The Mission Fly Fishing Magazine Issue #5

DEAD ZONE

PLATON TRAKOSHIS

DESPERADO

PROVIDENCE WITH DRE

MARCO PIERRE WHITE

PIKE, TROUT AND NOSTALGIA

ISSUE 05 SEPT | OCT 2017

LEFTY

KREH FREE

THEMISSIONFLYMAG.COM

experience counts for everything Capt. Joel Dickey, a no-nonsense veteran guide and one of the most knowledgable and experienced anglers on the water. He calls Georgia home but can normally be found in Big Pine Key Florida chasing tarpon, bonefish and permit. Hardcore professionals like Joel are testing our products to the limit every day and push us in our pursuit to build truly great rods. Their knowledge, expertise, and understanding are passed to our craftsmen, who strive for perfection and uncompromising performance in every rod we make.

To us, Joel and his fellow professionals are our unsung heroes. We salute you.

Introducing the new T&T Avantt and Exocett Series. remarkably light. extraordinarily strong.

est

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T H E R O D YO U W I L L E V E N T UA L LY OW N

www.thomasandthomas.com HANDMADE IN AMERICA

“NEVER LEARN TO CAST THE WAY MOST PEOPLE TEACH, BECAUSE THIS IS THE MOST INEFFICIENT WAY YOU CAN DO IT.” - Lefty Kreh PG 46

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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 5 SEPT | OCT 2017

CONTENTS Cover: The hand of rod. Southpaw Lefty Kreh’s left hand by Conrad Botes. Photo Jan Verboom.

14 INTERNATIONAL ARRIVALS

By Conrad Botes 16 COMPETITIVE STREAK

By David Karpul 18 HIGH 5s With James Topham 22 FISHING WITHOUT HONOUR

By Sean Christie 26 FINDING LIFE AT THE EDGE OF THE DEAD ZONE

By Platon Trakoshis 32 LOW RIDING AVOCADO SALMA HAYEK

By Andre van Wyk 40 LEFTY KREH The Right Stuff 64 FLUFF: SPONGEBOB

By Conrad Botes

REGULAR FEATURES Payday 58 Wands 60 Shortcasts 62 Reel Deal 70 The Lifer 72

06 Ed’s Letter 08 Masthead 10 Wish List Fish 12 Beers & Beats 52 Salad Bar Contents Photo Mark Murray

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

DEATH METAL IN THE AFTERNOON

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full volume, or if you find yourself in semi-polite company, you can say the words, effectively speaking along to the song. With an impassive mug like a Botoxed Tim Currie, Brad’s got a great face for ventriloquism, his lips barely moving when he speaks.

He picks me up in the Hyundai, tunes stomping out the night’s crickets from a block away. As Cape Town’s late nightclubs are still excreting those on a bender, we thread our way through drunk driving police roadblocks picking up the others. Despite the crusty eyes and lack of sleep, this car full of facial hair is excitable; guys alternatively yawning and yapping like huskies. Music on low, as we open up on the highway talk in the car fluctuates from the day’s fishing to future plans and bucketlist missions, touching every now and then on the usual speedbumps of time and money.

We tend get where we’re going just before daybreak and fish hard all day till the sun dips and we have to shoot back to the city. Especially when the wind is up and the visibility nixes any chance of sight fishing for grunter, this kind of fly fishing is the comforting zone-out stuff of hit and hope monotony, not unlike steelheading I imagine.

Casting and retrieving, only mixing up the flies and speed we retrieve them at as we project imagined stories into the water about just what it is that the kob, grunter and leervis might want on the menu today. Each cast a tendril of hope that it was worth getting out of bed that morning.

hen I go fishing with Brad, he likes to drive. And because it’s his car, we listen to his music. Usually, we’re headed to one of the Overberg estuaries. To save on the outlay of a full weekend away yet still get our fix, these are day trips. That means leaving town stupid early.

Breaking for a sandwich around lunch, we compare notes. A few small leeries, one solid kob take, thousands of mullet nosing their way to the mouth and Brad swore he saw a lost carp dying in the shallows.

“My smile was taken long ago, if I could change I hope I never know.”

Say what? I glance at Brad. He seems cheerful. Checking the rearview mirror he goes off on a tangent about the merits of segmented turd flies and whether or not Henkie Altena’s agha templates are better than going deer hair all the way.

“I will leave the world of mortals.”

There it is again. A comment within the conversation. Almost imperceptible. Dark and unrelated.

Brad then overtakes a double trailer truck and pulls off the N2, the Hyundai dipping into the lucerne fields around Caledon.

Heavy mist sits over the hills. Brad and SJ who’s sitting in the back discuss their big goal for the year – kob on fly. Come hell or high water, they will crack the code.

“I push my fingers into my eyes.”

As I’m about to tell him to keep his chin up, that life’s not that bad and hell, we’re going fishing, it dawns on me that Brad, like any car singer from teenage girls to doo-wop septuagenarians, is actually “singing” along with his music while maintaining a conversation. His music in this case tends to be on the heavy side. Slipknot. Hatebreed. System of a Down. Unlike “She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain” or “Sweet Home Alabama”, these aren’t easy to sing along to. I can’t pick out the words, but it’s clear if you choose to join in, your options are limited.

You either need to try match the song and shout or growl at

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We get back to it. We each get a few small leeries, then I luck into a kob in broad daylight, right next to the campsite, right next to Brad. That spurs the others on, working the water a little harder as the sun dips and we start to run out of time before we have to head back.

On the way back, while the others fall asleep in the back, as copilot I stay awake, we turn up the music and there’s a muted, somewhat begrudging chat about the kob interspersed with what I think are Slipknot lyrics.

“Undo these chains my friend. I’ll show you the rage I have hidden.”

It wasn’t a huge fish at all, but it was the highlight of a tough day.

“I have screamed until my veins collapsed. I’ve waited as my time’s elapsed. Now, all I do is live with so much hate.”

We segue into a discussion on why small clousers sparsely dressed with minimal flash will probably always be the number one estuary fly.

“Bury all your secrets in my skin.”

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Lost and found; a creepy totem pole of flotsam, jetsam and fly gear on a beach in Gabon. Photo Mark Murray

EDITOR Tudor Caradoc-Davies ART DIRECTOR Brendan Body CONTACT THE MISSION The Mission Fly Fishing Mag (PTY) Ltd 20 Malleson Rd, Mowbray, 7700, Cape Town, South Africa Info@themissionflymag.com www.themissionflymag.com

EDITOR AT LARGE Conrad Botes COPY EDITOR Ingrid Sinclair SALES brendan@themissionflymag.com 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 THE MISSION FLY MAG (PTY) LTD. ANY DUPLICATION OF THIS MAGAZINE, FOR MEDIA OR SALE ACTIVITY, WILL RESULT IN LEGAL ACTION AND A SWIFT KICK IN THE NADS.

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CONTRIBUTORS #05 Brandt Botes, James Topham, Sean Christie, Platon Trakoshis, Andre van Wyk, Jazz Kuschke PHOTOGRAPHY #05 Mark Murray, Tarquin Millington-Drake, Jan Verboom, Platon Trakoshis, Garth Niewenhuis, Leonard Flemming, James Topham, Justin Rollinson, Jazz Kuschke, Lefty Kreh archive, Marco Pierre White archive, Carl McNeil, Michael Gradidge, Jannie Visser,

@THEMISSIONFLYMAG

WISH LIST FISH

THE GURNARD Photo Leonard Flemming

M A S S I V E F I S H A R E N O T T H E B E A L L A N D E N D A L L O F S A LT W A T E R F LY F I S H I N G . S O M E T I M ES , AW K WA R D B E A U T Y T R I U M P H S . W I T H W I N G S , L I P S , S P O T S A N D AT T I T U D E , G U R N A R D H A V E A G R O W I N G L E G I O N O F FA N S .

What: Like a Gremlin crossed with a butterfly, Cape gurnard (Chelidonichthys capensis) and / or bluefin gurnard (Chelidonichthys kumu) are colourful, local members of the scorpionfishes. They could also claim the mantle of the Jar Jar Binks of the piscatorial world.

Where: You’ll find them along most parts of the South African coastline - from the Mozambique border to Namibian border. Generally bottom - dwelling fish, although mostly caught off shore, there’s a small band of die-hards targeting them in shallower water or from the side. Leonard Flemming of Feathers & Fluoro says that they seem to favour sandy substrates in deepish water, near drop offs or structure from the side.

How: A crustacean imitation or a Clouser, a fast sinking line (lead core line) in deep water offshore, or an intermediate line if fishing from the shore, 5 to 9-weight, 15 lb tippet or less.

Who: You, yourself and Irene.

There are very few guides who target these gems, but there’s nothing stopping you.

Also known as Sea Robins, gurnard will steal from the clouser-rich and give to the sea floor.

“LIKE A GREMLIN CROSSED WITH A BUTTERFLY, CAPE GURNARD AND OR BLUEFIN GURNARD ARE COLOURFUL, LOCAL MEMBERS OF THE SCORPIONFISHES” 10

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FLYLINE. THE SOLUTION TO EVERY CHALLENGE YOU’LL FACE ON THE FLATS.

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

FODDER

BEERS & BEATS THE BEER – CLARENS BREWERY’S RED ALE From ye quaintest olde village in the lande, Clarens, comes this excellent, award-winning ale (Most Popular of Show at the 2012 SA On Tap Craft Beer Festival) with a balanced mix of fruit, hops and malt, and the kind of long, smooth finish you wish your back cast had.

It’s a reasonable 4.5% alcohol by volume, but we would recommend having a few of these after fishing the Ash River near Clarens, not before. Deep, fast and strong-flowing with unpredictable surges – the Ash, shooting out of Lesotho, is not a river you want to mess with.

But, it has some seriously hefty river rainbows, so fish it, just be careful of subsidence and current. Then go get your red ale.

THE BEATS

THE MISSION PLAYLIST VOL 3 THE THERE AND BACK MIX START FAST, END SLOW.

BY BRANDT BOTES

BECK LOSER

JOHNNY FLYNN BEEN LISTENING

MINOR THREAT MINOR THREAT

VIOLENT FEMMES BLISTER IN THE SUN

NICK CAVE RINGS OF SATURN

ALT-J IN COLD BLOOD

FAUX FEROCIOUS THE BIG KAHUNA

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INTERNATIONAL ARRIVALS

BY CONRAD BOTES

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t’s early morning on day 17 of a three-month stint in New York.

I’ve just picked up Brent’s car on 118th Street and I’m making my way down to where I’m staying in Red Hook, Brooklyn via the eastern side of Manhattan. Brent, another South African based in New York, has taken the train to work so he can save himself a return trip to fetch the car.

That means I’ve got his wheels till we meet up later to fish.

Dodging traffic with skyscrapers looming, I eventually make it into downtown Manhattan and drop into the Battery Tunnel, then take a breather as I enter the relative calm of Red Hook. I’m a migrant from a small city at the tip of Africa so it’s a relief to survive my first experience driving (on the wrong side of the road) in the Big Apple.

Later that afternoon, I pick Brent up after work in Brooklyn. He normally works in Manhattan, but finishing work in this part of Brooklyn today calls for an evening session in Jamaica Bay. Target species: the famed striped bass, a fish that I am yet to catch, but which is basically the equivalent of my home water’s quarry; and dusky kob.

Jamaica Bay is an estuarine marshland located between Brooklyn and the Rockaways and a large part of it borders on JFK airport. An unlikely piece of suburban water by the looks of it, but the photos of big early season stripers coming out there have been popping up on social media.

We’re both frothing in anticipation.

The car loaded to the brim with tackle, a collapsible kayak, Brent, coffee and bagels, we jump into the traffic once more. With so much fishable water around this massive city, the real curse is just getting “there”, wherever that may be.

At the Crossway Boulevard Bridge across from JFK we pull up into a parking lot. I spot several spin fishermen working a channel.

The hunt for stripers was already clearly on.

We walk down to the water for a quick inspection. Tidal mud in New York City I can report smells the same as our mud back home. We help an old timer drag his kayak and fishing tackle back to his car. “Catch anything? See any bunker?” Negative. Brent does the talking, because having been here a few years he speaks ’Merican, while people find my accent hard to understand. No peanut bunker baitfish around and no bass either is the verdict, but the old timer was soaking baits, so we dismiss his lack of success to heathen tactics. We tackle up, get into our waders and drag the kayak down to the water. Brent passes the Stanley hipflask with whiskey.

“Safety first, Conrad. Hypothermia is a real and present danger.”

As the sun starts to dip we start fishing the pylons around the railway bridge.

The water looks extremely fishy, but when I eventually hook up, it’s against a pylon and not the striper I was hoping for. We take turns waving to the train drivers of the A-train that Photo Brent Flack-Davison

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passes overhead. They in turn hang out the window and wave back.

We move around the bridge and from the deeper water onto a mud flat. I sit and watch the traffic at JFK less than a kilometre away. With more than 4 million passengers every month, there is a plane touching down or taking off every two minutes. I can see a line of aircraft taxiing and queuing to take off. Remarkably, the noise of jet engines does not seem to bother or frighten any of the birds that live in this wetland.

I am yanked from my reverie as Brent tucks into the first fish of the evening. “It’s a bluefish,” comes the disappointed wail. Bluefish is what we call elf or shad and at about 50cm it’s considered a pest in these parts (poor bastards) and it goes back into the water without the ceremony of even having its mugshot taken. More rat blues come soon after that before Brent spots some bunker splashing on the surface.

“Bass food, my friend. We’ll get a striper, it’s just a matter of time.”

Shitty prophet that he is, as the sun dipped behind the skyline of lower Manhattan, I kept laying out casts, hoping for a striper, but it never came.

On the way in, the birdlife and the air traffic mirrored each other as neat rows of aircraft stacked up for landing; the flying V of livingroom wall ducks.

We passed the flask and headed home.

