flicking out the big CDC dry fly I waited. It came over with a sneer. With an almost teenager-like sullenness and suspicion, it watched. And then with a shrug it opened its big jaws. Perched high, I had little control as it bolted under a big boulder beneath me. Painfully, the leader juddered, scraped and scratched against rough rock. I hoped that there were no sticks in the hole. Finally, it came free and into open water. The tug of war became more controlled.

Shaking, I pushed the net forward. It was not elegant, but the marbled beauty dropped into the net. I was ecstatic. By no means a trophy, but a very special fish nonetheless.

The high water and fast flows of the Soča and Idrijca made wading with the kids too hard. We decided instead to focus on the smaller and shallower tributaries. By 7am we were winding up a mountain pass to a tributary of the Idrijca. While not early for a fishing morning, we were proud of the fact that we had got the kids organised so quickly. The enthusiasm was short-lived as the winding road led to an eruption of car sickness. After cleaning up and settling down we arrived on the river very delayed. But the slow-lane frustrations evaporated like mist in the sun as we approached the river. Fairyland. Boulders and stones shimmered as the light emerald waters trickled over them.

Sitting on a sandy beach for lunch, the gas stove roared under a teapot.

We reflected on the fishing. Not a single fish seen, spooked or caught, despite covering about 2km of water.

I am convinced the marbles were present. But today these moody marbles were simply smirking at us from their lairs.

The scenery was worth it. A few hours later we drove to another tributary. Almost immediately in a deeper seam the rod tip jerked down as another rainbow guzzled down the peeping caddis. While happy at not blanking, it was a hollow victory. The true quarry was more of those elusive marbles.

I really wanted to hike into some difficult and hard to access areas and Suzanne kindly looked after the kids. It was on this day that I found myself perched on crumbling limestone and needing to jump.

Having spoken to a few people, they suggested that I use euro-nymph-style tactics with small streamers. Eurostreaming? Swinging and drifting small streamers in and around the marble hidey-holes made intuitive sense.

Looking into the gorge pool I could not see a single fish.

Any fish in the open would stick out like a sore thumb in water like this. On the left of the pool was a deep undercut and if there was a marble in this pool, this is where it would be. I attached one of the goby jig streamers that I had tied the evening before. It felt cumbersome and heavy casting it with a 4wt. Plopping clumsily into the pool I let it sink. To my

astonishment, a black shape arrowed out of the undercut from 2m away and smashed it. A beautiful marble, with clear brown trout markings, swam into the net. A hybrid.

Confident with the euro-streaming style I continued upriver working the goby in and around structure. Sight fishing with a dry fly is exciting. This is the complete anti-style, but just as exciting as every now and then a bolt of fury shoots out of the shadows to grab a fly. These marbles are unlike any trout I have had the pleasure of fishing for. I understand the addiction, especially the search for really large ones.

While marbles and trout are top of the agenda, a trip to the clear Lake Bohinj and Lake Bled opened my eyes to other opportunities. Again, a family walk around the lakes provided great intel. Large schools of chub cruised the shores. We also had the pleasure of seeing thousands of chub schooling and spawning in the outlet of Lake Bohinj.

Watching chub sitting under the row boats, I saw a larger but very familiar shadow. The unmistakable shape of a zander slowly patrolled along the deep side of the ledge.

Later in the day, another enormous black shape moved deep among the roots and trees of a drop off. Squinting and taking a few steps closer, I could not believe my eyes. A kayak-sized wels catfish finned its way past us without a care in the world. While appreciating the beauty of Lake Bled and its surrounds from a high viewpoint, we had another surprise. From up here, people looked small. But there, in the distance, a massive black shape weaved over a shallow white flat. An even bigger wels catfish. Doing some research quickly reveals that these and many of the surrounding lakes and rivers have good fishing for pike, wels, zander, perch, carp and other coarse fish.

For an addicted fly fisherman, a family trip to Slovenia is a bit like limiting a BMW to 30km/h. It’s comfortable, but the engine is constantly twitching and crying out for the fast lane.

Every road you drive, every hike you take and everywhere you look there is titillating water filled with fish. Once you settle down into the Slo lane, the nature, beauty, and fun for the whole family is unparalleled. But occasionally, you do need to put your foot on the peddle and clear the cobwebs with a mission into the gorges and hard-to-reach areas.

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G U I D E T E A M S I N R E M O T E D E S T I N AT I O N S E X P E R I E N C E P R E S S U R E S A N D C H A L L E N G E S A L I T T L E D I F F E R E N T T O Y O U R AV E R A G E F I R S T W O R L D WORKING SCHLUB. FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, THEY ARE MAROONED, LOST FOR MONTHS ON END TO THE MODERN WORLD AND T H E S O C I A L L I V E S T H E Y L E F T B E H I N D . A D E C A D E O N , W E C H AT T O T H E C R E W W H O W E R E B E H I N D T H E S C E N E S I N PA R A D I S E O N FA R Q U H A R A R O U N D 2 0 1 3 . WA R N I N G : P R O FA N I T Y, N U D I T Y, A N D VERY LITTLE FISHING FOLLOWS. Photos. Jaco Lukas, James Topham, Kyle Reed, Cameron Musgrave, Scoty de Bruyn, Brad Hyman, Rhett Quinn Opening photo. Stephan Dombaj.

Illustrations. The Mission

DISCLAIMER To be clear, this is not about Farquhar itself. This could have been anywhere in the world with almost any group of young 20-something guides. Remote destinations are tough places to work, full stop. In the early stages, before the systems and support evolve into slick, seamless machines, it’s even tougher. What follows is just the truth of what guide life can be like in those circumstances.

What it’s not is a criticism of the destination or the operators of these remote slices of paradise, most of whom do a bloody good job in trying conditions.

WATCH LOST BOYS HERE

The idea for this story/confessional/ group therapy session came about after I interviewed Texas-based Seffrican guide and filmmaker Jako Lucas about something completely unrelated. He mentioned in passing that while on Farquhar in the early days of his career, he and the other guides would play table tennis and, on the table, they would write down their frustrations about the job, the clients, and life on a remote island.

Jako then dug up videos and photos that gave me a glimpse into this window in time. Once I roped in all the other guides from that intake, what followed was the most chaotic Zoom call ever.

Comparing each of them to the footage I had on file, the 10 years that had passed showed as you would expect. There were a few moustaches and receding hairlines, some wrinkles, and plenty of panda tans from long hours in the sun. All of them had filled out from the scrawny kids they were. Most, surprisingly given the attrition rate, had stayed in fly fishing. Jako has established himself in Texas as a guide and still hosts trips all over the world and makes films. Kyle Reed and his wife run a prestigious bonefish lodge in the Bahamas, James Topham (Jamo) has been working in Norway guiding for salmon for years, Scoty de Bruyn bounces between guiding in the Seychelles and Norway, and Cameron Musgrave does the same, freelancing between the Seychelles and Iceland. Brad (teaching in China) and Rhett (Underberg farmer) got out of the fly fishing industry years back.

A Pandora’s box of pain, humour, and friendship poured out. Think Lord of the Flies meets Lost meets Old School meets Reality Bites, but with no Winona Ryder in sight. Most people who have worked menial service-oriented jobs will have tasted something similar to what the Farquhar guides circa 2013 experienced. Whether it’s working in a kitchen, working a bar, a ski resort or setting up operations on a remote Indian ocean atoll, these environments stoke a frenetic energy among the seasonal denizens. They also tend to weed out the weak, hone the talent, and forge lasting friendships among those who remain.

“IF YOUR BOAT BROKE, YOU HAD TO WORK ON IT 72

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THE GRIND Once the pleasantries were out the way, the Lost Boys immediately began to reminisce about the good/bad old days with vague echoes of Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch (“When I was young”). One of the first things they covered was the difference between how things were in those early days on Farquhar and how things are now for young guides. Guides today mostly have it easy in comparison.

Jako: At that stage, there was no replacement guide, so there were no off days. You were on for the season. You were literally on all the time.

Kyle: Now a lot of destinations have rotational guides. Guys have off days. It’s very lekker. When we first started out there, no matter what, the show had to go on.

The problem with being in the middle of nowhere is that when stuff breaks (and stuff always breaks), you need to make a plan. For a guide team working with boats day in and day out, that meant many sleepless nights fixing their vessels and engines, their clients blissfully unaware of the immense all-nighter behind-the-scenes slog that went into making their boats run.

Jamo: Boats are always a constant nightmare, but it seemed like there were ghosts on that island that could not stop fucking us over. We had very few spares and no spare boats, so it just added extra stress.

Jako: If your boat broke, you had to work on it all night or the next day you go out with a broken boat.

