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FEBRUARY MARCH 2020 NEWSLETTER

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FEBRUARY MARCH 2020 NEWSLETTER

February/ March 2020

A decade of Spirit of Fly Fishing Newsletters comes to an end

By my reckoning, the first newsletter I sent out was in June 2010, nearly a decade ago. For two reasons I am not able to continue.



 

The first is that my health is such that I am no longer able to fish the rocky mountain streams I love. With arthritis in my hands and knees, I have difficulty wading and casting and now recently, even holding a fly rod, opening a can of beans or walking downstairs.  And to me, a defining issue is that unless you are actually fishing, it is difficult to write convincingly about it. It is a matter of being able to draw on the authenticity of direct experience. My fishing will now be limited to a few lovely ponds I know and maybe to some stillwaters.  Alone, that is not enough for a newsletter like this.

But had you asked me when I was a trouble-free youngster darting between runs like a bee between flowers whether I would be happy to fish mountain streams right up to my 77th year, I would have taken it.
The second reason is that MailChimp, my newsletter service provider, now charges $58 per issue. In South African language that's R870 a month, which is too close to my affordability threshold for comfort. 

I long ago decided never to charge my readers a subscription fee and I haven't changed my mind. Nor will I spoil them with paying adverts. My experience is that in the end, their intrusiveness spoils the experience for me. Besides, so little of what we now engage in for pleasure is spared the invasive pestilence of adverts. I also admit to a certain pleasure in cocking a snook at the world of advertising and its hordes of hovering backroom denizens.

I will obviously continue writing about fly fishing, and I will be painting fly tying, all of which thank heavens I still retain the capacity to do

My projects, for now, are to bring out the third edition of Hunting Trout (with a new cover and a little added text), to paint trout a whole lot better and in oils as well as watercolour, to put more effort into my web site, and from time to time to tie some Zaks and DDDs if only just to prove I still can.

So thank you all my readers (now well over 2000 in 16 countries around the world) for your support, kind words of encouragement, your critiques, and for providing many articles over the last decade while never asking a penny for them. Ed Herbst tops that list (with his articles on fly tying and modern methods), with Jan Korrubel for many years the roving ambassador of KZN. And there are many others, just like Hugh Rosen and Nick Taransky who feature in this final issue.

A Halford Miscellany by Hugh Rosen

(Hugh is a medical scientist working in La Jolla, California)
Says Hugh...

Flyfishers, as readers of Tom Sutcliffe know so well, are most fortunate in our literature and its traditions. The importance of the written word cannot be understated, because the author reaches out to us across space and time, to both inform and touch the soul.

So it has been for me with Frederic Michael Halford, whose pseudonym was “Detached Badger of The Field”.
The Ethics of the Fathers 1:6 reminds us of the obligation to take a teacher and also acquire a friend. Taking a teacher is perhaps the simpler, but from Antiquity, many eyebrows have been raised at the notion of acquiring a friend; after all good friends cannot be purchased. The best explanation came from the medieval commentator Rashi (1040-1105 AD), who pointed out that true friendship requires an exchange of the best of the human spirit, and for those separated by time and place, there can be no better friend than the acquisition of a book, that both befriends and teaches.

I first properly discovered Halford through a tying challenge from Paul Slaney, a long-distance friend who sought to improve my tying skills by encouraging me to attempt new and interesting patterns. His challenge was to tie the Half Stone, a West Country pattern captured in Halford’s 1886 groundbreaking “Floating Flies and how to tie them”. Fortunately, the book can be found in the Google collection of culturally important books scanned and available to all, and thus the patterns and tying methods are available to everyone by the troubling of billions of electrons. Paul then took me fishing on the Mottisfont Abbey beat of the Test, the stretch leased by Halford and his friends including Marryatt, where the codification of the dry fly reached its apotheosis.

 


Paul Slaney on the Test.



The Half Stone, the West Country variant pattern challenge that introduced Halford.

 

Discovering the Half Stone opened my eyes to the subtle natural historian eye that Halford had for matching hatches and the technical excellence of an innovative tyer working with 19th Century threads and materials. To spend some time with my friend over the recent year-end break, I opened up the 1886 2nd Edition of “Floating Flies” and began to tie a series of flies in memory of Halford.



 

Through tracking down suitable materials and then following my teacher’s method, I got to know and appreciate his contribution all the more, and especially his generosity in the attribution of patterns to those that taught him, and to George Selwyn Marryatt who he lauds as the greatest authority of his time.

Here follow a few examples that are an imperfect but well-meant tribute to Halford, teacher, and friend.