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Some of these waters can be fished on daily basis, while others are only accessible when accompanied by a pre- booked guide. Think of it as an exclusive club.

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You can queue outside for hours waiting to queue all over again at the bar (aka stockie pond) or you can get on the guest list and head to the VIP area.

So treat yourself, get on to some water you that you normally wouldn’t be able to fish unless you were lucky enough to own it. Who knows, you might crack your PB and even learn a new trick or two!

Call now to book trips or find out about the latest gear. info@flyfishing.co.za or www.flyfishing.co.za

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The Mavungana Flyfishing Centre Main Road Dullstroom, 1 1 1 0 , S A , 0 1 3 2 5 4 6072 7 0

N AT I O N A L S

COMPETITIVE STREAK T O B O T H H I S S U R P R I S E A N D T H AT O F T H E C O M P E T I T I V E F LY F I S H I N G S C E N E I N S O U T H A F R I C A , D AV I D K A R P U L W O N N AT I O N A L S . F L U K E ? H A R D W O R K ?

TA L E N T ? Y O U , A N D T H E T R O U T, B E T H E J U D G E .

H E L E A R N E D A LOT A LO N G T H E WAY. T H I S I S H I S STO RY.

I

When you’re offered live brown trout, you know something’s up with the KFC Drive-thru. Photo Platon Trakoshis

’d like to tell you how it all unfolded. While most of me would prefer to just go on my way, I think, maybe, for just a few, if you heard my story, you would pick up that bobbin when you may have picked up the remote, may make time to wet your feet when no time is to be had, you might seek new knowledge when the siren of comfort calls.

I stood there, a mockery. Hopefully no one would notice I was wearing Korrie’s tracksuit pants, folded in

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at the top and bottom so as not to expose the elastics. If you didn’t look too closely, they’d pass as chinos.

Up top was Garth’s spare white shirt, at least two sizes too small. I had borrowed a formal provincial tie and blazer from Albé, which obscured the poor-fitting shirt and the beltless pants. As long as nobody looked at my shoes, I might just pull it off. If my calculations were correct, I was about to receive some muchunwanted attention, which would give me a very large smile indeed.

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Just more than a year prior, I was first exposed to competition fishing.

I had ridden a wave of apathy into my provincial team. By no means would a sane person regard me then, or indeed now, as one of the best anglers in my province, but you must always take the opportunities offered to you.

I found myself feeling thoroughly out of place at the 2016 South African National Championships in Douglas; clueless but not alone. I learnt many

things, made friendships and had a great time. Most of all, I found that someone like me, who fundamentally hates any dichotomy where a winner necessitates a loser, can engage in the positivity of competition, and simply leave the rest; it’s what you make of it. I started competition fishing to learn. The more I learnt the more fun I could have with my time on the water, and I wasn’t done yet.

catch fish in pools, unhappy fish in drought conditions or spooked fish I could see huddled in the deepest slot of a shallow run. My catch rate in normal conditions was almost always lower than whoever was fishing with me. I didn’t know how to tie hoppers, perdigons, F-flies, soft hackles, emergers or still-water flies in general, or at least, never versions that seemed to catch fish. There was a lot to do be done.

In the end I made the team, and all focus was on nationals. The practice continued and for three months leading up to the competition I made time every day to tie flies, I took a rod to work to cast on the lawn at lunch, but most importantly I arranged to fish with others. It is certainly very rare for me to consider my fishing partner as anything other than a fantastic source of knowledge and tutelage.

The 2017 championships were going to be held on my home waters in the Cape. If my goal was to learn so that I can better enjoy my fishing, what better skillset to learn than those needed for your home waters? I knew, however, that there would be two hurdles. Firstly, the pile of lifeless bodies over which I climbed to make the 2016 team would no doubt animate with the prospect of home water competition. Making the team would not be easy. Secondly, I didn’t actually know what I was doing.

I still don’t, but less so.

First, provincial still-water trials where, as predicted, all the guides, past provincial anglers, past junior and senior Protea anglers came out of the woodwork to participate. In preparation I coerced two of the Protea anglers in the Cape to host a still-water clinic mostly for my benefit, I spent many nights at the vice, I fished the dam in a boat as much as I could. Let’s be clear though, I was terrible; I caught very few fish, and there were times when it was not fun. But I was getting better, little by little. After achieving my goal of being entirely average at still-water trials, river trials were next.

In the 11 days leading up to the competition I fished six times. Six days on the river, and I caught one fish. For sure conditions were tough, but not that tough. What I was doing was focusing, on each of those days, to fish in ways that I didn’t know how, in ways in which I was not comfortable or with flies for which I had no data. It was painful, and it made all the difference.

I loved my stream fishing, had been doing it for a few years then, had enjoyed learning to tie a few flies and gained immense pleasure catching fish my way.

I felt comfortable telling myself that the fish I couldn’t catch were either uncatchable or could only be caught through unspeakable means with which I cared not to engage.

I mention this because I think that perhaps you relate; maybe some of these words sound a quiet bell in the back of your mind, resonating with your own reasons for continuing to do things the way you do them, because that’s the way you like it.

For me, this translated into fishing only a handful of flies, almost exclusively dry and dropper in pocket water and runs.

I scraped through four of my five encounters at river trials, the fifth was against Protea team member Maddy Rich. In 90 minutes each, he caught 20 fish to my five, reminding me how far I still needed to go.

So I made my way up to the presentation area, gave Cherryl a big hug, and forgot about my Bo Jangles attire as I received a team gold medal and the individual gold medal. I promise you now, every fish I caught throughout the competition, I caught in way I didn’t know how to a year prior. My unsolicited advice is simple: spend time outside of your comfort zone – trying new things in fishing isn’t that dangerous; find the time and put in the effort – it’s worth every second when you’re out there on the water; maintain a positive attitude at all times – things won’t go your way, but always ask how you can get the best from the situation, no matter how dire. Above all else, I owe everything to the people that surround me; I hope to treat them accordingly.

It’s no false modesty or secret that I consider myself far from deserving the title of national champion. A lot went my way and played into my hand. But it seems, in a world where I constantly feel like a child pretending to be an adult, if you pretend hard enough for long enough, eventually, it doesn’t matter whether you’re bluffing or not.

I didn’t know how to fish still waters at all, especially not drift boat fishing.

I didn’t know how to do Euro-style nymphing in anything less than the raging waters of the Orange River with a small anvil attached to the end of my line. I didn’t know how to Photo Garth Nieuwenhuis

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GUIDES

HIGH 5S A R A P I D - F I R E C AT C H U P W I T H J E T- S E T T I N G G U I D E J A M E S T O P H A M , F R E Q U E N T LY F O U N D E I T H E R I N T H E S E Y C H E L L E S AT A L P H O N S E I S L A N D O R I N N O R WAY C H A S I N G C H R O M E R S .

Photos James Topham archive

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

1) My mate Baas Craig (I’m not very good at selfies, I need a witness, and my own company is frightfully boring.)

2) Sunnies (I’ll refrain from the Costa/ Smiths debate.)

3) MaPincha (Pliers or forceps – try get a #18 out of the throat with your fingers without freaking the fish out.)

4) Dry shorts (I always end up wading, and going to the pub with wet jocks sucks).

5) R100 (a bevvy after fishing is a tradition.)

5 bands to listen to while on a road trip?

1) Blitzen Trapper 2) Lord Huron 3) Midlake 4) Fleet Foxes 5) Ray LaMontagne Basically folk rock. My girlfriend thinks it’s hillbilly music but she listens to EDM so whatever.

5 things you’re loving right now?

1) Vintage Africana fishing literature.

It’s amazing what you can learn from those old authors.

2) Glass. I know it’s been trending pretty hard for a while, but the more the big rod companies make stiffer rods the more I crave for some deep flex. I cast the G.Loomis made by Shimano and it didn’t even load. Bleh.

3) Finding new local water. Our country (South Africa) is massive, and there is so much water that we don’t fish.

The Lowveld alone is saturated with undiscovered water.

4) Hand-forged axes. I’m in Norway at the moment and having a good axe collection is vital. I’m saving up for a Gränsfors Bruk Splitting Maul. If you thought being a salmon guide was just watching over someone’s shoulder and pointing out the odd lie, you’re very mistaken.

5) Flounder. Before the end of this summer I’m going to catch a flat fish on fly, if I get some time off…

5 indispensable flies for saltwater?

1) You can’t not say a Clouser 2) Alec Gerbec’s Alphlexo Crab 3) Spawning Shrimp 4) Cameron Musgrave’s Blackie Chan 5) The good ol’ Flashy Profile tied by Alfred Chiwaya 5 indispensable flies for freshwater?

1) Black Moose Dog 2) Woolly Bugger 3) CDC Caddis Sedge 4) Adams 5) ZAK 5 favourite fly fishing destinations in SA? 1) Blyde River. I can’t tell you much more about that…

2) Cape Streams 3) Orange River 4) Sabie River

5) Every single average bass pond, usually on your neighbour’s farm 5 favourite fly fishing destinations globally?

1) Norway 2) Mongolia 3) The Seychelles 4) The Amazon basin 5) Argentina in its entirety 5 of the most difficult guiding experiences so far?

1) I think every time I start guiding a new destination it’s difficult in the technical sense. There is so much to learn, and often with a guest on board, which can put you under pressure, but I thrive in that situation.

2) Being the head guide, at any destination, can be a helluva thing.

You often do twice the work; the buck stops with you, and you have to solve some pretty tricky situations – often with very few resources at your disposal. Keeping your team’s morale up can also be tricky when the fishing gets tough and the clients start getting grumpy.

3) Guiding couples. Guiding guys is great, guiding women even better, but husband and wife? Tricky.

4) Leaving loved ones at home.

5) Realising that you can’t ride the guide high forever. In other words: you don’t see many grey-haired guides out there, and if you do it’s unlikely that they have a wife and kids. The day I stop guiding is going to be the greatest kick in the gut of all.

“YOU CAN CHUCK YOUR #6 ROYAL WULFF IN AND CATCH A TANK, PROVING THAT TROUT DON’T SIT IN LEATHER CHAIRS READING DAVE WHITLOCK’S BIBLE ON ENTOMOLOGY.” 18

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5 flies to pack (in the smuggler kit under your driver’s seat) to cover most species?

1) Clouser again.

2) Blane Chocklett’s Game Changer (Because it’s fun to play with while you’re stuck in traffic.)

3) Lefty’s Deceiver (no one has these in their boxes anymore, such a classic!)

4) Royal Wulff (Just so when you drive past a trout stream and some ou’s sukkeling to see his #22 CDC Emerger you can chuck your #6 Royal Wulff in and catch a tank, proving that trout don’t sit in leather chairs reading Dave Whitlock’s bible on entomology.)

5) Para RAB (Because it’s South African and sexy as hell.)

5 best things about Norway?

1) Pølse (hotdog sausages) 2) There are fish everywhere, we even saw one lying on the sidewalk in town the other day.

3) Driving the tiny roads. You cross fjords and forests and lakes and rivers and it goes on and on and on. It really is one of the most scenic countries in the world. And you’re surrounded by water.

4) Atlantic salmon. Their story is incredible. And they’re beautiful.

5) Norwegian swearwords. E.g. “Fy fæn, jævel Satan fisk! Hellvetta fæn!”* 5 best things about Alphonse?

1) It’s reputation, and how it represents South Africa in the global fly fishing industry.

2) How professionally it’s run. Fishing is always a variable, no matter where you are. But it’s incredible to see how a handful of young men and women can run a multi-destination operation under immense pressure and do it so well and with a positive attitude.

3) Its multi-national team. It’s rad guiding with guys that have been places.

4) The buggers at Stu’s Bench.

5) Seeing someone bail off their bicycle on the way back from the bar.

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5 people you would like to guide or fish with?

I’ve been really lucky to have trained under some of the best guides in the world. Guys that put South African guides on the map. Keith Rose-Innes, Jako Lucas, Tim Babbich, Mark Taylor, Paul Boyers. I’ve also guided some guys that are pretty big names in the industry, guys like Oliver White and Jim Klug and Matt Harris and Henry Gilbey – all of whom were absolute gentlemen. But more than anything I’d like to guide my family and my girlfriend and my mate Craigo. But for real – on a skiff, in the middle of nowhere. It seems absurd that the people who know me the best have absolutely no idea what happens when I go away. There are more than five people there but I’m hardcore like that.

5 fish on your species hit list?

1) Steelhead 2) Dorado 3) Rooster 4) ‘Poon (I must be the only saltwater guide to have not caught a tarpon) 5) Flounder. No seriously. It’s an obsession.

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

1) Fish give zero fucks 2) Global warming isn’t solvable. It’s the one thing I’m pessimistic about.

3) I’ll only fall in love after I’ve seen a girl dig up worms and gut a fish.

4) Like big-game hunting, when fishing for GTs the guide should also carry a rod, more to protect his sanity than for his physical wellbeing.

5) If religious extremists fly-fished the world would be pretty chilled.

5 of the most underrated species in your book?

1) Bonefish (Might surprise you, but these are the first that get kicked to the curb when there’s something else to target.)

2) Yellowfish

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3) Tigers (We don’t underrate them, but the rest of the world seems to.)

4) Emperors 5) Smallmouth bass (No one writing poems and books about these bad boys.)

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

1) Boat building 2) Bow hunting 3) Snowboarding 4) Prescription medication addiction 5) Cane rod building 5 flies that to look at make no sense but that catch fish all the time?

Every salmon fly ever tied.

Peacocking for bass is a fierce contest of gaping mouths and goofy smiles. Winner takes all.

5 essential ingredients for an incredible mission?

1) Girlfriend 2) Good buddies 3) Fly rod 4) Tunes 5) Outdoors 5 things about fly fishing that you may never understand?