Jamo: By the end of the season all of our steering cables seized. I had chronic tennis elbow and T-rex arms from steering. I just couldn’t get anything done. Kyle helped me out. We ended up doing many 4am sessions sorting out steering cables.

Kyle: If we were swinging spanners and greasing cables all night it didn’t matter, we had to be there.

Thunder and lightning, the guests were ready to go.

Jamo: I remember towing guys back from out at sea a few times. I had to fetch Scoty once. He had broken down offshore and was slowly drifting towards Providence, which might have been his plan in the first place.

Scoty: I had a client and her daughter on my boat when I snapped a steering cable 12 to 14km from the lodge going through one of the gnarliest coral gardens. After we caught a fish I said, “Listen the steering cable on the boat is buggered and I don’t have an auxiliary pipe to mount to the hydraulic washer on the back of the 90. You can use the throttle and I will steer the motor with my hands.” By holding the outboard and with the client navigating, I managed to drive that boat all the way back to the harbour – facing the wrong way – without hitting anything.

ALL NIGHT OR GO OUT WITH A BROKEN BOAT.”

FAUNA: RATS AND CATS Farquhar Fight Club. Part 1.

The Battle of Waterloo Humans equal food and food equals vermin. The guides had an ongoing battle with rats.

Cameron: We had a massive infestation of rats in our rotten Leaning Tower of Pisa accommodation.

We were getting chowed by them. Everything from our food to our sunglass lanyards, even my toes got chowed at night.

Jamo: I still remember after a particularly evil fines session where Scoty partied like a rockstar, Nick Clewlow woke up in the middle of the night and there was a capybara-sized rat sitting on Scoty’s chest.

Jako: It was a huge, seasonal problem. We all had a rat running over us at some stage. There was no air conditioning, no windows, no nothing. So you made your own little mosquito net perimeter around your bed and the rats would still come in to spoon with you at night. Literally one night, between Scoty and me we killed about six with wading boots and any other weapons we could find.

Brad: I remember the night the massacre started.

We brought chocolates which were like gold on that side. We thought one of the other guys were skoffeling [eating] our chocolates. We think that’s what herded the rats into the house.

Cameron: We definitely developed a personal vendetta against these fuckers. Then the rat poison came out.

Rhett: We heard them, scratching around in the middle room between all the bedrooms where we kept all our kit. Then one of them broke cover.

Cameron: Our caveman instincts kicked in and the rat ended up in the toilet bowl. The bumpy net was the only thing we could find at that time in the morning to finish him off. Rhett was first in and ended up cracking the toilet bowl.

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Farquhar Fight Club. Part 2.

The Battle of Cat-Rapala Where there are rats, you find cats, and the guide house was no different.

Kyle: The key premise to bear in mind about this entire event is that the house we were staying in was fucked. There were no doors, no windows, nothing. It was littered with rats so every now and then we would have cats that would come into the house. You would wake up and there would be a cat cruising around your room. One cat decided that Scoty and my room was its territory. At 3am another tom cat rolled into the room and they decided that they were going to have the biggest fight ever between Scoty’s bed and mine while we were all fast asleep.

Jako: It sounded like someone punching a bag of babies.

Scoty: I was the first one up so I went into attack mode, grabbed whatever I could which in this case was my pillow. I was swinging wildly while holding onto the side of the bunk bed. Kyle when he woke up was lying very calmly in the foetal position. He sat up and saw me swinging amid this flurry of cats that absolutely stank of fish and piss because they were pissing themselves and throwing up while fighting. He rolled onto his back still in the foetal position with his feet and hands now in the air trying to fight a cat that was on top of him.

Kyle: All I recall waking up is looking across the room and I can see Scoty clambering on the side of the bunk bed, shouting at the top of his lungs, “That cat has a fucking Rapala stuck in it!” But actually they were just fighting.

Scoty: When they ran out, the one cat went left where we had lures, Konas and Rapalas, hanging over a box and it sounded like one of the cats hooked itself on the way out. Then I turned the light on, the cats ran out and all the other guides were awake going, “What the fuck just happened?” Kyle slept on the ping-pong table that night because the room smelled so bad.

“WHERE THERE ARE RATS, YOU FIND CATS, AND THE GUIDE HOUSE WAS NO DIFFERENT.”

COLLEAGUES While for the most part relations were good with everyone else who lived on or visited the island, the guides had constant run-ins with the island manager, let’s call him Trevor. The two main points of contention? Sustenance and offensive body parts.

Jako: Let’s talk about the big outie he had.

Kyle: Absolute unit, at least half an apple. That belly button had its own belly button.

Jako: He used to walk around without a shirt on all the time, like he was putting a leash on it and taking it for a walk.

Kyle: He would roll in with the first two or three buttons done up at the neck.

Brad: I reckon that’s what Yeti designed their bottle caps off.

“WHETHER HE WENT FROM HIS HOUSE TO THE TOILET, HE WOULD TAKE THE SCOOTER. SO ONE NIGHT WE WEDGED HIS SCOOTER UP A TREE.” 76

Jako: The big problem was that he was the island manager and he had been in that position for a while. He was the in-between person between the IDC [Islands Development Company] and us. If there were no clients on the island and we were not guiding, which would happen once a season, we would always have conflict with him because he would not really give us any food or at least not anything decent. Literally the one day they gave us some bread rolls with a bowl of pork fat. The conflict escalated because every time we asked for a little something to eat, he would say, “It’s not in the budget.” Like getting food was our problem.

Eventually we would go to the chef and see if he could hook us up with something. Also, even if our guests were not there, we were not allowed to fish, so we had to find sneaky ways to go and do our own thing. The whole time the tension built to a point of it being us vs Trevor. We knew there was only one way to get back at him. He used to scoot around on his scooter, when he should have just walked around to be in better shape. Whether he went from his house to the toilet, he would take the scooter. So one night we wedged his scooter up a tree.

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SUSTENANCE When you’re burning up calories guiding, you get seriously hungry, but remote islands are not the best places for sorting out a feast. Even when they weren’t fighting with Trevor over food, the crew were constantly on the lookout for something they could graze.

Jako: The most exciting part of our week was when someone opened the tuck shop so we could buy some chips or whatever else they sent to the island.

Scoty: At the end of the 2013 season I experienced the highlight of the my guiding career at Farquhar when they opened the shop and in the freezer we found two frozen chickens. We bought them with the only rupees we had, because the clients, being cocks, would sometimes tip us in rupees. We went out that day and fished, caught a wahoo, brought it back and had a full-on braai with wahoo made with local coconut oil, spatchcock chicken and a crate of beers, plus a few bottles of hard tack we had scored from the client. That was the best day of our lives.

Kyle: We were trying to braai the wahoo on palm fronds, Michelin-star vibe.

Rhett barking at clients Jamo: I clearly remember it was late in the season and we had a bunch of South African clients and Tim Hammond was one of them. You learn to accept everyone’s eccentricities. Everyone had a thing.

Scotty and Nick Clulow used to eat all the rice, but Rhett’s thing was bread rolls. If he didn’t have his bread rolls there was hell to pay. Everyone let Rhett go ahead and eat all the bread rolls and it was fine.

One day, Tim Hammond made the catastrophic error of dropping a snarky comment like, “Oh, are you going to give us one of your 17 bread rolls?!”

It was the most poetic beautiful thing ever. Without any further ado, Rhett looked him dead in the eyes and started barking like a chihuahua. We’re at the dinner table with all the clients, paying high-profile guests, and Rhett’s barking like he belongs in the asylum. How do you respond to that?

“‘IT’S NOT IN THE BUDGET.’ LIKE GETTING FOOD WAS OUR PROBLEM.”

LEISURE On the odd occasion when they did have time off, between groups of clients or at the tail-end of a season, the guides had to find ways to entertain themselves.

There were obviously boozy nights, endless games of cards, advanced drinking table tennis and what looks like a nut-slapping game inspired by Jackass and perfected on Farquhar. During the daytime, if they weren’t watching a tortoise try bang a tree stump or get in a fish away from Trevor’s prying eyes, their focus sometimes turned to turkey.

Young Turks Jako: The thing is, we weren’t allowed to do anything on our off days, including fish, so we had to find ways to entertain ourselves. For some reason Farquhar has turkeys. Those things were straggly survivors.

Kyle: Even after a Category 5 storm came through, those turkeys were still there. They did not lose one.

Jako: One day we were walking to see if we could go have a sneaky fish near the runway. Then Rhett saw the turkeys and the hunt began.

Rhett: I can’t remember why we hunted the turkey, was it entertainment or were we that hungry?