Panel 1: Clockwise from top left

Brown Drake, Detached Badger, March Brown quill, Orange Sedge, Sanctuary, Coachman

 



Panel 2: Clockwise from top left

Adjutant Blue, Whitchurch, Orange Bumble, Ginger quill, Flight’s Fancy, Yellow Bumble

 


Panel 3


Grizzle Spinner, Medium Olive Quill
 

So it is, that a second edition of “Floating Flies”, joins first editions of Halford’s remaining books on the shelf in my fly tying room, where they sit next to “Hunting Trout” and “Yet More Sweet Days”.  I have taken teachers and acquired friends indeed.

(Thank you, Hugh, for a brilliant piece, especially illustrating some wonderful tying of your own. A number of readers will be reaching for their vices, chief among them, no doubt, one JP Gouws, who is as equally troubled as you in preserving our fly tying histories through perfect representations of the masters. His forte is Catskill dry flies. TS.)
 

Hugh Rosen, medical scientist in recreational mode.
 

A word from master bamboo rod maker Nick Taransky

Nick is based in the Blue Ribbon Trout fishing Monaro region of NSW in Australia. He says of the recent bushfires…

The recent fires have been almost apocalyptic.  I finally ventured out with my friend Troy, to try and recreate the mini Grand Slam that we experienced and wrote about last season.  

 


All these trees are dead and the understorey has been reduced to black ash.'

 

Only the top headwaters of that rookie stream are un-burnt, and we were turned around way before we got there with indefinite road closures because of fire damage.  So we surveyed the wreckage that has gone on.  It is true scorched earth stuff.
 


Nick caught a brown and rainbow in a little plunge pool here with his son 3 weeks ago.  At least he has the memory of it.


It looks like many streams will be lost for years, if not decades… But nature is resilient and I saw some early glimmers of regrowth, after just a few weeks and some timely rain, that might make an idiot of me from a fishing point of view in regard to the recovery.  
 

Even a few burn badly burnt areas are springing to life, even though the alpine shrubs and bushes will take decades to re-establish.'

The vegetation will change, and valleys and ecosystems will lose trees, shrubs and other vegetation and animals and become more grass and tussock, but we will have to be thankful for whatever comes back.  
After seeing endless destruction, we finally found a small semi burnt valley, where some insects had survived, and we even rose a fish and spooked another in the still semi-turbid water.  
But in some unburnt valleys, insects survived and came out for us.

 

'A Kossie Dun mayfly spinner


'Alpine spider

 

I really do think that within a year, many of these places will be full of fish and good fishing.  
 

Nick's Ushu Nakamura rod and Koba reel among wildflowers.


(Thanks, Nick. Though the South Africans and Aussies are fierce rivals on that 22 yards of flat grass called we call cricket pitches, we have been right behind the people of Australia in these trying times. We too have had serious fires right over some of our trout streams. I think recently of the Lourens in the Western Cape burned black from bank to bank. It recovered magnificently well. so there is hope. Plenty of it. TS.)

Tying Kite's Imperial
 


 


 

Following discussions with my good friend Robin Douglas about tying this pattern it was clear that, much like tying a proper Zak, there are some tricky steps you have to get absolutely right. In this case, it is the aft thorax. I did a few sketches to help.
 


 

Dress the shank in purple tying silk and tie in a honey dun or ginger tail of standard length. Tie in a separate length of purple thread and five to six heron herls by their tips.
 


 

Bring the herl forward in even wraps leaving space in front for a standard dry fly hackle.
 


 

Trap the herl with thread and then wind it back over the body for a short distance to form the base of a thorax.
Now rib the body up to the back of the thorax using your loose piece of purple thread.

 


 

Then trap the heron herl as shown above. Now wind the thread forward over the base of the thorax.
 

Now pull the heron herl forward over the base of the thorax. Lock it down in front of the thorax and tie off using the loose piece of purple thread. Trim that off, but leave the bobbin in place here to tie in the hackle.

You now have a neat thorax and ahead of it, space to add the dun or ginger hackle (or two for rough water), as you would routinely hackle any traditional dry fly.

 


 

Steve Boshoff

Bamboo rod maker Steve Boshoff has been featured as a master craftsman by Lexus Toyota. 
What can you say? High praise; deserved recognition; masterclass. All of those.



From the Spirit of Fly Fishing Newsletter July 2010
I wrote at the time...

Incrementally, my fly tying has changed, from precise correctness to orderly untidiness, from stiffness to pliancy, from the exact to the impressionistic. In trying to build life into my flies I’m discovering that in fly tying, if not in life itself, rigid conformity is not necessarily the route to go.

 


 


 

To illustrate the point, the topmost of these three sketches is an instantly recognizable object done with just three straight lines and a single wavy one. But despite more detail added in the two sketches below it, little is changed from the instantly recognizable ocean liner in the top sketch. So too in fly tying I believe.
 



 

Another example. The rock in the stream is in some detail, but the trout beneath it is not.