1) Why it was ever considered an old man’s sport. I think the tweed jackets and men-only clubrooms during the Victorian era really set fly fishing back. 2) Why people pretend that they’re really good at it. It’s OK to fish once a year for 30 years and still suck. It’s not OK to tell everyone that you are the proud holder of the IGFA record for a 200-pound fly-

caught coelacanth. I play pool a lot. I still suck at it, but it’s a jol.

3) Fly tying hooks. Jesus. I like tying a fly but don’t start rapping about B10Ss and shit.

4) Why a salmon takes a fly, or jumps, or doesn’t take a fly. I get asked that a lot. The beauty is in not knowing.

5) Why I can walk 14 miles to catch a fish but walking to the workshop to find a spanner is such a hack.

5 common mistakes that most clients make?

1) Being unprepared. Don’t go to Astove with pike flies and Snowbee reels. It won’t work.

2) Not having faith in your guide. You may be 63 and a successful tycoon and he may be a 19-year-old pothead but chances are he’s still spent a helluva lot

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more time on that water than you.

3) Pretending to know everything.

No fly fisherman knows everything. If after every piece of advice you get you say “I know”, people will stop giving you advice and you’ll stop learning.

4) Not practicing your cast. You may be super-busy and get one trip every three years, but cracking a beer and having a few casts on your front lawn makes a huge difference to your fishing.

5) Taking it too seriously. Stop stressing.

It’s fishing. Chill out and have a laugh.

Your last five casts were to…

Pollock; sea trout; salmon; bone; GT; permit (That’s six, but I can’t leave out the permit!) * “For fucks sake, devilish Satan fish! Hell fuck!”

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BY SEAN CHRISTIE

M

rs Daniels’ English class, standard 7, set two: the one time in my life I plagiarised another writer. It was a creative writing assignment, the sort of thing I had relished and excelled at in my last year at junior school. Yet, rather than build a story from first principles, I had copied, virtually word for word, an article from a fishing magazine, about a good fight on a glittering river. It was from Hemingway descended but still very good, with the river and the reeds and the cold air and the quality of the light well drawn. Mrs Daniels was impressed, and asked my permission to read aloud to the class. Nobody seemed particularly suspicious afterwards. My stolen stream with its dark rocks and golden reed beds was well matched to the surrounding countryside, which is rich in fishable dams and rivers, and lodges with names like Troutbagger.

If the author had attempted to layer his narrative I would for sure have been exposed, but he had not, and I could write descriptive sentences.

The one facet that could not possibly have come from me was what made it good: the detailed descriptions of rod and tackle, and the fisherman’s working relationship with his tools.

When the large rainbow snatches the fly, the line, reel and rod spring to life as characters in their own right, each protesting the sudden activity in their own unique way and making it clear that in inexpert hands they will conspire to lose the fish and fall still. These were not understandings I possessed, having come no nearer

to the techniques of fly fishing than a mid-audience seat in a 1992 screening of A River Runs Through It, in Fourways Mall. But we were all first years in that class of strangers, and so the deceit went over, although not entirely without consequences.

My problems started after class, when a boy I was becoming friendly with approached and said, “Great story.

My family belongs to a fly-fishing syndicate out near Dullstroom.

We should take a trip out there in the holidays.” He was a deadringer for adolescent Ethan Hawke, with a fringe like a St Bernard’s ear and bright, uncertain eyes. I said I would like to visit Dullstroom with him, to fish, and that I had always enjoyed the fishing in that part of the country. Plagiarist, and now liar.

I have since wondered about what my motivations but at the time I had one thought: how was I going to get through a weekend in Dullstroom without being exposed as a fraud?

My new friend had not forgotten his invitation, as I had hoped, and not many days went by that term without some banter about the giant fish we would hunt together. Worse, he had asked to photocopy my story in order to share it with his father – a man who radiated gravitas and was 10 years older and several zeros richer than most other dads. I unfairly suspected that my new friend, in sharing my story, meant to appeal to his father’s sense of noblesse oblige, as in, “See how passionate this one is about something we too love to do. Let’s ILLUSTRATION CONRAD BOTES ILLUSTRATION PHOTO JAN VERBOOM

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grant him access to the real thing – he is bound to be grateful.”

Back in Johannesburg, day one of the winter vac: I made my way to ME Stores in Randburg, where I used my savings (I ran a tuckshop from the trunk beneath my bed) to buy a basic fly-fishing rod, reel and spool of line.

My family lived across from a periurban Country Club and that evening I practiced casting on the fourth fairway, eventually building up the courage to send the line out over a water hazard. Even without a hooked ending the line became ensnared, and the reel jammed when I tried to pull free. I broke the rod down, wrapped the surplus line around it and stalked home. Back in my room I closed my flea market copy of The Compleat Angler and scrunched up my notes, which included definitions of words like double taper; tippet; palming; presentation; and roll cast. That last term was a punch in the guts: Roll Cast, noun, A cast in which the angler does not throw the line backwards. Why not abandon euphemism and just call it a fucking Magic Cast? I prepared to excuse myself from the trip and live with the consequences, which would surely include a premature end to a promising friendship.

The phone rang. Lots of stammering.

Lots of apologising, on his side.

Dullstroom was off – his old man had done his back. I had said not to worry, we would bag those monsters yet. He said we undoubtedly would.

The line crackled and my spirit soared free. Then a surprise proposal: his father had this friend, he said, who owned this farm to the north of the city, not far from Lanseria Airport.

On it were dams stocked with the biggest largemouth bass in the country. Of course the estate rule was fly rods only, and there was just one window of opportunity available: that afternoon. All I had to do was say “no” and I would have been in the clear, but an hour later I was in a taxi on a veld-bitten road north of North Riding, staring at a leathern tube that had entered the vehicle with my friend.

My friend nervous.

nodded.

He

looked

“Couldn’t resist bringing her along,” he had said, adding, “Split-cane Hardy – inherited her from my grandfather.”

“You little fucks killed eight go-away birds. They were found rotting in the bushes by the river.”

“And you only shot at pigeons?”

After only a momentary hesitation my friend said, “I can’t lie, Jef. We took aim at some loeries that we felt were scaring off the pigeons.”

“You’re not going to get a line in from there,” I had cautioned.

I’ve never fully understood the distinctions that sports hunters draw between species but this seemed transgressive even to me, and I shifted a few feet away from my friend, on the pretext of picking up a ball.

His determination to cast in impossible conditions had everything to do with his recent disgrace, and I tried to raise him up by lowering myself.

The breach between our worlds widened when he described our host: an unspeakably wealthy man famed on two continents for his eccentricity and his impeccable morals. When we pulled up to the bluestone farmhouse this man – Jef – stepped right out of legend, wearing tennis whites and clutching three rackets, at least one of them wooden.

“First tennis, then fishing.”

The game was quite simple. Any ball that cleared the net was a valid service and the ball remained in play no matter where it went, and for as long as it was moving. Jef played alone, using the perimeter fence to ricochet his shots and occasionally chipping the ball back at us with his foot. After half an hour of this he motioned us to the net.

“Did you enjoy the pigeon shoot last weekend?” Jef asked, facing my friend.

“We didn’t get many, but it was great fun.”

“You were paired with the Parkinson boy, weren’t you?”

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could drop a line in from here, right onto the thing,” I had suggested. My friend, assembling the Hardy, showed no interest.

My own crimes were granular compared to this slaughter of crested birds, and best of all Jef forbade us from fishing the bass dams, as a punishment. “You can fish the river,’ he had said, meaning the Jukskei, a stretch of which slithered across the bottom of his property. We set off downhill, and I can’t recall if we giggled or swore or said nothing. We smelled the city-borne river before we saw it – a carbolic whiff compounded of phosphates and faeces – and yet holding the current, in the middle, was a barbel. It was approximately two foot long and unfazed by our approach, which was noisy owing to some dense riparian bush. A footbridge went over the river, and I climbed on for a better view. “We

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“Roll cast,” he’d grunted.

“You know I can’t really roll cast,” I’d admitted, but he was already tossing the line upwards and out, upwards and out – the loop of line growing larger and larger but remaining vertical to the bushes behind. It was pure wizardry, but he became mesmerised by his own dexterity, indulging unnecessary iterations until I saw, from the bridge-top, a section of line settling on a thorn-tree branch.

It was a second before my friend chopped his arm forwards, aiming at a stretch of water just upstream from the dozing catfish. The Hardy snapped like a stick, and not at the ferrule. My friend had stared at the broken item and his shoulders had started heaving. He looked up at me, tears of laughter streaming down his face.

“I’m so screwed – this is my father’s rod. I took it without telling him.”

We spent the remaining hours of that afternoon inventing elaborate stories he could tell his father, and laughing at the events of the day – the mad tennis, the go-away birds and the incensed randlord, and now the snapped heirloom. We laughed hardest when I confessed to plagiarising a story from a fishing magazine, no longer fearing loss of face and friendships, because we were now confederates.

We’ve been friends ever since, my friend and I. I haven’t seen him in a very long time but when his house burned down recently with all his family’s possessions in it, I was the first person he called.

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A UN outpost in the demilitarized zone between Turkish Cyprus and Greek Cyprus.

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FINDING LIFE AT THE EDGE OF THE DEAD ZONES

FROM CYPRUS TO ZIM AND BACK AGAIN ON THE FINS OF BREAM, PLATON TRAKOSHIS FINDS THAT LIFE GOES FULL CIRCLE

“Be careful you don’t get lost and drive into the dead zone and get caught by Turkish soldiers.” Mrs Maria Trakoshis (aka my ma), aged 86.

Like my father and his brothers before me, my brother and I fish. And like his old man, my son Stavro fishes. His little brother will no doubt do the same when he’s old enough.

It’s in our blood.

That’s Greek blood. Well actually I’m a Greek Cypriot, but I doubt you know there’s a difference. I grew up fishing for bream in Zimbabwe where my family lived. These days I live in South Africa so I’m also South African. GreekCypriot-Zimbabwean-South African. One foot in Africa, one back in the old country if you like. Forget Sout Piel, try Chakalaka Halloumi Piel.

Greeks and more specifically Cypriots in my case, return home to the island. Some return home for good, like my ma and papa who moved back there when Zimbabwe fell

to pieces. Others visit often like me and my family, wallow in the Mediterranean sun, get fat for a few weeks on our cousins’ food of dolmades, olives, souvla and lamb and for a moment we are reunited.

Unlike most family holidays where I can factor in some fly fishing, that’s not usually part of the equation when visiting Cyprus. Until now.

I discovered via my Cypriot nephew and friends that there are some dams with incredible fishing. Of late, back home in South Africa I have become obsessed with fly fishing for carp. These Cyprus dams have big carp. Ergo… I want a shot at them.

After digging around the Cyprus fishing sites, good references kept coming up about a reservoir called Achna with an abundance of carp up to an astounding 20kg.

And unlike the steep-sided reservoirs found elsewhere in Cyprus, this place is shallow with a gradual gradient,

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making it perfect for fly fishing. The reason I’d never heard of Achna was because it is in the dry, dusty eastern side of the island in the flat lands standing all on its own, far from the mountains of Trodos where snow falls and fills reservoirs dotted around its foothills.

The catch? Achna’s is usually closed to fishing and it’s right next to the DMZ (Demilitarised Zone).

A little like North Korea, Cyprus has a DMZ. It’s a divided land. To the north, Turkish occupied Cyprus. To the south, Greek Cyprus where my family comes from. In 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus and occupied 34% of the northern half. Between the “border lines” is a strip of land called the dead zone, which is patrolled and controlled by the UN with their barbwire, sitting squat and ugly like washed-out trinkets joined by chains across an ageing belly dancer’s boep. Unresolved for over 40 years now. Despite the fact that Greek and Turkish Cypriots cross the border on a daily basis going about their business, what goes on there is highly regulated.

Even if a random Cyrpiot-Zimbabwean-South African on vacation wants to catch carp on fly.

That’s why my ma is stressing.

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She’s one to talk. After years of secret letter writing, she left Cyprus accompanied by a stern Brienne of Tarth-type escort to join my father in Zimbabwe or what was then Rhodesia. That meant travelling by ship through the Suez Canal down along the east coast of Africa to Mozambique and onto Rhodesia by train. They got married in a tiny Greek church in a small town of Selekwe and spent 50 years in Zimbabwe, most of their life. Sticking it out after independence until things just became impossible before moving back to the family village in Cyprus. She knows risk. As far as I’m concerned, fly fishing in the DMZ is not even close.

The “Achna Carp on Fly” plan is set in motion. Emails are written, promises made, forms filled out, backs scratched and exchanges take place in the form of me doing a fly-tying demo for the curious members of the Cyprus Freshwater Angling Association in return for one day’s fishing on the fabled waters of Achna. A delegation is formed to accompany me: my guide is Phivos Papachristophorou (who happens to be president of the Cyprus Freshwater Angling Association), my nephew Charalambos “Bambis” Hadjimireos is the photographer and Maria from the Fisheries Department is there to observe, the department having generously decided to give me a pass.

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Left to right - abandoned streets in the UN buffer zone in central Nicosia; Grandpa Trakoshis at left handling the spit braai on a fishing trip. Main picture at right; Platon Trakoshis chases aliens in his ancestral home.

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No pressure.

With my mother’s warning ringing in my ears, we set off.

looking at their hands for signs of cuts from bream’s spiny fins caused by handling many that day. No one revealed the truth.

The road to Achna runs along the edge of the dead zone, where signs riddled with bullet holes warn you not to enter the occupied Turkish area. There are Greek Cypriot military posts, followed by UN outposts, and in the far distance you can make out the Turkish outposts. We can see the old abandoned Achna village in the dead zone. It’s eerie and I always feel for the local refugees who can see their old homes but can’t live there anymore. Bambis’ father’s family are from a village in the occupied north, so the division runs deep for them.

The Achna bream are spooky as hell. I’m loving this sight fishing, have quite a few shots, but they give me the finger dashing off into deeper water at seeing my offerings.