When I look back at it and think about catching and then releasing that turkey, it’s a bit surreal in my mind. We used to watch a lot of Family Guy and Blue Mountain State in the evenings, and I just remember the chicken from Family Guy that used to come in and fight with Peter Griffin. I’m fairly certain, when you spend a little bit too long on that island, you do start mixing reality with what you’re watching on TV. When I remember the turkey hunt, it’s in cartoon form. Me fighting with that big-ass chicken.

Jako: In the last weeks of the season, we would be talking in movie quotes. The clients probably thought we were all on crack. We watched The Conjuring alone on the island, that was the scariest thing I have ever done in my life.

Scoty: Okes were trying to duct tape the shutters on the windows closed they were so scared.

Rhett: It kept the rats out!

LUST Imagine being 20-something and getting your dream job as a fly fishing guide at one of the world’s best saltwater destinations, but realising weeks or months into the gig that there is next to zero chance that you will ever get laid until you return home. None of this would have been a surprise to the guide crew, but it didn’t make it any easier.

Sparta-cuss Scoty: I stuffed up when a big film producer from New Zealand called Rob Tappit visited Farquhar.

As a gift he organised us a whole six-pack DVD series of Spartacus which had not even come out yet. He gave it to Jako and said, “Dude, this is for you guys, there’s some really good shit in here.” We got so addicted, we were watching it till 3am when we were supposed to be getting up for guiding in two hours. “One more episode!”

We were all sitting in the same room, sweating, eating old stale NikNaks and chocolate that had been masticated by rats, watching these insane scenes of fighting and killing, banging and orgies. We thought it was amazing. At dinner with the guests on the second-last night, Rob the producer pipes up, “Hey guys, how are you enjoying that series?”

Jako responded, “Rob it’s amazing, thank you so much!” I said, “Oh my God! That Batiatus’s wife, Lucretia!” I then went into great detail about my lust for Lucretia, a role played by Kiwi actress Lucy Lawless.

Once I was done Rob turned to me and said, “Oh well, I’m glad you like it, because that’s my wife.”

The Time ‘A Girl Came to the Island’ Like when Princess Di died, there are landmark moments in time everyone recalls. All the guides remember the sole occasion a good-looking female fly fisher came to the island during their time there. Having taken a geographically enforced vow of celibacy for four months, how could they not?

Jako: I guided her the first day and drove an hour in the wrong direction just because she liked to sit in the front of the boat, and I liked that view.

Rhett: Jako was steadfast in his principles. He was never going to make a move and even if he was the rest of us were batting second, going, “Camaaaan, play us into a gap here!”

Jamo: I only heard about this episode the next season, but even second-hand it was bloody funny. By the end of the week the anticipation of a potential rendezvous behind a coconut palm had become too much for some of the boys and they took it upon themselves to bang on her door in the early hours of the last morning. It must have been right in the very back end of the season because certain aspects of this proposition made no sense: One: Two of the buggers went to knock on her door. No matter what far-fetched scenario they had in their heads, the fact that they thought this was going to work is mind-numbing. Two: More importantly, I’m almost certain she was sharing the room with her dad. I mean honestly. The fact that they got a tip at the end of the week is quite extraordinary.

“THERE IS NEXT TO ZERO CHANCE THAT YOU WILL EVER GET LAID UNTIL YOU RETURN HOME.”

TOILET HIERARCHY

“I DEVELOPED A BATHROOM FLIP-FLOP OBSESSION ON THE ISLAND THAT I HAVE TO THIS DAY.”

In a house as decrepit as the guide quarters, the guides shared everything – bedrooms, the kitchen, the patio area, the bathroom. With the latter, from ablutions to quiet time with Mrs Palmer and her five daughters, privacy was fleeting and rare.

Kyle: You’ve got five/six okes living together for four months of the year and there was just one toilet (smashed with a bumpie net while trying to drown a rat), one basin and one shower between these dirty, sweaty, South African fishing guides.

Scoty: And everybody drinks coffee.

Rhett: I just remember in the early morning it was pretty important to brush your teeth before everyone started shitting.

Kyle: Critical. Everyone needed their moment on the loo. Jako used to bring this toilet spray disinfectant from SA that just lived in the bathroom.

Jako: I remember Scoty used to like going after me because I disinfected that whole room.

Scoty: I was like a remora following a shark, there was a symbiosis. I would go in after Jako because he would Dettol the crap out of the bathroom.

I would walk in naked with just my flops and a Buff on to take a dump. After Jako the toilet seat was warm and clean. I developed a bathroom flip-flop obsession on the island that I have to this day, always wearing them in the shower, because I did not want to get athletes foot or jizz on my toes.

What no one wants to mention is that we also had a pile of four/five filthy porn mags like Mayfair and Loslyf.

Jako: A pomp in elke dorp!

Brad: I remember when Jamo was watching some erotic material with his headphones on but they were not plugged in so everyone could hear what he was watching.

Rhett: Favourite non-pornographic mag to relieve oneself with?

Scoty: Good Housekeeping.

Cameron: Horse & Hound.

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CLIENTS Jamo’s Angry Braveheart Speech In the footage from that era, amongst the videos of frat-boy parties, slapping each other in the nuts, drinking games, turkey hunting, catching sailfish and milks – there’s a clip where Jamo utterly loses his shit.

It’s not a party scene. Kyle and Brad sit around the ping-pong table, beer mugs replaced by maps of Farquhar and reel parts mid-service, while Jamo stands across from them with arms crossed. It’s a planning meeting, but it gets derailed as Jamo rages because a dimwit client has asked five times how to use the sat phone and has stuffed it up each time. He’s visibly incensed, but starts off slowly, saying, “If you can’t explain to someone how to make a phone call, then there’s no plan on the flats.” The rant builds and builds into an incandescent rage aimed at both that one client (remarkably, a captain of industry), but it’s clear that it’s about more than that, the entire concept of “the client”, their inability to take simple instruction, and the state of a guide’s temperament at the end of a long season.

with everything from the obvious – finding fish – to putting their boots on, tying their shoelaces, how the lunch boxes work, how to eat, and just about wiping their arses. It gets to the point where they start seeming like infants. I had completely forgotten about this episode until Scoty sent me the video the other day. Watching it back now, it’s so embarrassing. I think that video is just me at the very tail end of a season just absolutely livid because someone could not make a phone call.

Jako: At that point you are pretty much dead inside, so everything comes out.

Jamo: There comes a point on the island where you really just get absolutely sick of it all. You spend your whole day looking after people. Of course you do, because you are a guide, so you guide them

“IF YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN TO SOMEONE HOW TO MAKE A PHONE CALL, THEN THERE’S NO PLAN ON THE FLATS.”

Cameron: If anyone in this team was going to express themselves poetically, it was Jamo.

The Worst of the Worst On the subject of clients, I had to ask who was the worst nation to deal with. Various nationalities had reputations for being something, e.g. bloodthirsty (Spanish), stingy (Brits), psycho (Russians), but the overall winners (or losers), hit much closer to home.

Jako: South Africans are by far the worst people to guide on the planet.

Rhett: Spaniards are worse.

Jako: It’s a close call but I still go for South Africans because you give a guy rope and he thinks he’s a cowboy. If he fishes one day in the Seychelles, suddenly he knows more than anybody on the planet and wants you to take him… “CLOSER TO THE DROP-OFF”.

Scoty: “TAKE ME CLOSER TO THE DROP-OFF, I WANT SOME KINGIES. I CAUGHT ONE HERE YESTERDAY WIF JAMES AND I WANT A BIGGER ONE.” Kyle: One of the Saffer groups we had was an ex-DIY group that had now upgraded to a discounted trip. We did the Paris-Dakar surf walk and I have never in my life had to swim more for a poese Clouser than with these okes. Every five minutes, there’s this arsehole blind-casting behind me in shin-deep surf with a 1mm Clouser and a 12-weight. Obviously he is going to get stuck.

And, of course, he wants me to go swim and get his Clouser.

Jako: One of the Saffers, I took him the envelope for tipping at the end of the trip and the oke literally put the pocket change he had in it.

Kyle: The one guy from Cape Town gave each of us a speech on the boat every morning. “I’m not interested in going to places where there are lots of fish, just take me to a place where there are big geets. Just big geets.” Like this was something we could magically do and something we would hold back from regular clients. Jako responded perfectly at breakfast the one morning that, “We might also see Jesus.”

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LAND HO! Not unlike Vikings after a long and perilous sea voyage, when guides make landfall at the end of a season they, for want of a better description, tear the ring out of it. After months spent in each other’s company, there’s finally a change of scenery. Wine (rum), women and song ensue. Before returning to South Africa, that usually meant a massive party on the Seychelles main island of Mahe.