‘Super-normal Releaser’  Ed Herbst writes:

I first heard of the ‘Super-normal Releaser’ concept in the mid-1980s. It was an article in Trout & Salmon  about a New Zealand fly angler, Jim Ring. Building on the work of Nikolaas Tinbergen, he argued that the inclusion of certain materials in a fly would cause a trout to move further than normal to intercept it.

One thinks of the work of Gary Lafontaine with Antron, but the most obvious recent example was the discovery by American guide Pat Dorsey that silver-lined clear beads were a 'super-normal releaser'.
In the 1990s Bill Black of the Spirit River Company sent Colorado guide Pat Dorsey some glass beads to experiment with. By far the most successful was the clear bead with a silvered centre and this led to his Mercury series of flies now marketed by Umqua.

Dorsey wrote:


The following week, I took the Mercury Midge to the South Platte River in Cheesman Canyon and tested it rigorously. I was pleasantly surprised to see discriminating rainbows move 8 to 10 inches to intercept it. I knew there was something special about the bead that persuaded trout to eat this fly but I could not put my finger on it. Later it occurred to me that the silver-lined glass bead imitated the gas bubble that gets trapped in the midge’s thorax when it emerges.’

US fly tyer Dennis Potter ascribes magical properties to UTC Mirage tinsel which morphs from opal to green as the light changes. In the Master’s Fly Box Dennis says: “I carry no dubbed caddis flies – none. All my X-Caddis, all my Elk Hair Caddis – all my caddisflies have bodies tied with opal tinsel. I beat this into people: Tie a few of your caddis or mayfly or opal tinsel bodies. I don’t know what, but it is as close to a magic material as I have ever used.”

Morne Bayman of the African Fly Angler online mail order shop recently brought the Textreme range of products into the country which includes a very fine opal-type tinsel and a thin, glow-in-the dark floss.
I’ve combined the two materials in this buzzer pattern tied on the splendid # 18 TMC 2499SP hook. I call it the Multi-Colour Midge. I covered the rear section with Solarez Topaz Sparkle resin which contains minute flecks of blue glitter dust.


 


 

The author’s Multi-Colour Midge which uses colour-changing tinsel for the body and phosphorescent floss at the hook eye.
 

I used silver Quick Descent Dub just behind the floss wing section after coming across a YouTube video of the late Shane Stalcup tying a pattern he called the Gas Bubble Soft Hackle Midge. This is a unique material made from aluminium shavings which he constantly enthused about in his book Mayflies: Top to Bottom.
 

The materials used by the author for his Multi-Colour Midge



I share his enthusiasm because I have never found a dubbing that is easier to use and there is nothing better for tying micro-patterns.

Ron Swart has these items of tackle for sale …

Contact Ron directly at
ronaldswart321@gmail.com 

1: Orvis HLS  4-wt 7 ft rod - Includes bag and tube -(very good condition) - tip replaced under Orvis 25 yr warranty.: R1200.00

 



2: Orvis Battenkill 3/4 reel with Cortland floating WF line and backing - very good condition - includes felt bag  - R 1000.00
 



 

3: Vintage Hardy 9 ft Palakona ‘’Gold Seal” 3-piece split cane rod (with sterling silver presentation seal) - circa 1938 - Slight parting of cane in a small area on the midsection) - R 1200.00
 


 

4: Vintage Alex Martin Scotia 3 inch reel - Cica 1938, with well-preserved level silk line. 


Quote of the month

Dr Strabismus of Utrecht (Whom God Preserve) is carrying out research work with a view to crossing salmon with mosquitoes. He says it will mean a bite every time for fishermen.
JB Morton Beachcomber

Tom Sutcliffe

 
 
 


DECEMBER 2019 FLY-FISHING NEWSLETTER

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DECEMBER 2019 FLY-FISHING NEWSLETTER

THE SPIRIT OF FLY FISHING NEWSLETTER DECEMBER 2019

A word of caution about Santa Claus

Let me start by wishing you a Blessed Christmas and at the same time, express the hope that your long back-ordered special piece of Christmas fly-fishing gear actually gets to you. I'll tell you why. 

It seems that one of the elves employed in the North Pole division of Santa's factory has leaked to the press a story suggesting that Santa might be intercepting goods along his annual distribution route and putting them to his own use. Says the Elf in question, "The boss has just gone ballistic on fly fishing and we can't keep up with him stealing stuff, especially flies and bamboo rods." The elf, who prefers for obvious reasons not to be named, says there's hard evidence and that Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo) are working on leads in conjunction with Greenland's Police Force, who are using Polar Bear sniffers. 


Santa seen with his chief of elves in Helsinki's Police Department


An artist's impression of the culprit in the act


From my friend Fred Von Reibnitz who lives near Canberra in Australia.