At first, Achna reservoir looks enticing. There’s plenty of structure but as we walk along the banks, rod at the ready, looking into the water for any signs of life, we discover there’s only a couple of feet of visibility, the water is low and the skeletons of tilapia are scattered all over the place.

Dead fish next to the dead zone – this is not a good sign.

Fortified and determined not to go home fishless, Phivos spots a few good-size bass jumping for dragonflies in an area of shallow water with drowned trees. I tie on a dragonfly nymph pattern I call the Lalu Bug that has been working for me on the tricky carp in my home waters.

Made from the fur of a wild Cyprus hare that I scrounged from my uncle Arkis the previous year, I’m convinced it will change the game. The bream also show up, but the wind picks up so they’re harder to see. On my second cast, I let the fly sink, a slow short strip and my line tightens, I lift the rod, fish on! I’m elated. I know bream, but these ones are different, much brighter in colour. Feisty little buggers in fine condition, I admire their blue colouring, big red tail and huge red-tipped flared fins compared to so many others of this species I’ve caught before. My later research reveals that these beauties are blue tilapia, Oreochromis aureus.

Phivos has walked ahead, spotted some carp and signals me over, but by the time I get to him they’ve ghosted away.

I find a perch on a rock and stand patiently and wait and watch for their return. They don’t. Migrating bee eaters call out their ethereal shrill from up above. I’m starting to feel a dark disappointment creeping in. Phivos knows his shit and is one of those guys who catches fish when others can’t. Despite the rusty umbrella poles and deck chairs left behind by poachers and float fishermen and the fact that he hasn’t fished Achna in years, as ever he remains positive.

“You’ll definitely catch.”

We keep searching and as we approach the dam wall where the water is a bit clearer we see some movement, but it’s not carp. A closer look reveals fat bream in shallow water. The fish of my youth!

Bream and fishing permission (or lack thereof) = the story of my life. As a kid growing up in Zim, I fished for tiny bream in the Selekwe park pond on a bent pin and squashed grasshoppers while avoiding the groundsman at all costs. My father was always trying to work out which of his Greek fishing buddies where fishing where, permission to fish on farmers’ dams was where you really hammered them. It was about which farmers you knew, in my father’s case, those who came to his shop for supplies every Friday. The offers of discount helped permission being granted and the obligatory Sunday paper and a bottle of whiskey before hitting the dam usually sealed the deal. At the Greek club after a weekend of fishing it was all cigar smoke and mirrors while some players sipped whiskeys glancing across the Saturday night poker game guessing what was in the other player’s hand, my father would be

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The hours pass in a haze, the Mediterranean sun beating down on us as we occasionally spot big orange shapes milling about, always out of range and lacking interest.

We break for lunch – homemade halloumi, village breads, local tomatoes and cured meats – sharing stories of fishing and food.

Whooping and high fiving with a fish ticked, the life comes back into us. Next cast I hook another. We’re onto something here and the Lalu Bug is working. Then the small fly gets nailed by something heavy – a huge bass Phivos has had his eye on. It rolls twice before it throws the little hook. “Gamoto!” as some choice Greek cussing escape me. But I’m soon back at the bream and I catch another beauty. Bigger than the others I hold it up to the light admiring its colour as it flares its fins, look into its face and think, “Hello old friend.” I came for carp, but this is better. I’m in my element sight fishing to the fish of my childhood on fly, me an alien of sorts. The sun is setting and I feel a deep sense of contentment.

A few days later I show some photos to my brother Luke, I see a twinkle in his eye as he admires the bream with surprise. I think of my father and the days we talked while bream fishing together, waiting for them to come on.

Days I hope to share with my boys, Stavro having already caught a few hand-sized bream. I dig out a mounted bream my dad caught back in the ’80s. Stavro admires it, a little seed gets planted.

The circle is complete.

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Blue tilapia caught in the UN Buffer Zone of Cyprus.

“WE KEEP SEARCHING AND AS WE APPROACH THE DAM WALL WHERE THE WATER IS A BIT CLEARER WE SEE SOME MOVEMENT, BUT IT’S NOT CARP. A CLOSER LOOK REVEALS FAT BREAM IN SHALLOW WATER. THE FISH OF MY YOUTH!” 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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PROVIDENCE

LOW-RIDING AVOCADO SALMA HAYEK A N D R E VA N W Y K F I N D S L O V E A N D L U S T I N A BAR CALLED PROVIDENCE

S

ometimes you don’t know you’re obsessed with something till it smacks you right in the face.

Like you never even knew about it, had never thought about it or even seen it, never knew it existed. The way I never knew I liked Latina girls until I saw Salma Hayek walk down the street in Desperado and realised that my ultimate fantasy might just be to become a rivulet of sweat, if it meant I could slither my way down that slope of caramel cleavage.

Sometimes you don’t know you’re obsessed with something until the right version of that something comes along, or it doesn’t fit with what’s cool, what’s hip. As a metalhead youth, I hated rap till I heard Snoop and Dr Dre low-riding through Compton sipping on gin and juice. I went out and bought a bottle of Tanqueray right then and there.

Sometimes you don’t know you’re obsessed with something until you try it. You might have seen it, heard about it, thought about it, but until you do it, you have no idea. Like avocados. As a kid there was no way you could convince me to eat something that looked like green whipped instant pudding. And then I tried it and proceeded to spend my teens living off avo on toast… Eight slices at a time.

Bumphead parrotfish are my LowRiding Avocado Salma Hayek.

Thirty-seven trips round the sun prepare you for some things in life.

Depending on how deeply you indulge, some are more prepared than others. I’ve indulged myself rather enthusiastically in my 37 round trips. I’ve seen some things, I’ve heard some things, I’ve danced round the fire, eaten the fruit and vomited in the car park (and in the bar). Along the way some fish were caught, some pretty decent ones too, some that I was even a little bit obsessed with, but those obsessions were long courtships. Like that first high school crush: you knew you were hooked, her skirt was just that little bit shorter than the others, an almost imperceptible inch, but you knew. You wrote letters, you talked, you held hands, you eased your way into that infatuation and you kinda knew it was coming.

My Low-Riding Avocado Salma Hayek was not so gentle. Of course I’d seen the pictures and videos. I’d talked to fishermen and guides who had caught them. I’d even tied and bought flies from others better at it, specifically for bumpies. Standing on the seam of a middle-of-nowhere flat, thigh deep in the warm Indian Ocean, I watched a score of shovelsized aquamarine tails waving at me less than 20 yards away and realised that my Low-Riding Latina Avocado obsession had just run up and delivered a running fuck slap to the side of my head.

Photos Tarquin Millington-Drake

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There is nothing normal about Avocado Salma, in fact there is nothing about her that makes any sense at all, maybe that’s part and parcel of an individual obsession.

This fish should simply not really exist the way it does. It’s grotesquely beautiful, frighteningly stupid and skittish, magnificent and macabre.

I understand GTs. I understand bonefish. I understand triggerfish, or at least the idea of them… I even understand permit – well, actually no, I don’t understand permit, no one does – screw those things anyway.

Snooty bastards with their big beautiful eyes and perfect skin and long glistening sickle tails and lemonkissed flanks. Pretentious pricks – but I can understand their existence and the pursuit.

Avocado Salma, on the other hand… I can’t wrap my head around something that looks like that, being where it is, being that big, and I must now throw a tiny crab fly at, well, a whole herd of them, on a spindly piece of carbon, and with a daftly skinny leader expect to triumph? Ja well no fine… Avocado Salma has now gone from a little interesting box in the back attic of my mind, to a full-blown real life Pandora’s Box smashing around my cerebral cortex.

Two hours into the morning, standing there rubbing the side of my face still stinging from the proverbial running fuck slap,

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I’m watching a scene play out. I have the right fly, I have a right arm that when it behaves could get its shit together and put out a cast. I have the advice of a calm and experienced guide. I watch, my obsession grabbing hold deeper and deeper with every blue spade waving at me, every bright gnarled head smashing into the bottom to dislodge (or brain) crabs from the coral bottom.

This is terminal.

I’m in a seedy bar district called Providence. My head is hazy at this stage of the party so where it is exactly is hard to tell. Take a right off Playa de los Muertos (or was it Puerto Escondido), a longhaul flip to Mahé, jump on a boat and then another boat and slosh through shallows out in the Indian Ocean. Vegas meets Valhalla, Havana bumping uglies with Copacabana, somewhere out there it’s the kind of place that shapeshifts in your brain depending on which day of the binge you are on. I’m halfway through my second or third beer too many and suddenly, Dutch Courage or some such voodoo venom flowing through my veins, I start to believe in myself. That hot Salma Hayek-looking betty at the bar who has been making eyes at me all evening, I think she’s keen. She wants me, the South African labradoodle. I’m in with a chance.

I stroll up, and surprise even myself by delivering a pretty charming opening salvo. She laughs, her broad smile might be goofy to some, but for me it’s perfect. Obsession builds. Holy shit, I reckon I’m in here. But then she turns to the bar, slams her tequila and suddenly I realise I’ve got this all wrong. Salma is walking out, with nary a goodbye, a wink, a “so nice to meet chooo.” GONE. I’m left standing there with my fly down, drooling like The Don and with my heart beating faster than it should. Just being in her orbit, I had a taste. Reeling away drunk, I can still smell her perfect perfume, a mixture of cinnamon, tequila and redemption.

The obsession is now full blown. All I can see in my mind’s eye is us running through the shallows together, Jon Secada or Gloria Estefan belting it out in the background, perhaps even the Baywatch tune.

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A beautiful portrait of me kneeling in the water, Salma cradled in my tired arms, is all I see looping in my head. It’s all I want.

The bender continues into the next day where I find myself back in a different bar. Salma is there again and as yesterday’s rejection starts to fade after a few more beers I decide to take my chance. Perhaps foolishly, considering I’m kitted out in my finest 8 feet 8 inches of Epic Kiwi glass, I decide to ask her to dance the salsa wiggle. It’s not a dance for the faint of heart or the stiff of hip and inviting a booty-shaking salsa beast onto the dance floor is risky business…

But I know avocado and salsa go together like Forrest and Jenny, and I’m gonna gets me some tacos.

I can cut a rug, I can shake a leg, and when the beers have been flowing, I can down right squeak some grade-A tekkie. I’m keeping up with Salma, but as the first song fades, and the jukebox keys up the next ditty, I realise once again that this is may be just too much mamma for me. She leaves me shaking on the dance floor, busts out through the swinging doors and into the night.

We – me and my bar-hopping wingman Timbo Babich – stumble out after her, but she’s turned the ignition on her V12, dropped a gear and mashed that dusty six-inch stiletto to the floor. All we see are taillights heading straight out into the darkness. We give chase down the canyon, but this is Salma’s town, and Salma’s time, and she knows where to hide. The gossamer strand of hope that once held us together comes fluttering back to me in the wind…

I’m destroyed, feeling rejected, confused. Did I come on too strong?

Did I not come on strong enough?

Did I dance like a dick? The only thing I know is the obsession is now moving into capital letter territory. It’s taking on its only personality, has its own moods, desires, mannerisms and in all honesty, I’m not particularly fond of it. Even the girls back at the bar, the beautiful silver waifs with pursed lips who are easy pickings can’t satisfy me. I try amusing myself on the dance floor with a couple

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of biker girls, cause I need the pain to distract from the Obsession. They give me a rev or two, but it helps little.

We’ve got one more bar to visit.

Yesterday’s hangover has me sulking and drinking straight lime and sodas.

There was interest there. I have Salma’s number or she has mine. Now, I need to convert. I’m sitting for a long time before she shows up again. I get a fright when I raise my head and there she is. Without thinking, I just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. She turns to look at me, half smiles and is gone again.

The barkeep calls last rounds, the tide of this party is up around my waist.

My weaponry has been soaking in salt (my tears perhaps) for over an hour. I drain the last dregs of my drink, turn to leave and there she is – Low-Riding Avocado Salma, in all her glory, getting her grin on with a pack of her beautiful friends. She’s out front, leading them from the bar like Joan of Arc… a flying V of perfect line-dancing chaos. In a desperate last-ditch effort to get her attention, I reach across the bar, grab a bottle of Patrón, pour a double shot and with every iota of deluded hope left in my soul, I sling shot that glass sliding down the bar. At the last moment, just as that precious goblet of blue agave is about to fly off the counter and shatter, along with my dreams, she turns, reaches out and grabs it. Looking back up the bar towards me, she throws her head back and shoots it right down her throat.

Connection.

My Hail Mary worked. Dragging me onto the dance floor by the hand, she locks me into a dance I don’t know the steps for. Tonight’s wingman, Jay-Dog Rollinson, is suddenly in my eye line, waving instructions, showing me the moves, guiding me through the first minute of pure chaos and carnage as I pinball around the floor of the bar, which has suddenly become a minefield of obstacles. With a huge open dance floor, Avocado Salma

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- Dancing with boney waifs, while fun for Andre van Wyk, was no match for the rambunctious twerking he experienced with bumphead parrotfish. Photo Justin Rollinson 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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Salma poses for one last goofy grin before making her getaway.

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shows her true self and shunts me in amongst the tables and angry drunk patrons instead. Her friends join in, trying to cut between us.

It’s all I can do to hang on, to keep her in my arms. Jay-Dog, the consummate wingman, is doing what he can, moving tables, throwing drunk dancers out the way, diving under a table to unwrap Salma’s dress where it briefly catches on a smashed bottle neck.

Slowly the longest and most stressful dance of my life begins to calm. The musical tempo kicks down a notch, like Antônio Carlos Jobim is in charge now. Jay-Dog has put another couple of bucks into the jukebox, so he’s controlling the flow. Now it’s just me and Salma. We’re close. She knows I wanna kiss her, but she’s playing hard to get. I finally trust myself enough to talk to her: “I just wanna hold you, baby.”

The music slows almost to a stop and Salma matches it. My Low-Riding Latina Avocado Goddess Obsession, someone I barely knew existed three days prior, turns her head, and slowly says “ola mi amor” in the lushest baritone I have ever heard.