Cameron: On one of the last nights of the season, one of the last nights we were all together in fact, we went out drinking. We were all in there looking super-cool in our guide gear and old securitycum-flats boots that we bought from Jonsson. By the end of the evening we all got kicked out of Cacholos (a legendary Mahe bar), because Rhett in full Farquhar mode climbed up into the ceiling without any kit on.

Rhett: Making landfall for guides was pretty diabolical. I do remember being in the rafters.

W W W. T H E M I S S I O N F LY M A G . C O M

POSTSCRIPT In the old footage, in the drinking game of table tennis the rules seem to change all the time. You have to wear shades, you have to get the ball into your opponent’s glass, which means they must down their beer or take a shot of hard tack strategically placed on the table. At one stage Rhett’s balls are stationed outside the elastic of his tie-dye stripey pants while he plays Cam. Rhett is skeletal. Bones and balls. No wonder he barked at guests like a rabid chihuahua when someone tried to make moves on his bread rolls.

Now, 10 to 11 years later, when I ask Rhett on the WhatsApp group if he still fishes, he says he does in the rivers and stillwaters of Natal, for trout. He says, “I may have got out of fly fishing, but it isn’t out of me. It is not something that one can walk away from easily. Those of us who have the disease, live with it and die with it. There’s no cure.”

When I ask him what he does for a living, he says he’s a farmer in the Underberg. Dairy, maize, beef, and sheep. His next message to the group says, “I sell food to feed the nations.” Compared to the turkey-chasing, scrote-exposing, rat-battling hooligan guide par excellence of his youth, it feels more solemn than he probably intended, but it’s indicative of where they all are in their lives now.

They lead teams and negotiate contracts, raise kids

and fire people. They have evolved, some might say. Matured even. Except maybe for the Peter Pan-like spectre of Scoty who drinks Black Label in bed throughout the catchup. Jamo meanwhile has conducted the entire Zoom call while walking through a Norwegian mall as if in an odd Scandi techno music video. When the subject matter turned mildly lewd, he realised with a shock that he had wandered into the breastfeeding rooms of the kiddies’ play area and swiftly departed the chat lest people get the wrong idea. Jako left the chat for what he says is “just a moment” as he’s getting his US citizenship and has people coming to give him a medical. The predictable prostate check jokes are made and he departs. As I leave, Kyle in the Bahamas, Scoty in Natal, Brad in China, and Cam in the Eastern Cape are making plans for a reunion on an island somewhere.

When I go through the video later it turns out Jako did return to his office computer after his health check. He looked around, sanitised things a bit like the Farquhar guide house toilet of old, and then switched off the lights. Someone had to.

“I MAY HAVE GOT OUT OF FLY FISHING, BUT IT ISN’T OUT OF ME.”

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THE TRAVELLING MAN A G L A N C E AT J E T - S E T T I N G P H O T O G R A P H E R A N D F I L M M A K E R S I K AY ’ S PA S S P O R T – S TA M P S F O R C O L O M B I A , M E X I C O , I TA LY, SLOVENIA, SEYCHELLES, MARSHALL ISL ANDS – MAKES FOR ENVIOUS R E A D I N G , E S P E C I A L LY W H E N Y O U C O N S I D E R T H E S P E C I E S H E H A S F I L M E D A N D F I S H E D F O R W H I L E W O R K I N G W I T H F LY F I S H I N G N AT I O N . S O , W H E N S I D E S C R I B E S H I S R E M A R K A B L E T R A J E C T O R Y I N F LY F I S H I N G A S “ F R O M T H E C A P E F L AT S T O T H E S A N D F L AT S ” I T M A K E S C O M P L E T E S E N S E . H E C H AT S T O T H E M I S S I O N A B O U T T H E G E A R H E S W E A R S B Y A N D A F E W H A R D - E A R N E D T R AV E L R U L E S , T I P S , A N D TA C T I C S .

Photos. Simon Kay archive

O

ver the last couple of years, especially since joining the Fly Fishing Nation (FFN) media team, I’ve been travelling a hell of a lot. This means a mix of fishing and filming, photographing and trying to pack accordingly, with most trips requiring more than one flight. Through the lens of social media, this may look like an amazing rollercoaster of fish pics and crazy destinations… and it is.

I’ve just had one of the best years of my life, seeing places that, a few years ago, I had never even had on my bucket list. But, this has also meant being tossed in the deep end. A lot of work goes into keeping the engine turning.

I have learnt masses from the team, in terms of media in the fly fishing world and, more importantly, in terms of the fishing itself. If I look back a year, it feels like looking at one of those teen photos of yourself where, at the time, you thought you were the coolest guy on the planet and knew all you needed to know already. Oh, what a cute, I, 35-year-old man I was back then.

I have a rule: I’m either fishing or capturing fishing content.

I make a clear distinction. If the aim is to capture footage for even just an hour, the rod stays far away for that hour.

This may mean for a whole trip, such as when I shot the floating crab permit film in Mexico, I didn’t pick up a rod for 18 of the 20 days I was there. It’s quite simple: You need both hands to do either of the two well. If the aim is to capture images or footage, I focus on clicking. If the aim is to fish, I focus on flicking.

TACKLE I have been fishing FFN “team gear” for most work trips.

This is fishing gear (rods, reels, lines, flies, etc.) that stays with the person on the team who is most likely to be needing it for an upcoming trip/project. Most of these projects have been expeditions for bigger fish and all in warmer climates.

There is a lot of stuff in the kitty. These are some of my favourites: Epic Bandit 10-weight glass paired with a Shilton SR10.

I first fished this combo in Colombia for peacocks and payara and the extra weight of glass versus graphite was well worth the confidence knowing that when these creatures tried to pull a dirty under the boat, I could just fight back without having to worry about the rod popping.

On that trip I used Rio Jungle lines and Hatch Mono leaders for the peacocks, with fluoro and wire for the payara. These never let me down in any way. I have fished this rod and reel combo a few times since then and just love it. Fresh, salt, it does it all.

Sage R8 9-weight Salt. I fished this rod in Xcalak, Mexico for permit. The right amount of fast in all the right places.

Perhaps it’s my casting style, but the way this thing casts is just dreamy. Favourite rod of the year. I am yet to put it to the test fighting a big perm. 2024 goals…

“IF THE AIM IS TO CAPTURE IMAGES OR FOOTAGE, I FOCUS ON CLICKING. IF THE AIM IS TO FISH, I FOCUS ON FLICKING.” 86

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“I ALWAYS KEEP MY SIX-PIECE REDINGTON CLASSIC TROUT 3-WEIGHT AND STROFT TIPPET WITH ME IN THE VAN.”

“IT’S DAMN COOL DRINKING STRAIGHT FROM THE RIVER AND KNOWING I’M NOT RISKING ANY TUMMY ISSUES.” Another rod I absolutely love, and which I didn’t expect to fall for, is the Epic Carbon 10-weight. Man, that thing is fast, light, and gives me so much feedback. It feels like an arm extension with a powerful core. I only used it on a four-day trip to Baja California chasing mahi-mahi with Angling Baja and then a second time on the flats of Farquhar looking for bumpies [bumphead parrotfish].

Despite casting at a few small herds of bumpies, the stars did not align but I caught some nice bones and other fish along the way.

Patagonia Stealth Work Station. This thing is my carryall for streams. It does everything, can be attached to anything, and has magnets for fly changes. No words can describe how much I love this thing. Game changer for me.

On Farquhar I fished the Lamson Cobalt rod range (8, 10, 12) and I was (and still am) extremely impressed with what they do at the price point. Fast, easy casting, relatively light and I have come to love the powder grey colourway.

I still have those three rods with me, and I am looking forward to trying to get the 8 onto a grunter before I leave South Africa. I got my first GT on the Cobalt 10 paired with their Lightspeed M reel (which is incredibly light). I couldn’t believe the way I could apply the brakes to a geet intent on taking me up the beach through the rocky coral.

Another cool addition on that trip was that I was using the Cubalaya Fair Chase reel on the 8-weight and had a ton of fun with it.

A very large-brimmed straw hat that I found on a street corner in Mexico has become my favourite. Although it may look like a fashion statement, in the high sun it provides so much shade for the face and neck that I often feel comfortable not wearing sunscreen. Even more importantly, the brim is large enough to allow me to view my camera monitor. Double win. I have worn through a couple of these and then just replaced them.

For my private missions it’s been mainly small stream trout stuff. I always keep my six-piece Redington Classic Trout 3-weight and Stroft tippet with me in the van.

Most-used dry flies: RAB, Para Adams, Sedges, small white elk hair caddis flies. Then I always have a few basic bead-head nymphs. I’ve been tying rudimentary orange tungsten-beaded, olive-dubbing-bodied nymphs with the little bit of material I have. I always get a few flies at local fly shops I visit and keep my options open that way.

One piece of clobber I can’t live without now is the

The only waders I have ever owned (and still do) are the Patagonia Packable Waders and, other than a small leak on the right foot that I just need to seal, they have served me so well. I love how compact they are.

Other items I always travel with are my Patagonia River Salt Wading Boots. Comfortable and versatile.

For sunnies, I use Waterhaul sunglasses, with polarised mineral glass lenses and frames made from recycled fishing nets (that they actually collect themselves around the UK). They look great, but are not the best for low-light conditions. Costa Sunrise Silver Mirror are the best I’ve used for low light although I lost my pair not long into enjoying them. Bonus tip: sunglasses retainers are vital if you use a camera, because polarised sunglasses mean you constantly remove them to see your camera screen.

For drinking water I have started using the Sawyer Filter on trips where I know clean fresh water is not available. It’s damn cool drinking straight from the river and knowing I’m not risking any tummy issues.

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“WITH MY LARGEBRIMMED STRAW HAT I OFTEN FEEL COMFORTABLE NOT WEARING SUNSCREEN. EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY, THE BRIM IS LARGE ENOUGH TO ALLOW ME TO VIEW MY CAMERA MONITOR.”

MEDIA GEAR Gear-wise, my go-to photo and hybrid camera was the Sony A7IV. This was my first dip into the Sony world and I love the images it produces. It’s the right mix of everything for the price: great pics and video quality but not the fastest or most slow-mo. Just a nice balance. My only issue with it is that the other FFN guys all use Canon, making lens sharing difficult. The reason I used “was” when referring to it, is because it was recently stolen and I am yet to decide what to replace it with.

In terms of lenses I go for zooms and I go for compact. A wide zoom, e.g. 16-35, a nice all-rounder like a 24-70, and then something with reach, 70-200, etc. Nothing specific here because I have changed around a lot.

For film-focused work I have been shooting on the Red Gemini recently. Red RAW is something special.

Then, I always have a small LED light for effect rather than power, a folding bounce/diffuser combo for shaping natural light and a tripod. For sound I have been using the Rode Wireless Go II on talent and just a standard small Sennheiser shotgun mic for run-and-gun stuff.

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TRAVEL TIPS AND TACTICS My approach to packing has evolved and is now pared down to this: Rolling hard case (think Pelican) for camera gear. This is hand luggage. I was forced to check this in twice because it was overweight. On the second occasion, about a month prior to writing this, most of my camera gear was stolen out of it. It arrived on the luggage belt with the locks removed. So never check this stuff in. A hard case screams “expensive camera stuff for the taking”.

I carry a backpack for my laptop, extra camera gear and other vital stuff. Again, this is hand luggage.

You need less than you think clothing-wise. Two outfits generally are enough. Wear the first and wash it at the end of the day, then wear the other the following day while the first one dries. Always pack a rain jacket.

I use a big 100-litre Patagonia duffel for all my fishing stuff, clothing, etc. Of course, this gets checked. It’s not the easiest to haul around when it’s at that 23kg limit, so I may move to a wheeled duffle soon.

Never take rods or reels with line/backing on them as hand luggage. Some airport security (maybe all, not sure of the rules) classify backing or line as strangling tools and they don’t want those sorts of weapons on board. Not all airport security allows rods as hand luggage. I had often flown with rods until once, in Colombia, when I was told it was not allowed. Because I was already cutting it fine in making the flight I didn’t have time to go back and check the rod in so it stayed at the airport and I flew away. Now I usually check them in my main bag. That said, we have had rods stolen before that were checked in, so it is a gamble. The best thing to do is ensure you have more than enough time at the airport before your flight to establish the rules and then take what you are certain you are allowed to take on the plane with you.

“YOU NEED LESS THAN YOU THINK CLOTHING-WISE. TWO OUTFITS GENERALLY ARE ENOUGH.”

L AT ES T R E L E A S ES

SALAD BAR THE MISSION - FLAVOUR SAVER TRUCKER CAPS Like Lefty’s Deceiver, this cap is… deceptive. That subtle corduroy-like ribbing is not hot and heavy as you might expect from anything that looks like corduroy. In fact, our new five-panel Flavour Saver truckers are light and airy, sporting a classic trucker design with an unstructured, relaxed fit that moulds to the shape of your magnificent melon. The adjustable snapback closure ensures a perfect, customisable fit for all head sizes, even Smokey Bear. The pièce de résistance? Our Flavour Saver badge on a Velcro backing where you can keep your used flies handy in case they need to swim again.

Available in Rusty Mud and Swamp Green. themissionflymag.com

SIMMS - BUGSTOPPER NET SOMBRERO There are two versions of you commentating in your head when you look at this hat.

The one says, “Nah, I’m a tough guy.

I don’t need to look like a bell-end out-fielder wrapped in a mosquito net. Bring it, bugs.” The other one says, “I have seen the Selous’s swarms of tsetse flies, the horse flies of Haenertsburg, the no-see-ums of Gabon, and mosquitoes the world over and thanks to this full-coverage, glare-blocking sombrero with UPF50+ sun protection and 360-degree mesh coverage, plus a drawcord at the bottom of mesh for added security and a foam brim for floatation, I have not cried myself to sleep at night from the bites, I have not had to overdose on antihistamines and I have managed to spend more time fishing.” If you’re heading to extremely buggy places, choose wisely which version of yourself you want to take along. simmsfishing. com, frontierflyfishing.com

PATAGONIA - WADING STAFF Age and mobility is a funny thing.

One minute you’re prancing over rocks and leaping from cliffs, the next you are slowly descending a midsized boulder hoping that your pants don’t rip and that your dodgy knee holds. Regardless of age, when you’re wading rivers with serious flows, you need a third leg. Patagonia’s lightweight, adjustable wading staff is perfect for the job. Plus it comes in handy for the hike in, too. With a thin diameter, ergonomic foam grip, and durable carbide tip, the carbon fibre-wrapped aluminium staff comes with its own stuffsack and a retractor that attaches to your wading belt.

Made in Italy. patagonia.com, xplorerflyfishing.co.za

RIO - AVID TARPON Are you all about poons in paradise?

If chasing large tropical species is your bag, then with its mid-length head and a short, powerful front taper designed to efficiently cast typical tarpon flies, you might want to get Rio’s Avid Tarpon line onto your reel. Built with Rio’s exceptionally slick, durable SlickCast coating on a strong, medium-stiff core which will not wilt in the heat, this high floating line won’t sink and impede the cast.

The rear weight distribution easily loads powerful saltwater fly rods and ensures the very best in presentation so as not to spook wary poons, making it the ideal all around line for a range of tarpon fishing situations. farbank.com, xplorerflyfishing.co.za

SIMMS – M’S WAYPOINTS RAIN JACKET Perhaps the one area where Simms missed a beat with this jacket is how it looks so perfect in the product shots, when a jacket like this in reality is stuffed in your pack, amid your smokes, a stick of droëwors and a drowned fly box, ready for instant deployment. Lightweight and infinitely packable, the Waypoints jacket features an adjustable hood, zippered chest pocket, drawcord-adjustable hem, hook-and-loop cuff closure and reflective logos for increased visibility on and off the water. It packs into a zippered hand pocket (or gets stuffed in if there is a fish about). simmsfishing.com, frontierflyfishing.com

“LIGHTWEIGHT AND INFINITELY PACKABLE.” ORVIS - SUN DEFENSE QUARTER-ZIP You may not want to fight the sun, but the sun wants to fight you (“Damn you, great glowing orb of Ra!”), so you best suit up with fly fishing armour. Orvis’s Sun Defense knit quarter-zip pullover is designed to protect you and keep you cool. Lightweight, moisture-wicking and quick-drying, the UPF50+ Sun Defense knit is treated with Orvis’s odour-blocking, eco-friendly OutSmart Fresh tech so you should stink less than usual. Comfortable thumb loops keep your sleeves down and provide extra coverage for your hands. Expect an active fit to account for all that double-hauling. orvis.com, flyfishing.co.za

“BEST SUIT UP WITH FLY FISHING ARMOUR.” THE MISSION - FOKKEN BESIG LARGIE T-SHIRT Let 2024 be the year you graft and hustle your way to piscatorial prosperity including, we hope, a PB largemouth yellowfish. To ensure good juju we highly recommend our Fokken Besig Largie T with artwork by Conrad Botes. The second in the series after the Fokken Besig Tarpon, this beaut features the main artwork on the back and The Mission logo on the front. 100% cotton, stock is limited. themissionflymag.com