As Salma whispers something inaudible about Fools Rush In and Desperado, Jay-Dog doubling as one of those Thunda.com club photographers prepares to take a snap of us. A snapshot of a memory I’ll never forget, one I’ll show and tell to all my mates back home for decades to come.

But Salma has one last surprise in store. As I go in for the smooch, her tequila goggles slip for a second and in a moment of sobriety she realises what she’s done, who I am and the tidal pool of regret she’ll wake up with in the morning if that pic gets out. With a sudden lambada-style flick of her hips, she shakes free from my grasp and powers off into the night leaving behind only that cinnamon scent, a broken heart, and the deeprooted obsession within my soul for Latina girls in green and blue dresses who listen to Snoop Dog and dance like nothing I’ve ever known before.

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PROFILE

LEFTY KREH THE RIGHT STUFF

SHOOTING THE BREEZE WITH A A LIVING LEGEND

By Conrad Botes & Tudor Caradoc-Davies Photos Conrad Botes, Lefty Kreh Archive Retouching Jan Verboom

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“Sorry, what’s that?”

Lefty Kreh grins at me while waiting for me to repeat the question again.

I grin back, thinking I just enunciated like bloody Mary Poppins and not quite sure how to rephrase my question. I’m here in Maryland trying to conduct the biggest interview of my life (admittedly I am not journalist by trade so I have only done a few interviews), but this is Lefty Kreh, a hero and a role model for me. I cut my teeth on his book Fly Fishing in Salt Water. He is THE man.

But, despite us both speaking fly fishing, the man doesn’t understand 80% of what I am asking him. It’s my accent. I am an Afrikaans-speaking South African who speaks fluent English, but with a heavy accent.

And to top it off, I mumble at the best of times.

Fortunately, my buddy Brent FlackDavison has come along for the ride and despite also being a South African, he has been living in New York for years and now speaks ’Merican. Between the three of us, over the course of an afternoon we dive deep into Lefty’s life.

Catchphrases We were prepared. Lefty has some favourite lines, honed over countless interactions with the media. He did not disappoint. They include: 1. “We were so poor we couldn’t buy a mosquito underwear.”

2. “Putting a fly in there is like rolling a bottle of wine into a jail cell. Once you roll it in you’re never going to get it out again.”

3. “Did you look at your back cast?

Because it’s ugly as hell.”

Childhood crush “Smallmouth were the first fish I ever caught fresh or salt. River smallmouth.

I don’t care much for lake smallmouth.

I think the two freshwater fish I like the best are peacock bass and smallmouth bass.”

The nickname “My father died when I was six and I grew up in a black ghetto. Black people in this country give everybody nicknames. Since I excelled at sports and I was left handed they gave me my nickname when I was about eight years old.”

Breaking bad “In the ’40s I had never seen a fly rod. I’d just got back from the war and I was just having fun. Spinning tackle was just coming into our country. We were using little plug casting reels. Our rivers were all full of fish. Joe Brooks had just begun to write a tiny newspaper column.

It’s hard to realise, but back then there were only four hunting and fishing magazines in the United States and probably only a half a dozen newspaper columns on the outdoors. Joe came to fish with me with an Orvis bamboo rod. The wind was blowing and I said, ‘Mr Brooks, if you don’t have a plug casting rod, I can lend you one.’ Almost nobody catches as many fish as the local guy on his water. He didn’t do that but he caught an admirable number of fish. He had this line that looked as thick as a rope and a black and white fly. There were rings everywhere so

he drops this thing right into the ring about 20 feet away and catches a smallmouth. He did this about 20 times before I said, ‘Mr Brooks, I gots to have some of this.’ So the next day I drove to Baltimore. It was a Model A Ford so it took a couple of hours to get there and I bought his setup at Tochterman’s Sporting Goods, which, after 100 years, is still there. Mr Brooks picked the line it out for me, a GFA line. We went over to small stream, he gave me a lesson and left town the next day.”

Big names In a life well fished, Lefty has met a lot of famous people, both flyfishing famous and big-world famous outside of our nerdy niche. He’s not a name dropper by any means. They were just part of his journey and they pop up in the stories. He met Castro and Hemingway. He taught Michael Keaton how to cast. Huey Lewis called him two days ago. The old guard of fly fishing from Bob Clouser to Ted Jurascik, Flip Pallot, Larry Dahlberg and everyone else in between – they are his friends. Like, his real friends, not social media friends.

Casting with Castro “When Castro took over, Joe Brooks sent me and a bunch of writers down there. It was the week after the revolution and the country was broke because the other dictator took all the money, and we were there 18 days. We were observers on Castro’s boat for one day and two days on Hemingway’s boat. I didn’t know who Hemingway was. I knew he was an author… We were with him the next two days. It was ’59. I had never caught billfish.

“HE MET CASTRO AND HEMINGWAY. HE TAUGHT MICHAEL KEATON HOW TO CAST. HUEY LEWIS CALLED HIM TWO DAYS AGO. THE OLD GUARD OF FLY FISHING FROM BOB CLOUSER TO TED JURASCIK, FLIP PALLOT, LARRY DAHLBERG AND EVERYONE ELSE IN BETWEEN – THEY ARE HIS FRIENDS. LIKE, HIS REAL FRIENDS, NOT SOCIAL MEDIA FRIENDS.” 42

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They said Hemingway’s mate was the best in the world so I spent the whole first day with him learning to debone mullet and all that sort of stuff. The next day I said to Hemingway, ‘I don’t know much about writing, I’ve got a high school education. How do you know what good writing is?’

He thought about it and said, ‘Good writing can’t be edited.’”

Old Man Patagonia “Yvon Chouinard – five foot two and the toughest guy I ever met.

He hardly ever wears shoes. His feet are tougher than a badger’s motherin-law [another Lefty classic]. He’s climbed over 200 of them vertical mountains alone. Never talks about any of this stuff. I’ve known him for over 30 years maybe. He’s a neat guy.”

Cathy Beck “I taught her to cast, she teaches my

method and she’s the best all-round woman fly fisher in the world. She’s caught several of the billfish, blue marlin, she’s caught many trout over 10 pounds… Almost every species you could think of.”

It does not only count on fly He may love fly fishing, but fly fishing’s biggest name is no purist.

“My attitude is if it won’t take a fly, use lures. If it won’t take lures, use bait. I’m not one of those guys who only fly fishes or only uses dry flies.

Those guys are missing out. I’m going to catch the damn fish one way or another.”

Barriers “For a long time fly fishing was too expensive. If you wanted to buy a bamboo, glass or fibreglass rod up until 20 years ago, a working man could not afford to get his kids into fishing. It was just too expensive.”

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Numbers game “Competitions? I didn’t get in to fly fishing to beat people. I fly fish to have fun with people. A writer at some stage made an effort to find out how many different fish I ever caught on a fly rod. He came up with 117 different species. Of all the fish I ever caught, I’d rather catch bonefish.”

The bone collector “I learned how to land a 100-pound tarpon in 15 to 20 minutes. I got over that [obsessing over big fish] really quick. To me, bonefishing offers so much more. First of all you’re moving over your environment all the time.

Wading or in a boat. You’re fishing in shallow water with 6- to 8-weight rods. You’re using small flies. I think bonefish are so much smarter and more wary than tarpon are. You hook one and he runs off – I never seen a bonefish run more than a 150 yards and I’ve caught them up to 10 pounds

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“Never learn to cast the way most people teach, because this is the most inefficient way you can do it.”

had to catch a bass. I realised that that should apply to fly fishing. I began to slowly go back further and more sideways and I started casting much farther, much easier. It’s not a style, because I now know that it’s simple physics. I actually ended up doing a major article for Outdoor Magazine where the rod was completely extended parallel to the water behind me. The mail they got on that was something else!”

On his method

The tailing loop

“Joe Brooks taught me the 9 o’clock to 1 o’clock casting. I realised, having done a lot of bass fishing, that the longer you swam a lure through the water, the more opportunities you

“The most important thing in fly casting is to understand the stroke.

When you make a stroke, it’s either short or it’s long. It must continue to accelerate from the beginning

– maybe 50 yards, bring it back and then do the thing all over again. To me, it’s much harder to catch bigger bonefish. A bonefish over 8 pounds is a totally different bonefish from ones under that.”

A pearl of wisdom

and go faster. Every stroke has to start slower and then go faster. The stroke accelerates in the direction you want something to go, like if you want to throw a Frisbee or hit a ball.

Those are the three main ingredients there. If you start a stroke, a soon as the line is tight, the rod will start to bend. If you start a stroke real fast, what happens is you can’t keep going faster so what happens is, the rod unloads. Any time that you don’t continue to accelerate faster, from the beginning to the end, you’re going to unload your rod. It’s going to come up and then it’s going to fold back down so you’ve started in one direction and ended up going in another. That’s what causes all tailing loops.”

“THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN FLY CASTING IS TO UNDERSTAND THE STROKE. WHEN YOU MAKE A STROKE, IT’S EITHER SHORT OR IT’S LONG. IT MUST CONTINUE TO ACCELERATE FROM THE BEGINNING AND GO FASTER.” 46

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Double hauling “Double hauling does not make your line go faster, but everyone thinks it does. What makes your line go faster is how much you bend that particular rod. It differs from different models, but the amount of bend you put in any rod, when it straightens is what is making the cast. You’re not making it. What makes the double haul go faster is when you’re pulling off the water or against the line in the air, it’s resisting that and so the rod bends to make it do that and it’s the amount of extra bend you put into the rod that makes the cast, rather than you doing it with your hand. Now the hand controls the bend because the faster you accelerate, the more it works (or bends). What you really should do with a double haul is, with your line hand, replicate the exact stroke you did with your right hand.”

Man cave Lefty has the kind of fishing man cave that is both modest and impressive.

It’s modest in that it is not showy.

He’s not trying to wow anybody with his extensive collection of reels or rods (which are nonetheless hugely impressive on their own). First and foremost, it’s a functional workspace, with clever detail on the marking of rods, filing of flies, storing of gear.

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The overall idea being to have it all in arm’s reach rather than rolling around in a tumbleweed mess like many of us do.

Frenemies “I used to keep books at home, but all my friends, they will buy me a $100 dinner but they won’t buy my damn books! Then when you have them here and get them out and sign it, they think because you’re friends you ought to give it to them, so I stopped keeping all that stuff around. I gave up.”

A perfect day “My fishing is at least 90% or more who you’re with and the environment you’re fishing in. How many fish you catch… Well, in fact at the end of the day I don’t know how many fish I catch. My greatest pleasure is to take someone who’s never caught a trout, teach them a bit about casting, the fundamentals of drag and drift and stuff, go down with them and explain the problems, here’s the fish and what you’re going to do. And then to watch them catch that first fish is like me catching it all over again.

I don’t have to catch fish. I sit on a boat or on the flat or something and enjoy watching my friends catch fish.

Catching the fish… To me it’s always been about solving the problems.”

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Why 10% of fishermen catch more fish “I was given an assignment by a magazine editor on why 10% of fishermen catch more fish than anyone else. There are two overriding characteristics. One is that they’re intensely observant. For example, instead of fishing during a hatch, you wait till it’s over when nobody is there and you have concentrations of bugs centrifuging in eddies where the big fish are feeding. The other thing is that they do things ass backwards to everybody else. For example, Del Brown. Because they are so spooky we always tried to catch permit by throwing way ahead then bring the shrimp or the crab fly back. Del made that merkin and tapered the front end almost down to a point. He threw the fly on the permit’s nose to get a reactionary take. He did just the opposite of what everybody thought about it.”

Flip Pallot “I used to be an exhibition shooter for Remington Arms, shooting Aspirin tablets and shit out of the air. When I moved to Florida to run that big fishing tournament, I was there about a couple of weeks when this young man showed up at the door. It was Flip. He had no beard

We went to dinner that night and he kept saying, ‘That matherfaaker!’ He wanted to build a reel that put that guy out of business. He wanted me and Flip to write everything we do and don’t like about saltwater reels.

The next time we came down there, we sat down at the kitchen table after dinner and designed a Tibor. ‘Ted’ in Hungarian is ‘Tibor’.”

Lefty and Flip Pallot on the set of a TV show.

then. He said, ‘I heard that you used to be an exhibition shooter?’ I said, ‘Yeah. I haven’t done it in a while.’

He said, ‘I heard you could hit Aspirin tablets with a BB gun.’ If you take a BB gun and put a couple of drops of oil in the barrel and shoot six or eight BBs, you can hit the zero on a clock at 30 feet. An oil seal in there makes it very accurate. If you take the sights off, you’re looking at the target, at what you want to do and you actually see the BB in flight.

If your first four are off, mentally your body or mind will adjust to it.

I would teach people to hit Aspirin tablets and when you hit one it turns into little white puffs. Well, Flip had two Aspirin boxes, 4 000 BBs, a gun and some oil. He shot all 4 000 BBs and got them good. He’s the greatest hunter I ever met. Uses a longbow for most of it.”

“That matherfaaker!”

“Ted Jurascik, Flip Pallot and I used to come down almost every year to fish the Everglades where Ted had a second home. He was a master machinist in Hungary when he was 15, the youngest to ever get that degree. He was in the Budapest revolution, escaped to Austria and was in a Catholic orphanage before eventually coming over to the USA and moving to Florida. That’s when I met him. Every May we would go down there and fish, because that’s when the tarpon would come through.

He was at a show in San Matteo and a competitor, a reel manufacturer, who was copying a lot of his stuff and other people’s, came over and made some snide remark about his skill and the quality of his reels. Ted has that accent which is something else.

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The one that got away “I made two dorado trips from Quito, Ecuador. It took a long time to get there. This was back in the ’70s. We made a long trip on mules or horses taking a day to get down through the jungle to the rivers. Bill Barnes had caught a 30-pounder down there, but when we got there jungle rains came and ruined the river. Two different trips. God did not want me to catch a dorado.”