ORVIS - MEN’S CLEARWATER WADING BOOTS, FELT SOLE Value and performance in one package? Believe it with Orvis’s men’s Clearwater felt sole wading boot. Built with a full synthetic leather upper that provides comfort and durability without excessive seams, the boot is protected by a scratch rubber toe, vamp, and heel counter for added durability, and a heavy-duty rubber toe bumper protects the foot in tough wading conditions (think anklecrushing boulders of the Cape Streams). An integrated EVA foam footbed offers all-day comfort and a wider fit, while a Phylon midsole and ESS plate provide stability and excellent stud retention (how the editor’s wife refers to his wedding ring). orvis.com, flyfishing.co.za

ORVIS - REKKAGE LT ADVENTURE 80L CHECKED ROLLER BAG The Holy Grail of luggage is a secure, spacious, bombproof bag with wheels, which can take your fly rods, clothes and other goodies. In the Orvis Trekkage LT Adventure 80 Checked Roller Bag, you might just be having an Indiana Jones moment. Made of 100% Cordura with a hardshell back case, it is tough yet light, water-repellent and holds all the space you need for a big trip. Ergonomically designed telescoping handles and low-profile roller wheels mean you can cruise through airport terminals with minimal sweat and heart attacks. Lockable zippers, interior mesh organising compartments and daisy chains for attachments round out the package. And yes, it handles 9-foot fourpiece rod tubes with aplomb. orvis.com, flyfishing.co.za

FISHPOND - THUNDERHEAD (SMALL) The original Thunderhead Submersible Lumbar is a favourite of some regulars on The Mission, but we can see its new little brother competing for popularity. Featuring a TRU Zip submersible zipper, the Thunderhead Small Lumbar delivers an airtight closure system to ensure everything stays completely dry. There are multiple attachment points for all your gadgetry, water bottles, etc., but the key feature of this pack is its detachable lumbar strap, which allows you to easily switch between a standalone lumbar pack and a fully integrated pack on Fishpond’s Switchback Wading Systems. This nifty little pack will do duty anywhere you plan on fishing and getting wet from sun-baked flats to frozen tundra. fishpondusa.com, frontierflyfishing.com

“FROM SUNBAKED FLATS TO FROZEN TUNDRA.”

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PICK YOUR COLOUR SHILTON SHOCK LEADER 100LBS, 130LBS & 150LBS

S H I LT O N R E E L S . C O M S A L E S @ S H I LT O N R E E L S . C O M

NEW

SHILTON FLY-BRAID 30LBS, 50LBS & 80LBS

TONIC - OUTBACK LITHIUM If we must give the Ozzies anything (other than being good at sport and essentially being very much like South Africa but with law-abiding people…), they also really understand the sun due to the harsh conditions experienced across much of the country. So, when you hear people rave about Ozzie sunglass brand Tonic as being the real deal, it makes sense. In the Outback Lithium in either blue mirror or photochromic grey lenses, they have a lightweight pair of sunnies designed for all-day on-water comfort.

Thanks to their SliceLens technology, which is designed to cut through glare effectively, enhancing your vision and reducing eye strain, you’ll be spotting fish for days, mate. xplorerflyfishing.co.za, toniceyewear.com

LOON OUTDOORS - APEX HD PLIER If you’ve ever used their ergonomic tying tools or nippers, you’ll know that Loon makes quality gear and the Apex HD Plier looks no different. Constructed of lightweight aluminium, housed in a durable rubber sheath, and secured with a coated steel-core tether, the entire system can withstand salt and neglect (looking at you, “I’ll rinse my stuff tomorrow!” crowd).

Most NB: The built-in replaceable cutter and the pliers’ large jaws designed for large flies will handle whatever you throw at them. loonoutdoors.com, frontierflyfishing.com

EWING - WOOLLY BUGGER PACKS Not all heroes wear Capes and not all fly tyers need to invest in a full cape to tie arguably the most versatile and lethal freshwater pattern, the Woolly Bugger. Ewing Woolly Bugger Packs are feather patches cut from the sides of rooster saddles. These feathers are fairly soft with webbing down the centre of the feather, making them perfect for Buggers as they give your fly movement and life in the water. They’ll work just as well in Foam Dungeons and other streamer patterns for both fresh and saltwater and are great for hackle on poppers and bass bugs. xplorerflyfishing.co.za “PERFECT FOR BUGGERS AS THEY GIVE YOUR FLY MOVEMENT AND LIFE IN THE WATER.”

VENIARD - HARE DUB (BUG DUB) DUBBING DISPENSER Blending an old classic fly tying material (hare’s ear) with the relatively new (SF fibres), Veniard’s Bug Dub Dubbing Dispenser gives you a dozen options in one box. Perfect for a wide range of uses from large buggy patterns to small nymphs, emergers and bead heads, the colour mixes were originally developed by fly tying guru Davy Wotton and include light olive, green olive, dark olive, brown olive, golden olive, orange, red, claret, black grey, med brown, and natural hare. veniard.com, frontierflyfishing.com

GRIP - 210DEN FLAT WAXED THREAD Got a spread of saltwater patterns you want to tie? Then you’re going to need a strong waxed thread like Grip’s 210 Denier Flat Waxed Thread. Perfect for deer-hair work, streamers, poppers and other saltwater or large predatory freshwater patterns, it comes in beige, salmon, fire orange, pink, blue, black, chartreuse, light olive, and white. scientificfly.com

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FRESHWATER TROUT SERIES

FULL SINK TYPE 6 An easy handling sinking line that will get your fly down fast and effectively.

COMPACT INTERMEDIATE Designed to be our most versatile intermediate fly line.

CLEAR CAMO The 444 Clear Camo line disguises itself extremely well in a variety of different water types.

FULL SINK TYPE 3 Great for subsurface tactics in lake and river applications.

TROUT BOSS For versatile anglers who target trout in every season.

TROUT ALL PURPOSE Durable, high-floating, general-purpose fly line available in a weightforward taper.

SPRING CREEK 444 Spring Creek remains supple in the coldest conditions.

COMPACT FLOAT A full floating short, compact, aggressive head design that shoots an extreme amount of line.

Cortland is distributed through Catch | Contact: sales@shiltonreels.com | cortlandlines.com

L AT ES T R E L E A S ES

PAY DAY THE TONGS - DONKEY LONG TONG We wager there are very few people who have stood around a braai, burning their hands and knuckles over molten flames, and not thought, “Surely there are better tongs out there?” The fact is braai tongs are by and large poorly designed, flimsy and, most importantly, too damn short. You get the ones with the flimsy tweezer mechanism that are no good for anything; the ones with the looped wire ends that juggle chops (badly); the ones with the serrated edge that pierce your wors dry; and the clamshell ones that are OK, but still too damn short and prone to the handle breaking.

Fortunately for us, there are people who think about problems and people like Nic, Marcel, and Simoné who fix them. Both on their travels and even braaiing at their shared apartment, the three friends complained about crappy tongs and then did something about it by creating a new, improved tong. That single prototype has evolved into Donkey Long Tong, a company that sports just a few products, but that has taken off in such a big way it now stocks the USA, Canada, and Australia too.

Their line-up is as follows. The original Donkey Tong is a 69cm beast that makes your normal braai tongs look like chopsticks in Eben Etzebeth’s paws. Made from food-grade stainless steel, with a white oak wooden grip fastened with brass rivets, it features flattish ends for flipping burgers or other sensitive bits of meat, a sliding lock, and a bottle opener at the end. If you only get one set of tongs, this bad boy is your go-to for meat, tending coals, retrieving your child’s dummy from the back of a cot, rescuing mineworkers from mine shafts, etc. Then, almost unbelievably, it has a big brother, the Donkey Long Tong, an 80cm behemoth. Use it exclusively for turning logs and coals, for the braaiing itself, or hell you can even braai the food at your next-door neighbour’s from the comfort of your own lawn. Lastly, there’s The Blower which may look like an Amazonian blowpipe, but instead of poison darts, it channels your breath through a nifty jet nozzle into a vortex of logigniting flame. We’ve tried each of these braai tools and can vouch for the fact that they are legitimately brilliant. You will never need to buy another set of tongs except if your friends steal these. donkeylongtong.co.za

“YOU WILL NEVER NEED TO BUY ANOTHER SET OF TONGS EXCEPT IF YOUR FRIENDS STEAL THESE.” THE GAITERS - ASI LITE There are parts of the world (e.g. Ireland, thanks St Paddy) where people fish without giving snakes a second thought. But if you’re stomping through bush and veld throughout Africa, that’s simply not the case. That’s why you may want to invest in the African Snakebite Institute’s flexible snake gaiters. They have an outer shell made from 500D Cordura with double acrylic coating, while the inner shell is made of two layers of DuPont’s Kevlar micro filament yarn, a very finely woven material that renders exceptional protection against fragmentation, with an antistab capability. These two layers are stitched into an inner casing of high-tenacity nylon (parachute material) for extra protection. They have been tested against bites from a variety of nope-ropes like puff adders, Cape cobras, snouted cobras and black mambas with no penetration during testing. xplorerflyfishing.co.za “TESTED AGAINST, PUFF ADDERS, CAPE COBRAS, SNOUTED COBRAS AND BLACK MAMBAS.”