River Rambos “The most amazing fish I ever caught was those New Guinea black bass.

When I caught them I think there were only six or eight guys who had ever caught them on fly rod. They’re in the same genus family as the cubera snappers, but they’re a dark greenish black and they live in the tidal rivers in New Guinea. We were making a TV show down there. We flew up from Australia, then flew in a helicopter to a river and they opened up the jungle and built a thatched hut up there. That night Rod Harris, who was the top fisherman down there, was rigging up our rods and lures, taking all the hooks off and putting extra-heavy hooks on and putting 40- or 50-pound line on. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ and he just said, ‘These fish are bad.’ The Australians call them River Rambos.

We’d been in the Outback for a couple of weeks and they had played more jokes than anybody so I figured he was joking. Just to be sure I put 20-pound test tippet on with a piece of 80-pound on the front. We go down to the river and the only two rods he’s got in the boat are the 40-

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Lefty with a large Florida poon as shot by Bob Stearns. The fish is slipping out of his grip in the shot and according to Lefty he was shouting to Bob, “Hurry up and shoot the photo, this son of a bitch is getting heavy!”

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Poetry in motion as the master lays out a cast.

to 50-pound rods. What they do is lay under the fallen trees and dart out. They live under the brackish water in the river mouth. Where a big palm tree had fallen down he took out his pliers, locked his drag down and put the 40-pound out there with a big Rapala with extra-strong hooks.

This thing came out from behind that tree and snapped the 40-pound test like it was 8X tippet. I snipped that light shit off my rod really fast.

I got the fly rod ready, a sailfish rod with a 12-weight line and I got this big, heavy Tibor reel and a big 5/0 deceiver with a weed guard. I threw it back in there and a big ’un comes out and hits it. I hit it like I would a tarpon or something. That thing burned a white groove in my hand.

You couldn’t hold him. I got re-rigged with the 40-pound. When I hooked the next one, I shouted ‘Hit it!’ and we backed out into the middle of

the river. They only last about two minutes but it’s the damndest two minutes you ever seen in your life.

My biggest I think was about 28 pounds. I’d never caught a fish like that. I caught a lot of cuberas, but nothing like that.”

Gospel truth “Ain’t nobody ever gotten heart attack fighting a trout.”

The left ventricle “Larry [Dahlberg, of Dahlberg Diver fame] and I was supposed to go to Cuba today. They found out my heart only pumps at 34% now at 92 years old and so I can’t go. If I do any physical stuff I have to sit down and rest for a while before I can carry on.

It was gonna be an eight-day trip but I ain’t up to this.”

Kids “When my son Larry was 10 years old he could cast 100 feet of fly line.

We spent an enormous amount of time together. Me and my wife were married 66 years, the best marriage I ever knew, I took care of myself the last two years. We spent a lot of time on our kids and I think I might have fished him too much, but he’ll go any time I go and he’s the most devoted son anybody ever met. My wife was a great cook so I never learnt to cook. I can make coffee and steam in the kitchen and that’s it. My son is a great cook and lives 15 minutes from here. He comes over every night that I’m home and he fixes a good healthy dinner. You get a kid to fish with you, your kid or any kid, and he’s your pal for life. It’s a good thing to teach about life – about patience, observation, people.”

Visit www.themissionflymag.com for Lefty’s fly fishing hacks.

“MY GREATEST PLEASURE IS TO TAKE SOMEONE WHO’S NEVER CAUGHT A TROUT, TEACH THEM A BIT ABOUT CASTING, THE FUNDAMENTALS OF DRAG AND DRIFT AND STUFF, GO DOWN WITH THEM AND EXPLAIN THE PROBLEMS, HERE’S THE FISH AND WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO DO.” 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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L AT ES T R E L E A S ES

THE SALAD BAR G. LOOMIS – ASQUITH For a long time, G.Loomis fly rods have been like honest politicians – incredibly difficult to find, especially if you happened to find yourself living in Southern Africa. Until now. G.Loomis devotees have good reason to rejoice because not only is the brand available from the new Big Catch Fly store, but they have the latest range too.

Enter the Asquith (also a descriptor for our visual impairment after one too many witblits) Designed by world casting champion Steve Rajeff (brother of Tim from Echo rods) and built on Shimano’s proprietary Spiral X platform, G. Loomis Asquith rods are sensitive and strong, like A.B de Villiers and his pop career, boasting incredible power transfer from tip to hand, quick recovery, and increased sensitivity. Big Catch Fly have stock of the 5, 6, 9, 10 and 12-weights, so you can expect fast actions, generous power levels, titanium guides, and exceptionally light swing weight. Still a fan of the established G. Loomis ranges? Big Catch Fly ALSO stock the full range of NRX from 3-12-weight and the GLX Crosscurrent in the popular salt water 9-weight and 12-weight. www.bigcatch.co.za

RIO - DIRECTCORE FLATS PRO FLY LINE

solid strip sets and shortened fight times. Translation: more fish. But wait, there’s more. They have also worked the triple colour distance-marking design of RIO’s SureFire technology into this line, meaning you are less likely to overshoot a cast on that dream fish because you’ll have a better idea of just how much line is out. While the DirectCore Flats Pro line is available in floating models, there’s also a clear tip “StealthTip” option that features a full-float head with six feet of clear intermediate at the tip. This nearly invisible front section allows for shorter leaders and easier, more accurate casts, while the increased density provides greater wind penetration. Because when you’re on the flats you want to be direct and a pro, right? R1820, www.xplorerflyfishing.co.za

Fresh from winning a bunch of awards at international fly fishing shows, RIO’s new flagship saltwater fly line has been designed specifically for anglers hitting tropical flats in search of bonefish, permit and tarpon. Built with a front taper that loads easily at close range, and with a mid-length head and extended back taper that provides stability for fast, accurate, long-distance casts, this line carries a whack of tech too. There’s DirectCore, RIO’s new proprietary low-memory, low-stretch monofilament core that retains its stiffness in tropical heat, yet lies straight on the water without curl or retraction. According to Rio, that results in 30% less stretch than regular tropical saltwater fly lines,

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

ODYSSEY – PHANTOM & MAVERICK FLY REELS New on the scene, Odyssey fly reels are light weight machine cut fly reels made from T6061 aircraft grade aluminum bar stock. The sealed nano carbon disk drag offers a low inertia on startup to protect light leaders and tippets while offering a smooth strong drag when serious breaking power is required.

The Phantom series fit the bill for everything from finessed small stream fishing to banging out big flies for salt water species. Machine cut aluminium construction gives you a good-looking lightweight reel with a smooth sealed drag system at a great price.

The Maverick series boast the same quality technology as the Phantom series only think of them as the jazzed up version with a retro metallic colour combo finish.

Bonus: Odyssey rods and reels come with a limited lifetime warranty for the original owner. If you are unhappy with your rod or reel for any reason it will be replaced by Odyssey with a brand new rod or reel at 60% off the recommended retail price. Both series are available in 2-4 WT, 4-6 WT, 5-7 WT, 8-10 WT, 10-12 WT models. www.bigcatch.co.za

FLY MEN FISHING COMPANY - SURFACE SEDUCER South Africa took gold at the recent IFTD/ICAST show in Florida when the Surface Seducer Double Barrel won the ‘Best of Show - Freshwater Fly Pattern’ category. Ok, the fly and the Flymen Fishing Company took gold, but owner Martin Bawden is an ex-pat South African and just as we claim Roger Federer because his mom is South African we’re claiming this too, ok?

The Double Barrel has several unique design advantages over other popper bodies with a deeper cup, extended top lip, recessed eye sockets, a tail socket and popper skin. The versatile foam head can be tied on with the cup facing forward to create popper flies, or tied on in reverse for sliders, divers, and Sneaky Pete style foam flies. Available from Mavungana FlyFishing, www.flyfishing.co.za XPLORER – FLEX REELS One of a bevy of new reels coming out from Xplorer towards the end of this year, the Flex is a contender for king of the mid-range reels. Made from strong, light composite polymer material, it sports a simple one way bearing disc drag system with a rear adjusting drag knob that creates a smooth and effective drag. It will be available in three sizes, 2/3wt, 5/7wt and 8/9wt and starting at around R330, you can arguably get all three and save the rest of your Randelas for the actual missions. www.xplorerflyfishing.co.za

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L AT ES T R E L E A S ES

THE SALAD BAR LOOP – ROD AND REEL BAG Picture the scene. You, rocking up at your destination.

On your back, a specialized rod and reel-carrying backpack.

Like Deadpool or a steamy pool shark with a custom cue bag, you lift it from your shoulders to reveal your weapons of choice. With an internal layout that can be configured to various storage solutions for different needs and can easily hold a large selection of rods and reels, Loop’s rod and reel travel bag is made from water protected 420D Nylon fabric with a PVC inside and has transparent inside pockets for tippets, leaders, fly boxes and other small items. Best of all, a set of hidden carrying straps allows you to transform it into a backpack, like a sniper with a gun bag. www.flyfishing.co.za

LOOP – DUFFLES Available in 50 and 90 litres, these all-purpose bags are perfect for all your crap. Made from heavy gauge welded PVC tarp and fitted with removable shoulder straps, they are 100% waterproof up to zipper level (should they fall off your boat in the Zambezi and get retrieved quickly) and semi-dry above. Made from the highest quality YKK zippers and Duraflex buckles these bags are rugged, dependable and capable of handling your frenzied stuffing of smelly gear before heading home. www.flyfishing.co.za

REDINGTON – I.D REEL Don’t want no stinking same-same chrome, black, silver or gold anodized reels? The new i.D fly reel from Redington allows you to customize to your heart’s content. With a flat back surface, you can simply remove, stack or swap to update the look from your favourite fish species to a pink donut and “Strip, Strip, Set” in neon disco lights. Made from sturdy cast aluminum construction, a smooth rulon disc drag, and a large arbor for speedy line retrieve, they’ll provide function AND form. Available in a 3/4wt, 5/6wt and 8/9wt, with a wide variety of decals for customization and personal expression.

R1890, www.xplorerflyfishing.co.za

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THOMAS & THOMAS – LOTIC FIBREGLASS A story about this rod, from the recent ICAST/IFTD show in Orlando: While testing the feel of new rods at the new showcase section, a well-known, well-traveled and wellrespected industry figure said, “I don’t get the hype around fiberglass rods.

They don’t do it for me.” He then proceeded to wiggle a few rods in the new product testing zone before picking up the Lotic and saying, “Wow. I love the feel of this. Perfect for a small stream. What is it?” He turned the rod over and voila, it was the new T&T fiberglass, the Lotic. It

was an understandable mistake when you understand what the man who built the rod, Thomas & Thomas’s Joe Goodspeed, set out to achieve with it. Goodspeed says, “The Lotic is an aggressive design concept that really maximizes the performance attributes of S glass. S glass isn’t brand new to rod manufacturing, but new enough that a consensus taper style and manufacturing strategy for developing the best actions hasn’t been achieved.

As a result, the competing fiberglass rods made from S glass (as opposed to the traditional E glass, which has a lower strength to weight ratio and less rigidity) have a wide range or taper strategies and actions. Lotic Glass

design strategy takes a fresh look at how to build a rod action with this material, resulting in a very unique product that blends the recovery time and light weight of high performance graphite with the deep flex profile and open loop shape typical of fiberglass rods. Basically, someone with the muscle memory developed by years of double-hauling fast action graphite rods can cast a Lotic rod without a major adjustment of their casting stroke or timing and deliver flies without a major sacrifice in capability – with a rod that will flex to the cork when a fish is hooked, and maintains the supreme durability of fiberglass” From $595, thomasandthomas.com

SAGE – FOUNDATION

SAGE – HD

In the Foundation, Sage have built a high performance rod with that signature Sage feel for a fraction of the price you might normally expect from this premium brand.

With a fast action providing excellent casting power and effortless control, the FOUNDATION will take your game to another level without breaking the bank. Win win. www.frontierflyfishing.co.za

Where the Foundation is meant to be accessible to allcomers, the HD can lay claim to being the holy grail of the salt, a high performance tool that you put on a pedestal and whisper sweet nothings to in your sleep. Why? Well, Sage’s KonneticHD Technology’s graphite-to-resin ratio, results in a higher density (HD) fiber composite.

That means lighter, stronger blanks which deliver unmatched recovery, energy transfer, and line/loop control. Think quick shots at big fish, even quicker second shots and a few whoops and some adrenalin later - Cheshire Cat grins all round. www.frontierflyfishing.co.za

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L AT ES T R E L E A S ES

THE SALAD BAR XPLORER – WADING SOCKS & GRAVEL GUARDS “Nah, I’ll be fine,” said the noob to the grizzled veteran much to his regret. There’s a reason that so many guides and experienced anglers wear wading socks and/or gravel guards. They’ve made the mistake of not doing so and have had days cut short by blisters and Biblical scale chafe. Xplorer’s 2-in-1 pack of neoprene wading socks with separate wraparound gravel guard are designed to prevent sand or scree from getting into your wading boots in fresh or saltwater. R599. www.xplorerflyfishing.co.za TIEMCO – DUST BAG When you are getting flack from the family because it looks like you run a psychedelic pet parlour from your fly tying station, you need help. Mount TMC’s Dust Bag onto your vice’s stem. When you’re done churning out your production line of flies, simply unclip and empty. www.frontierflyfishing.co.za TMC – POWER DRY DESSICANT Radiohead might have been singing about this nifty stuff from Japan in their seminal hit “High & Dry”.

Unleash it on your dries by simply brushing the desiccant onto the fly with the brush. Eh voila! A clean, dry fly in seconds. For your next trick, catch a fish. www.frontierflyfishing.co.za SOLAREZ Murray Pedder, the fly tying guru behind FlyZinc, reckons this stuff is tit boet, tit. “From small poxy back nymphs to large baitfish patterns, Solarez offers a solution to all your tying needs, completely eliminating the need for epoxy.” Depending on what you’re trying to do, there are four formulae on offer: thin, thick, flex and bone dry, which are available in standalone tubes or kit form with a torch. Available at leading tackle stores country wide. www.flyzinc.co.za

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MAUI JIM – WORLD CUP Vanity is a cruel taskmaster. It’s easy to get drawn to the more lifestyle-focused shades when selecting a premium pair of fly fishing shades.