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Distributed by Xplorer fly fishing www.xplorerflyfishing.co.za / Contact 031- 564 7368

DAS UBER S C I E N T I F I C F LY ’ S A R N O L A U B S C H E R I N V E S T E D F I V E Y E A R S , A N D A VA S T A M O U N T O F T H O U G H T A N D E F F O R T, I N T O M A K I N G H I S N E W G N A R LY H E A D Z POPPER HEADS. HERE, HE TELLS US ABOUT THE PROCESS AND THE P R O B L E M S H E B E L I E V E S H E ’ S S O LV E D .

THE IDEA I like fishing poppers. It’s the most exciting way to fish. You can try to make your own popper heads, but either it takes too long, you can’t get the right material, or you won’t have the right manufacturing processes. If you buy your heads, quite often you can’t find the right hook to fit the popper. This made me think.

My research showed that a lot of people were complaining about poppers and, specifically, the hook-up ratio. They’d say they only get like a 40% hook-up ratio. With that in mind, I set about developing a popper that would expose the hook more.

THE PROBLEM Some fish eat a popper from below or from the side. Others eat from behind depending on things like how fast you retrieve and what fish species it is. Most people don’t understand what hook exposure is about when they buy commercially manufactured popper heads and hooks. The packet may say “use a 2/0 hook for the popper head”, but is it the long shank 2/0 or the short shank 2/0? What must the gape measurement be to fit that popper?

THE PROCESS Turns out I’d opened a can of worms. It started with a simple drawing and progressed to buying a 3D printer, learning the software and then drawing, taking measurements, and making notes. I didn’t realise it was going to take five years. I was still learning the 3D software when I came up with the design that I wanted. But the first one I printed was way too big. I thought, “OK, I’m going to print it for a 6/0 hook,” but it was totally oversized. I was going to have to take certain measurements on the hook and build them into the popper head.

THE SOLUTIONS The two most important measurements for the size of the popper on the hook are the hook shank length and the gape width. My entire design is based on that. I started with a 6/0 and created these shapes. If I put the shank length and gape of any hook into my spreadsheet, it will give me 26 measurements. With those measurements, you build the shape for a specific object.

The shape of the popper can be any shape, as long as it’s within this area.

When there’s nothing tied to a hook, that hook point is exposed to the maximum. As soon as you start to tie something onto the hook, just one wrap of thread, you affect the hook point exposure.

The more material you put on the hook, the more the hook point exposure is affected. Softer material will not have as big an effect as more rigid material.

There are two major performance factors with poppers. One, it must float the hook. Two, it must pop and give you the right action on the water. I needed to cut away as much as possible to get to my design and expose the hook. But, as soon as you cut too much away, you start to affect the performance of the popper. I needed to look at the volume of the actual head on the popper. To get back to this shape, I printed half-shapes and glued hooks into them to see if that would work. I then made sure the measurements from the hook eye and below the hook were right and I had to do this with a couple of sizes and brands of hooks to find a size that would fit most hook brands. Lastly, I designed the actual head by cutting away whatever I could and getting the volume right.

If you have just the right volume to float, the popper is going to hover. You need to have a lot more foam on the hook so that the thing can pop. That is why, instead of round corners on the top, I built in square corners because that is not really going to affect the hook-up ratio. I also made sure it was opened at the bottom and on the sides.

Also, a popper shouldn’t be convex shaped. This is a problem with the cone-shaped poppers. They should be concave, so you lose material towards the back and open that point up as much as possible. That’s why Gnarly Headz taper to the back.

Visit themissionflymag.com for the full video interview.

R-POPPER

LAUBSCHER’S 1ST POPPER LAW The most important thing I learned through this entire process is the relationship between the width of the popper head and the hook gape. That’s how Laubscher’s 1st Popper Law came into being: The popper head should always be, at its widest, equal to the mounted hook gape.

The mounted hook gape is what’s left of the gape once the popper is on the hook and that must be equal or greater than the width of the head. If a fish grabs the popper and it turns on its side, that is going to be in the way of the scissors and the fish won’t be able to close its mouth.

LITTLE MARKERS ON THE FRONT AND ON THE BACK WHICH INDICATE WHERE YOU PUSH THROUGH A DUBBING NEEDLE TO CREATE THE HOLE FOR THE HOOK.

YOU WANT TO TIE THE TAIL FIRST, THEN GLUE THE HOOK, THEN PUT THE HEAD ONTO THE POPPER.

THE EYE SOCKETS SLANT TO THE BACK AND DOWN SO THAT THEY ARE VISIBLE FROM BELOW AND FROM BEHIND

THE EXTRA FEATURES There are a few other small features to make tying easier for the fly tyers and that will automatically make their poppers more successful.

There’s quite a substantial cup in the front. I made it a little bit deeper so that it can grab more water. It pops very nicely and has a diving effect. You can fish it very slowly and pop it within a few centimetres. Or you can fish it very fast, the bigger ones especially, for fish like GTs. They’ll pop, go down, leave a bubble trail, pop up again, and sometimes jump out of the water.

I’ve pulled the cheeks back a little bit so when you retrieve it, it starts to release air to the sides before it releases air to the top, which is nice when you fish it very slowly.

I think the eyes on most poppers are in the wrong place and they’re always too small. I like a big eye on a fly, whether it’s a GT fly, a streamer, or a tigerfish fly. The eye must be visible to the fish. I made sure that features on all the sizes of the Gnarly Headz.

The smallest size takes a 6mm eye, which is quite big, and the biggest size, the XL, takes a 9,5mm eye. The eye sockets slant to the back and down so that they are visible from below and from behind. If you use a proper 3D eye, it will definitely be visible.

The position of the hook is important. Guys often don’t know how and where to position the hook. Cone-shaped poppers are made on a lathe, so they’ll have a manufacturing hole through the middle of the popper to the back, which most people think is where the hook goes through. That’s the worst place you can

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THE FRONT FEATURES A SUBSTANTIAL CUP

put it, because as soon as you put the hook through there, you push the popper down and that closes the gape. That is one of the reasons you don’t get the hook-up ratio you need on poppers.

Fish will eat them, but they are not going to hook up easily. Gnarly Headz poppers have little markers on the front and on the back which indicate where you push through a dubbing needle to create the hole for the hook.

Lots of guys put glue on the hook, attach the head to the hook, then finish tying the popper, which is the wrong way around. You want tie the tail first, then glue the hook, then put the head onto the popper. That is why I built the tail cavity into the popper heads. You make a little mark with a permanent marker on the hook and from there backwards, your tail can be exposed. From there forwards, you can tie it down. When you slide the popper over, this tail cavity will line up with where the hook’s shank stops.

The front is also different. On most poppers, the hook eye is hidden in the face so it can be difficult to get thread through there or to tie it on. I made it a bit wider so you can see the hook eye sticking out clearly. It’s not deep in the cut. I also created a bit of a concave shape there, so that you can see the eye of the hook from the top.

Gnarly Headz are available in sizes S, M, L, and XL in chartreuse, orange, black, white, and purple. They will be available as complete flies for those who do not tie their own and there will also be a DIY coating system for tiers wanting to customise how their poppers look. www.scientificfly.com

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Xplorer Hosted Trips – Local and International Destinations

LIFER

VANYA HACKEL F I L M A N D M U S I C P R O D U C E R , S A L M O N F LY F I S H E R , C O N S E R VAT I O N I S T, A N D F R I E N D O F T H E A R T S , W H E T H E R I T ’ S B E E N O N T H E B A N K S O F N O R WAY ’ S FA M O U S R I V E R A LTA O R T H E H A L L O W E D WAT E R S O F T H E R I V E R T E S T, W O R K I N G W I T H S TA R S O R B R I N G I N G P E O P L E T O G E T H E R , VA N YA H A C K E L’ S L I F E H A S B E E N O N E O F C O N N E C T I O N , FEELING, AND… FISH. Photos. Vanya Hackel, Siw Hermanstad/Stuenes. Flies by Davie McPhail

I lived in Kew Gardens until the age of seven when we moved out to the country and beside a river in East Sussex where my fishing began in earnest. This was at the tidal limit of a river that boasted the highest average size sea trout (4lb+) in England. For many years, my family went for the whole summer to Eire [Ireland] where my mother came from. Stanley, my mother’s brother, was based there and we used to pursue wonderful wild brown trout, salmon, and sea trout all the days and every evening. I was lucky to also be tutored by Billy, the manager of the family [flour] mill who also taught every family generation how to fish down from my uncle’s grandfather to my cousins and their offspring. I still fish with them a good deal in Scotland, Norway, and Eire.

After schooling I moved to London for university to read Philosophy of Religion (what else?) and would fish at weekends and vacation times.

A move back to Kew Gardens for a few years was very convenient for London access and travel while developing my arts management pursuits. This was before a significant move to the country again, this time to the banks of River Test, with access to the hallowed fishing there. After the truncation of an underwhelming marriage, I re-settled in Highland Scotland on the banks of the River Tay in Perthshire, which has plenty of user-friendly trout and migratory fish all round. Twenty years ago saw another big move back down to West Sussex, within an hour or so of the UK’s most seductive chalk streams.

I have been very indulged over the years and can now make good use of my membership of the august Piscatorial Society (thepiscatorialsociety.net), established in 1836

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and one of the earliest select groupings of anglers. By keeping the membership numbers low it is possible for members to visit one of the club’s waters normally without the need for prior booking. Nor do you feel that you must spend a full day on that beat to “get your money’s worth” if the conditions are not ideal. The society has over 20 miles of prime chalk stream fishing on the Test, Itchen, Avon, Wylye, Anton and, outside of the trout season, the society offers grayling fishing, as their closed season is different.

Throughout the year another base HQ is our bolthole in North Sutherland where we have three miles of double-bank fishing and an additional three miles leased, with accommodations (bowside.fishing). The river husbandry does take time but is very rewarding and it is looking very likely that we, as an area, will be awarded the coveted international UNESCO World Heritage Site status for this unique landscape called the Flow Country (fcrt.org).

I have been blessed throughout my life to have always worked for myself (and my clients).

A typical day involves basic administration for the fishery in Scotland and low-key preparatory work for the launch of a National Angling Library. I help where I can to campaign against un-sustainable fish farming and pollution including the sea lice plague. I also enjoy bread-baking and cooking.

And, if I choose to go fishing, I can, if the mood takes me! That means calling my fishing buddy Bill Woodrow as I drive to see if he can meet me at the river. Bill lives close to most of the Piscatorial Society waters, so very convenient!

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Situated in far northern Scotland in the counties of Sutherland and Caithness, the Flow Country is a massive 4 000m2 expanse of blanket bog, a rare type of peatland which forms only in cool places with plenty of rain and covers the landscape like a blanket.

“IT IS DIFFICULT NOT TO RELIVE THE DRY FLY VS NYMPH ARGUMENT AS YOU FISH OVER THE VERY WATERS WHERE ALL OF THIS WAS DEVELOPED.”

Winters are spent in the south for a vitamin D fix. During those dark winter months we often visit South Africa. Summers are more northerly – Scotland to Arctic Norway.

I love the chalk stream landscape, especially the small carriers which make for challenging fishing. The landscape and tree colours alone are transporting, and the water distilled clear.

With these streams I generally fish very light – tapered leaders based on 1, 2, or 3-weight lines; flies down to 22 from 14. I find floating flies more interesting, and it creates activity, although the nymph and sub-surface action can obviously save the day. It is difficult not to relive the dry fly vs nymph argument as you fish over the very waters where all of this was developed.

I normally fish with hip-level single waders which are lined internally with leather – a prototype that didn’t make it into production.

By Arctic Norway, he means the Alta River, the most sought-after ticket for salmon.

“I AM MOST PROUD OF ALTA – BY SPECIAL INVITATION, A DOCUMENTARY I PRODUCED ON THIS BREATHTAKING RIVER.”

The basic rod I use on the chalk streams is a Superfine (full flex) Orvis 6’ 6”, rated 2-weight with 3/2/1 customised lines on a Walter Dingley reel from 1898 (Irish). I also use an old Hardy System 4 reel and spools; and an Orvis Battenkill 5/6 for Mayfly on 9’ Orvis and Scott rods.

On high days and lighter days, I sport a rod commissioned for me by great friends Earl and Margit Worsham from their longstanding buddy, Michael Allen. It’s based on a Leonard parabola 3, 8’. It has the finest tip and is wonderful to use, every time!

My other main rods on other home waters include a MacKenzie 16’ as the everyday salmon rod with Lamson 4’ and a Sage ONE, 14’, 9-weight with WF SM competition heads as a lighter, grilse summer outfit.

My favourite flies for salmon are Munro Killers and Sunray Shadows along with Stoat’s Tail, Black Frances and the ubiquitous Willie Gunn.

My favourite flies for trout include Humpy/ Irresistible Adams, Black Gnat, BWOs, Tups Indispensable and Gray Wulff for Mayfly.

The same Ritz who invented the parabolic fly rod, wrote A Fly Fisher’s Life, founded the Fario Club (farioclub.org) and also happened to run the Ritz Hotel empire.

Yes, the same Pulitzer who sponsored the eponymous prize

Words to fly fish by are, “Any colour, as long as it is black.” This is what the writer Hugh Falkus said when I asked him about the best colour for a salmon fly. His first answer was, “Henry Ford”, which comes to the same thing! Along with Hugh, I have been very lucky to have met Dermot Wison, Joan Wulff, Stanley Bogdan along with others of the generation who pioneered catch and release. Earl Worsham was a contemporary of theirs and he makes them come alive as he describes them and their adventures in a world before mobile phones!

I am most proud of conceptualising and producing The Cotton Club Comes to the Ritz, which was produced with the BBCTV and WNET as an omnibus; ALTA – By Special Invitation, a documentary I produced on this breathtaking river; getting Max Roach to play drums with tap dancers Chuck Green and the Nicholas Brothers; editing and publishing Joseph Pulitzer’s We Go Fishing in Norway with original photos by Charles Ritz; and huge salmon catches on the Spey, setting records in 1993.

When I think of a special fish I’ve caught, a wild trout of 8.5lbs in a small River Test carrier on tippet strength of 8oz comes to mind.

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My go-to drink could well be a whisky blend and lemonade if there’s no DRC (Domaine de la Romanée-Conti) on tap.

One place I have to return to is the Kalahari Desert/Namibia dunes and always Norway. San Sebastián for pintxo bar hopping!

A skill I would like to master is the ability to make reliably perfect French croissants.

When dealing with fears, it’s best face to them and talk them down through gentle exposure.

If I could change anything about fly fishing, it would be to introduce youngsters sooner rather than later. I’d also like to see people taught to handle and release fish without damaging them.

The last fish I caught was a plump 2lb brown trout on the Test.

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POP QUIZ HEAD HUNTED OR GROWTH STUNTED? PICK OF THE LITTER OR LEFT I N T H E S H I T T E R ? TA K E O U R R A P I D - F I R E Q U I Z T O S E E I F Y O U S H O U L D TA K E A N O T H E R W E E K O F H O L I D AY B E F O R E S TA R T I N G W O R K .

On the scent: Colombian perro salchicha are trained to sniff out Payara and Peacock bass. Photo. Si Kay

2. According to Dr Alan Whitfield, what happens to marine fish locked in an estuary for more than five years (page 28)?

A. The re-consider their life choices.

B. They bang their cousins.

C. They become freshwater fish.

D. They re-absorb their balls.

E. All of the above.

3. What sparked a change in the fishing for the Mtsitsi Gorge tigerfish crew (page 50)?

A. Thoughts and prayers.

B. Brush flies and cannabis.

C. Gamechangers and gemsbok burgers.

D. Poppers and grasshoppers.

E. Flash clousers and brannewyn (brandy).

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4. Which section of a Norwegian shopping mall did James Topham find himself in when the Lost Boys Zoom call got a bit awkies (page 70)?

A. The indoor Fjord.

B. The Gravlaks gallery.

C. The Viking food court.

D. The breastfeeding Brunhilda room.

E. The pickled herring hall.

5. Vanya Hackel’s Scottish bolthole sits in which boggy region (page 110)?

A. The Chillax Zone.

B. The Land of Lounge.

C. Fort Comfort.

D. The Mission’s YouTube comments.

E. Flow Country.

Answers: 1. C, 2. D, 3. E, 4. D, 5. E

1. In Zimbo guide Cullan Ashby’s world, “FCFB” stands for... (page 34)?

A. Full Colour Full Bleed.

B. Forget Couta Focus on Bluefin.

C. Fuck Clousers Fish Brushflies.

D. Fire Classified Floor Box. E. Fly Casting Full Bachelor.

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