After all there’s always the odd awkward moment in a fishing day when you have to interact with none fishing people. Like at the gas station when you wander in looking for a coffee and a pie wearing wading gear, a hat covered in flies muttering about sink tips. The thing is, if you are in it, be in it to win it. That means going full Robbie Wraparound with shades that block any excess sun from messing with your peepers and your ability to catch fish. Currently we are loving Maui Jim’s World Cup wraps with the HT lenses for serious all-day fishing. Named after the famous blue marlin fishing tournament, they do a cracking job on the water and, in a range of colours from Mahi-Mahi to Redfish, Marlin and Green, the even look good off it too. Available in prescription from leading optometrists nationwide. rsa.mauijim.com

VELLIE NICE Other countries have subsequently laid claim to them as “desert boots”, but in South Africa we know vellies are a metatarsal national treasure.

In the Alps they have apres-ski attire, whereas at The Mission we have apres-vis vellies for when you transition from those heavy wading boots or waders into something that is as comfortable and good-looking fireside as it is at the bar. Check out the new colourful range from these guys. www.veldskoen.shoes

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THE CAPE’S PREMIER FISHING TACKLE SUPPLIER, NOW ON THE FLY

Bringing you an extensive selection of some of the world’s best fly fishing brands, the new Big Catch Fly store-within-a-store, is your new one-stop fly fishing outfitter.

Stock up on flies from Flyzinc, lines from Cortland, the freshest shades from Costa, discover our in-house range of Odyssey fly reels and get your hands on the latest range of G.Loomis fly rods, the Asquith.

Pull in for a coffee, plan a saltwater or freshwater trip with our expert guides and get the best gear available.

Can’t get to the shop? Coming soon to www.bigcatch. co.za, our online store will stock all fly products and you can enjoy national delivery too. www.bigcatch.co.za

INTRODUCING

BIG CATCH FLY! Contact Richard Wale or Nick van Rensburg on 0840706728

M U S T H AV ES

PAYDAY

KLYMIT – LITEWATER DINGHY There comes a time in every adventuring trootists life when you will find yourself up a mountain stream, faced with what appears to be an almost insurmountable impasse. A deep dark pool with steep canyon walls on either side means you either have to A) bundu bash up and around (something that can take a few hours on the narrow kloofs of certain Western Cape rivers), B) swim, which with a heavy pack can be a tricky task, or C) admit defeat and turn around the way you came Sniff.

The committed prefer B) because it keeps you close to the water.

Flotation devices become essential. Lilos are an option, but they are easily punctured. Emergency bags are somewhat hardy and cheap, but a pain to constantly unpack and secure at each swim. If you are doing a multi-night mission, the rain cover on your pack can work, but it’s risky because if there are several swims ahead of you they can soak through.

Enter the LiteWater Dinghy. Designed by professional kayakers and packrafters, this miniature inflatable boat made from lightweight, durable tear- and puncture-resistant polyester packs down to the size of a 1 litre bottle and weighs in at only 35 ounces (1kg). With tie-off zones for lashing on gear and a pump that doubles as a dry bag, it inflates quickly, tracks well through the water even though it looks like a haemorrhoid cushion, and if you choose to sit on it rather than swim beside it, gives you a decent ride across the momentum-blocking pool. Add paddles and it can take you places. For back-country adventure, it’s worth finding space in your pack for this. $169,95 www.klymit.com

SOUTH AFRICAN FISHING FLIES– AN ANTHOLOGY OF MILESTONE PATTERNS BY PETER BRIGG AND ED HERBST

South African

fishing flies

• Two legends of South African fly fishing.

• Four years.

• 25 chapters charting the history and standout flies of South Africa.

In South African Fishing Flies – An Anthology of Milestone Patterns, Peter and Ed cover a lot of ground, from the patterns that changed the way we think about fly design, materials and the imitation game, to the most important patterns in use today. For the latter, they sport a star-studded cast of contributors from regular writers for The Mission Leonard Flemming (Sand Flea), Herman Botes (Papa Roach) and MC Coetzer (JAM Fly) to more matured heavyweights like Dr Hans van Zyl (The Good Doctor’s Beetle), Alan Hobson (HOT fly), Tony Biggs (The RAB) and Tom Sutcliffe (Zak, DDD and others). An essential reference for effective patterns in South Africa, it’s also a great read and beautifully put together for those that value their coffee table eye candy. Author Q&A at the www.themissionflymag.com]

– an anthology of milestone patterns

peter brigg and ed herbst

Available from Amazon and most good book stores. R300. www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za

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THE FINAL FRONTIER DISCOVER GABON AND CONGO WITH WEST AFRICAN SPECIALIST ARNO MATTHEE OF THE GUIDE’S COMPANY There are few places on the planet that can still be classified as truly wild, but the vast expanses of estuarine systems, inland rivers and coastal edges found both in Gabon and Congo definitely qualify. And with the wild, remote nature of these places, come big fish.

With The Guide’s Company you can fish for 200lb tarpon off our 6,2m long flats skiffs with trolling motors, while elephants eyeball you in the shallows. But it’s not just about tarpon. With a whole host of unique species from Caranx Hippos (Jack Crevalle) and Caranx Senegalllus (Senagelese Jack) to Giant African Threadfin, Cubera Snapper, Jaw Croaker, Ladyfish, mammoth Guinean Barracuda and many other species, a fly fishing trip to this part of the world is, quite literally, the adventure of a lifetime.

For more information, rates and bookings, visit www.theguidescompany.co.za or email arnomatthee@gmail.com

WANDS

THE MISSION X SWIFT EPIC INTRODUCE…DA RIDDIM STICK I T ’ S F LY, I T ’ S H I G H , A N D I F Y O U TA K E I T F O R A WA L K I N T H E M O U N TA I N S , E V E R Y T H I N G W I L L B E I R I E .

SPECS: • FastGlass™ fly rod blank with internally reinforced ferule system featuring Rasta racing stripes!

• High-quality customised fibreglass rod tube • Premium hand-sewn rod sock • Cleaning cloth • Finest quality Portuguese cork grip • Full cork fighting butt with composite cork end (no cheap close cell foam) • Epic reel seat in black finish • Guide set (Snake brand Universal guides USA) •Two premium-quality titanium stripper guides with Japanese SiC inserts • Swift’s signature Epic Ghost Wraps in premium Japanese silk with fine one-turn pinstripe midway over each guide foot A four-piece, full-flexing 8-foot 4-weight “when I and I go into the mountains for dry fly-loving trout”, Da Riddim Stick is the rod to have in your pack. With a stroke smoother and slower than Linton Kwesi Johnson’s dub poetry, with this stick you’ll lay down delicate dry flies to rainbows, browns and brookies all day long.

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B U I LT E X C L U S I V E LY F O R T H E M I S S I O N B Y S W I F T ’ S IN-HOUSE ROD GURU TREVOR BOURNE, DA RIDDIM S T I C K I S A O N E - O F - A - K I N D D R Y F LY W I Z A R D WA N D B A S E D O N A N U D E 4 8 0 4 - W E I G H T B L A N K .

WIN THIS ONE-OF-A-KIND ROD! - -

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Follow and/or like @themissionflymag and @swiftflyfishing on Instagram and Facebook.

Keep an eye out for our The Mission Fly Fishing Magazine’s posts about Da Riddim Stick giveaway on Face book and Instagram.

Comment on one of the posts, or both, by describing your perfect mission with Da Riddim Stick and who you would do it with. One entry per person per platform.

Send us your greatest hits album later.

Competition terms and conditions 1.

By entering this competition, you consent to having your name and/or image reproduced online on The Mission Fly Fishing Magazine and Swift Fly Fishing’s websites, as well as their social media profiles.

2. All content shared with The Mission Fly Fishing Magazine as entry into the competition may be used on The Mission Fly Fishing Magazine and Swift Fly Fishing’s websites, and their associated digital platforms.

3. Entries close at 8pm (GMT+2) on Thursday 31 October 2017.

4. Winners will be notified via Facebook message no later than Wednesday 1 November 2017 at 5pm (GMT+2).

5. Representatives of The Mission Fly Fishing Magazine and Swift Fly Fishing will draw one winner by random selection from all entries.

6. The judges’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

7. The winner will receive one 4-weight The Mission X Swift Fly Fishing “Da Riddim Stick” rod and case.

8. Prizes are non-transferable.

9. Entry into the competition and acceptance of any prize shall constitute consent on the winner’s part to allow the use of the winner’s name, image, voice and/or likeness by The Mission Fly Fishing Magazine and Swift Fly Fishing for editorial, advertising, promotional, marketing and/ or other purposes without further compensation except where prohibited by law.

10. This competition is not open to The Mission Fly Fishing Magazine and Swift Fly Fishing staff and their families.

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SHORTCASTS G O O D S T U F F, G R E AT W H I S K Y, F I L M S , B A C K PA C K S & M O R E

TASTE Ardberg Kelpie Limited Edition. Named for the legends of the sea around Ardbeg, this intense whiskey might as well have been made for the salty fly fishers of the Western Cape.

Like the aroma of fly fishing bag that you forgot to rinse out, expect powerful whiffs of oily peat, salty seaweed and tarry rope conjured up from virgin oak casks from the Black Sea, intermingled with the hallmark Ardbeg flavour profile. Ardberg reckon you’ll also pick up on black pepper, a tide of bacon and dark chocolate. Sounds like dinner. R1699, www.bottleshop.co.za

CHECK OUT The custom-made backpacks of McHale Packs. Made by a veteran thru-hiker in his garage in Seattle and in huge demand by those in the know, no two backpacks are alike though all are made from hardcore materials like Cordura and Dyneema. www.mchalepacks.com

FOLLOW WATCH ‘Fly Fishing in the Anthropocene’, a film by one of our favourite fly fishing filmmakers Rolf Nylinder and his chum Peter Christensen. An earlier version of the film was known as “At the End of the Rainbow” so a few scenes might be familiar, but this 20-minute flick freely available on YouTube is a must-see. Focused on the Ozernaya River in Kamchatka in Far East Russia, Nylinder looks at the fishing (obviously), but also how man is threatening this incredibly wild ecosystem. While watching giant rainbows eat mouse flies in one of the most beautiful places on earth, you’ll contemplate just how fly fishing can help protect the wilderness. www.youtube.com

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@Flychotic (Louwrens Badenhorst) and @Flybefok (Jackpot Jackson) on Instagram for a glimpse into the lives of two home-grown big fish catching, fly-tying nut jobs of the highest order.

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I’D RATHER BE F_ _ _ING

To book your next ULTIMATE TIGER FISHING ADVENTURE on the Barotse Floodplains or simply to make an enquiry, contact us on the details below: bookings@matoyalodge.com | www.matoyalodge.com | +26 096 7101421 (Zambia) | +27 (0)82 253184 (SA)

FLUFF

BOOF SPONGEBOB! BOOF! CONRAD BOTES DIVES DEEP WITH HIS FAV O U R I T E K O B F LY ( A N D T H E W E I R D K I D I N Y O U R F LY B O X ) , THE SPONGEBOB.

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A schoolie striped bass (above) and a chunky blacktail (right) couldn’t resist some action with Spongebob.

T

he SpongeBob slider was born on the banks of the Breede River.

My entire obsession with dusky kob* however, came from another Overberg system, that of the Gouritz River. Some of my earliest fishing memories are from summers spent along the banks of the Gouritz and the few outings that I was privileged enough to join the men fishing for kob at night. It was on these waters that I heard the distinct “boof!” when kob suck mullet off the surface by means of gill chamber expansion. “Hoor hoe wei die kabeljoue?!” (“Can you hear the kob grazing?!”) my dad said when we heard this sound. Today on kob trips we sit around our braais at night like blabbering halfwits rolling the distinct kob sound around in our

mouths. It’s “boof!” meets “gnoof” (with a soft click on the first consonant) with a glottal hint of a superhero “kapow!”

Fast forward a couple of decades and I’m still infatuated with kob, more specifically to “crack the code” of catching them on fly. I read every piece of fly fishing literature dealing with dusky kob. Literally. What I found was the sinking line and heavy fly school of thought. Big white schlappen streamer. Black and red kob whistler.

Nah, I was not convinced. The results were as impressive as a slap drol**; more miss than hit.

I decided to look further afield. The spin fishermen of the Eastern Cape

caught my eye. Guys like Chris Schoultz managed incredible catches of dusky kob on a variety of lures. One lure stood out above all else: the humble bucktail jig. As the name suggests, its up and down jigging motion was what made it so successful.

I gave myself the challenge to come up with a fly that had a similar movement.

But instead of something that lifts up when you strip it and sinks when you pause, I thought of doing it in reverse.

That meant putting a reversed popper head on a streamer and fishing it with an intermediate or sinking line. Strip it and it dives, pause it and it floats upward.

Hello SpongeBob.

“I PUT A REVERSED POPPER HEAD ON A STREAMER AND FISHED IT WITH A SINKING LINE. STRIP IT AND IT DIVES, PAUSE IT AND IT FLOATS UPWARD. HELLO SPONGEBOB.” 66

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Photo Jannie Visser 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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It’s not really a new or innovative pattern at all. The streamer part is basically a Lefty’s Deceiver and the head is borrowed from a Dahlberg Diver. For extra buoyancy I replaced the deer hair with foam, and thought an SF Blend synthetic collar would make a nice transition from the foam head tapering down to the natural materials of bucktail and saddle hackles. Hence the name: a spongy character popular beneath the water.

kob seem to find this irresistible. Its buoyancy allows one to fish it really slowly, or even statically, and the long saddle hackles will always pulsate, adding to its appeal. Despite the rise of the DMA and the merits of Silicone Mullets, the SpongeBob still remains my number one fly for kob, and it has accounted for many fish since I started using it. It has taken kob in shallow surf and in different parts of estuaries.

The fly has everything you want from a kob fly. It has lots of up-down movement if fished correctly and the

Its appeal seems to attract other unlikely customers as well. I was fishing rolling surf at high tide for kob,

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when one of the biggest blacktail I’ve ever caught decided to chomp down on my 4/0 olive SpongeBob. Similarly, last year I was fishing this pattern on a floating line among kob sucking down mullet on the surface, when a spotted grunter decided breakfast was served.

SpongeBob has proven to be a fine travel companion too. Tourette Fishing head guide Mark Murray and itinerant fly fishing lifer John Travis tell me that if you fish this pattern on a floating line for Tanzanian tigerfish, you’ll see more teeth than an

Photo Mike Gradidge

IT’S “BOOF!” MEETS “GNOOF” (WITH A SOFT CLICK ON THE FIRST CONSONANT) WITH A GLOTTAL HINT OF A SUPERHERO “KAPOW!” More importantly, on our last trip, big tarpon also crashed the SpongeBob party. In one chaotic Gabon session that saw nine big tarpon hooked and lost in our group, I fed the SpongeBob to no less than four of these magnificent beasts.

The problem was that we were not intentionally targeting poons and the SL 12 hooks did not stand up to the challenge. Nonetheless, my fishing buddies were so impressed with this fly that afterwards they were literally queuing for me and John Travis to tie them a few. If I were a better capitalist, I would have charged like a wounded buffalo.

orthodontist. Mark says, “A couple years ago I was fishing with a good friend for tigerish on the Mnyera river in Tanzania. Back then we were still playing around with different surface patterns and techniques for these toothy critters. Late the one afternoon we came across some fish feeding on the surface, but they showed very little interest in anything we had to offer. After a number of casts with no results, John Travis decided to change from a popper to a SpongeBob on his floating rig.

Almost instantly we started getting eats. We were slowly skating the fly

along the surface, giving it a steady long strip every now and again, forcing the fly to dive just below the surface making it push a bigger wake.

This turned out to be really effective.

So much so, that it became one of my go-to patterns for my guests in Tanzania ever since.”

I have been on two trips to Gabon and the SpongeBob delivered the goods on both. I have fished this pattern with a lot of confidence for cubera snapper, Senegalese kob, longfin jacks and African threadfin. Only the latter is yet to fall to its charms.

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Lately, I’ve been trying a SpongeBob variation that is fished as a waking fly (as in creating a wake) on a floating line. Instead of tying it slider-style, I have turned the popper head in such a way that it sticks out the water when retrieved, leaving an enticing wake behind. Do the kob approve? Well, when a 70cm kob launched itself out of the water and ate the fly on the way down, I’d say that was a yes.

Like my old man before me, fishing for kob is as much about sound as it is feel so you can bet that when I hear kob feeding on the surface, you’ll find no other fly on the end of my leader. Try it. You’ll get more boof for your buck. *Kob or kabeljou are the same as Mulloway and Jewfish and similar in their behaviour to striped bass. ** An overly soft turd.

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REEL DEAL

THE REEL DEAL F O R J A Z Z K U S C H K E , H I S G R A N D FAT H E R M AY H AV E L E F T T H I S WO R L D, B U T I N A WAY, E V E RY T I M E H E CA STS A L I N E THE OLD CODGER IS RIGHT THERE WITH HIM

M

y late grandfather made me eat an eye from the first fish I ever caught. Twenty centimetres if it was a foot long, it was a Cape stumpnose from Hermanus Lagoon. Slurping that eye out was a blooding of sorts, not unlike eating a piece of the liver from your first springbok (if hunting is your thing). I was six, but remember it as vividly as my first Pomadasys on fly. Since that day fishing wasn’t something I did, it was something I was – a fisherman.

some part of his spirit, but none as powerful as the heavy trolling reel he handed me one day…

The old man’s been gone over a decade now and yet, from time to time, he’s out there on the river with me. Just the other day I heard him again – heckling as I was wading across the flat. “Moenie nou gaan kak aan jaag nie, kieriekie.” (Don’t screw it up, young ’un.)

It was a prize item rather than an heirloom. He knew what it meant to me, and when he gave it to me he eyed me with that trademark look and said, “Don’t go selling this now.”

A top surgeon in his field and known by many as something of a hard ass, he was from the old school. A proper sport who had fished and hunted some of the finest locations his passport could take him. Not one to suffer fools or incompetency. We understood each other.

That I was a favourite among the grandchildren was not lost on me, even if I thought of it both proudly and with guilt. You see, in his shadow years he passed down an immeasurable whack of fishing paraphernalia from out of his cluttered workshop – what I thought was heaven. Ever the grateful recipient, many pieces are still in use in one way or another. Above my tying table hangs an old split-cane complete with centre pin reel. There are a few singing Daiwas and some spinning sticks I dust off when the conditions call for heathen gear. And other bits ’n bobs have found their way into display. They all embody

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It is a fine piece of engineering – the Roddy Dominator made by Heddon.

It carries the scent of reel oil and lives in a hand-crafted wooden box. It had accounted for marlin off Hawaii and sailfish off Mauritius (the mount of which hung above the old man’s work bench). Who knows how many other epic deep sea battles it fought.

I can confess now that there were a few (very) lean times in the early years after he’d passed when I did do some web searches and costings on what I might get for the reel. Being so old, but in mint condition (as was the old man’s style) it carried sentimental, collectors’ value only. So it remained in my possession. Until I gravitated away from the city back toward my roots and a smaller town. Here I met a tackle shop owner with a wondrous collection of vintage tackle. All manner of reels, rods and shiny things from various ages and fishing genres. All lovingly restored and displayed.

I told him about the reel once and he seemed genuinely interested. But then, he has always eyed me with slight apprehension. I’m the guy who walks into his store and asks about this hook and that, feathers and ultra-light fluoro.

Aside from a few vintage reels, there is zilch in the lines of fly tackle in his store (this is a heavy tackle, heavy boep, rock-and-surf-and-deep sea jol

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here). However, hidden deep in the back behind a rack of short-sleeved Daiwa shirts and camo caps, I found a fly-fishing waist pack, something the owner had ordered a few years before but never managed to sell. The result of too few long-rodders through the door and a weighty price tag.

Whenever I chimed the doorbell and bumbled in with my ever-weird questions and requests I would inevitably drift to the back and fondle the bag. I’d fantasise about how I’d pack it and how light and efficient it would be on the flooded river flats.

Never could I bring myself to justify pulling the trigger on the price – for another bag, as my missus would say.

And he never did budge on a discount.

One rainy day in May, something spoke to me. Without too much thought I dug the wooden box out of storage and took it to the shop. When I opened it to reveal the shiny gold piece of history, he lit up, but quickly informed me it was not worth much in cash. He wanted it, I could tell. “I can give you a voucher,” he eventually said, now with reel in hand and bolting the off-set handle with white marbled knob into place.

“No need,” I replied and disappeared into the back of the shop.

“You’re never going to sell this. Let’s call it a trade,” I said, holding aloft the waist pack.

Under the tacit agreement that it is not for sale, that reel now has pride of place in the store owner’s collection. It is just down the road from my office and I visit it most days.

Out on the flats when I carry the pack, my grandfather fishes with me still.

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THE LIFER

MARCO PIERRE WHITE THE GRAND-PÈRE TERRIBLE OF BRITISH CUISINE ON P I K E , T R O U T, P O A C H I N G A N D N O S TA L G I A .

T

he first fish I ever caught was a brown trout on a little beck called Adel Beck on a golf course. My brother took me fishing and he sat me down by this bridge made of railway sleepers for the golfers to go across. He put a ledger rig on for me with a worm and I sat there while he went up to the best pool. He caught nothing while I caught a 12-ounce brown trout.

When I go back to Yorkshire now, I sometimes walk back to the bridge and think, “That’s where I caught my first fish.”

All through my childhood, I was an introvert. My mother died when I was six. I was very fortunate in that I lived on the outskirts of Leeds and so I used to walk to the top of the hill, across the golf course and I was on the Harewood Estate, which was designed by the great Lancelot “Capability” Brown (a famed British landscaper). It was beautiful and I fell in love with nature. I spent my childhood in the English countryside.

Trout fishing is very expensive on the Test. You can buy day tickets, but a friend of mine owns a stretch of the river and I’ve got one or two friends who are riverkeepers so therefore they let me on. I’m very lucky. When you’ve been in the area a while, you get to know people.

I used to live on an island in the middle of the Hampshire Avon and I had this tree in the bottom of my garden which I used to climb up to watch the barbell in summer. One day I am up there when all of a sudden I see this thing and think, “fuck, that’s a big pike!” I go into my garage and get my pike tackle. I was with my driver. I set up a pike rod, tie on a trace and flip out a plug and bang, the pike hits it. Now I’m hooked into this big fucking fish. My driver who’s never landed a fish before gets one of the hooks of the plug caught in the net, so the fish snaps the line. I was really upset. I later caught that fish in November at 33 pounds, which for a river fish is enormous. Had I caught it in February, it would have been 38 pounds.

I fly fish and I coarse fish, but when I coarse fish I stalk the fish like I do as a fly fisherman. I never overwork a pool. I’ll spend five to 10 minutes and then move down.

The two biggest fish I have ever caught were both caught on the 6th of March.

I prefer to fish rivers than lakes.

My home is in Salisbury so I consider the Test and the Hampshire Avon my home waters. Rolling a fly upstream on a beautiful river like the Test and watching it come down is absolutely amazing. That anticipation.

There’s a hotel called The Compleat Angler in Marlowe. In front of it there’s a weir structure where I used to walk out in my studded Wellies because I like fishing weir pools.

What’s interesting is that when water comes over the weir the fish are

facing downstream. You catch 90% of your fish a yard out. My friend owned the hotel, so I used to walk across. I’d have the whole weir because no one fished it. The lotkeeper used to go fucking mad screaming at me, “You! You! You! Get off my weir!”

I would pretend I couldn’t hear him over the sound of the water. One day I turned up and they had put a plaque on the wall, “No fishing beyond this point!” I never got a blue plaque on my house, but I got a blue plaque on the river.

I like to go fishing with a friend, but he could be half a mile up the river, it doesn’t really matter. It’s rather nice having the company of somebody, but from a distance.

I am so much happier in the countryside than I am in the cities. I go to work now to make a living, I don’t go to work to make a name.

I have had to work very hard at being able to deal with people. I was very introverted, very shy, which is I suppose why I did well in the kitchen.

I expressed myself with my hands, through what I put on the plate.

I have had to teach myself to navigate. I was in the kitchen for 22 years of my life, six-seven days a week.

When I left the kitchen, I suppose I was institutionalised. Like being in the army, all of a sudden you have to deal with the outside world. What I did was exactly the same as what I did with my mother’s death. I turned to nature. I did a lot of fishing, a lot

“I LOVE THE ROMANCE OF ONE FOR THE POT. THE POACHER IS ALWAYS IN YOU.” 72

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of shooting, a lot of deer stalking.

That’s where I felt most comfortable and when you feel comfortable, you can be yourself.

I never ever kill the fish I catch. The only fish I kill are pike out of trout or salmon waters like the 33-pound pike I caught. That kind of fish is in the later stages of its life and can take out a two-pound trout. Smaller pike I will turn into a Quenelles de Brochet (French pike fishcakes). The bigger pike go in a case. I never kill trout or salmon, I always put them back. I’ve only had to knock two salmon on the head and that was because I hooked them in the gills. When I shoot something, I always eat it or find a home for it. I am not into killing for the sake of killing.

It’s funny how you change as you get older. When you’re young, you want to kill everything and catch everything. You never want to go home. Now, if I want to hunt I do a dry stalk for roe deer. If I fish, there comes a point when it’s time to go have a pint. Now I walk into the woods and look at pheasants when they are roosting whereas when I was kid I would shoot them for pocket money. Now I walk into the woods without a gun and walk along the

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river bank without a rod. But I love the romance of one for the pot. The poacher is always in you.

The best advice I was ever given is something I did not really understand until I was in my forties.

One day I went around to see my friend Stephen. He wasn’t there but his grandfather, Mr Douglas, was. He made me a cup of tea and I chatted with him and then he said to me, “Marco, look at my hands. What do you see?” I said I saw a palm. He said, that’s right, but I see four knuckles.

We’re looking at the same thing, but we see something very different.” I never forgot that. Now, I realise what he meant. What he was saying to me is look at something for what it is, not for what you want it to be. Never allow the obvious to blind you.

Most of my reputation is a product of exaggeration and ignorance. I would say when I was younger, like lots of young boys or angry young men, frustrations started as hurt and turned into anger. But it’s about growing. If you’re tough, you are tough because of the world you were born into. You absorb that world and become a part of it. People who are strong, grow from within. We all have a choice. Do we grow from

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within, do we absorb our world, our environment and our surroundings? I chose to grow from within. The one thing I will always say is that I was real. I never did it for effect. Some people out there, in my industry, do it for effect. Every man has made mistakes, said the wrong thing, done the wrong thing. We’re not perfect, but we have to take the knowledge from our experiences, from our mistakes. It’s that simple.

Mother Nature taught me more about life than any individual. I learned more about myself. She showed me what I was and who I am and that’s why today, if I lift a gun, I want to shoot one for the pot, not to please my ego.

When you get to a certain age in life, you look back, you don’t look forward. When you are young, you look forward in life. When you look back, you start to become nostalgic. Like sitting down by the bridge where I caught my first trout.

The last fish I caught was a 15-pound pike on the Test. I took my friend’s son and I had this little spot where a stream runs in. In one year, I caught six double-figure pike out of the same spot.

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