I'm just back from a very enjoyable week's fishing in the South Island of New Zealand, taking a few cane rods, including a 69-year old Hardy Fairchild. It was as lovely to fish with as I'd hoped, and my guide took the attached photo of it under load.



The other photo is of a brown I caught with the little DeGere taper rod I built inNick Taransky'sclass last year. The fish was resting quietly after release, so we took the chance of a quick photo with the rod alongside - rather staged, but fun.



Is your name Alan, or maybe Hans?

I have particularly enjoyed adding sketches to copies ofYet More Sweet Days. Problem is when you get orders for a number of books, with say for four or five different people wanting sketches, you're bound to make a few blues – and I have. I've ended up with duplicate copies to an 'Alan' and a fellow named 'Hans'.
Here's the deal. If your name is Alan or Hans and you would like a copy (illustrated)it's yours for free. You just pay the R80 courier charge and it will be with you before Christmas. Interested parties can drop me an email atsutcliffe@mweb.co.za
.







 

Second-Hand Hardy and Orvis fish fly fishing gear for sale from Angelo Komis for a friend...

Reels 
Hardy Bougle3 1/2'” Mk VI (Cortland 444 Sylk Wf6f) – R 6500
Hardy The Sunbeam5/6 (SA Dt5s) – R 2 250
Hardy Marquis#7 (Orvis WF7F) – R 2 250
Hardy Marquis#4 + Spool (Cortland WF4F;Airflo  WF4i) – R 3 250
Hardy Marquis#2/3 (SA WF2F) – R 2 000
Hardy L.R.H Lightweight+ Spool (Orvis WF7s) – R 4 500-00, This comes with a second cage, although damaged can be used for spares.
Hardy The Flyweight (SA WF2F) – R 2 500
SA System Two 1011 + Spool (SA Tarpon Taper WF12F; SA Tarpon Taper WF12 I) – R 2 500
Orvis DXR 9/10 Reel + Spool (Orvis Wf10f; Airflo Wf10i) – R 4 000-00
Martin Zeus Mach 8 + Spool (SA WF8F; SA WF8F/S) – R 1 250




  1. Rods
    Hardy Palakona L.R.H Dry Fly 8’9” 6-wt 3-Piece 2-Tip – R000
    Hardy Graphite Favourite 7’0” 2/3 Wt 2-Piece – R 1 500
    Hardy Graphite Favourite 7’6” ¾ Wt 2-Piece – R 1500
    Orvis 7’9” Ultrafine  2wt 2-Piece – R 2 750
    Orvis 9’0”  HLS Powerhouse 8wt 2-Piece – R 2 250
    Sage RPLX 9’0” 11wt 2-Piece – Custom Built – R 2 000
    St Croix 9’0” 8wt 2-Piece – R 1000







If  you are interested contact Angelo 083 347 6682
 
Pottering around 

My daughter Alison invited me to breakfast at a place where you paint pots between eating eggs and bacon and drinking endless cups of coffee. Called theClay Cafeit's on the outskirts of Hout Bay and it's certainly the most fun you can have eating breakfast.



I did a couple of pieces (mugs and a large salad bowl) for close friends, but the next time I go I will take a range of more suitable brushes and budget a whole lot more time.



Ed Herbst writes on small hooks for large fish :

One of the problems which Alan Hobson found in his increasingly successful experiments with micro-patterns at Sterkfontein Dam for yellowfish and for trout in the very fertile Mountain Dam at Somerset East is that the fish which usually weigh more than a kilogram and are very powerful, tend to straighten conventional midge hooks.

Having just fished Thrift Dam with Craig Thom, he was able to relay to glad tidings that Craig has just become the South African agent for the superb Ahrexhooks which are made in Finland.


Craig Thom, Ahrex agent, fishing Thrift Dam near Tarkastad in the Eastern Cape
 

Craig has the agency for saltwater Ahrex hooks but can source the freshwater range if asked.
The 507 is available in#18 – 22and the 517 in#18 – 20.
 


Ahrex hooks in sizes 20 - 22

What sets these hooks apart for Alan’s purposes is that they are made of medium-weight wire and have a big eye.
TheAhrex NS150,which Craig has in stock, is my favourite hook for dragonfly nymph patterns. Place the eyes on top of the hook shank and it flips over to become more weedless.


A zonker fur and marabou dragonfly nymph pattern tied on the Ahrex NS150 hook by the author.


Midge hook challenges: 

Tying with tiny hooks can be challenging particularly if, like me, your eyesight is weak and you have a tremor in your hands. 

I use prescription reading glasses and the Donegan Optivisor (available from Cape Watch in Cape Town) equipped with the 3.5 x magnification lenses.
Tim Flagler has an excellentYouTube videoon handling tiny hooks but I have a slightly different approach which works for me.

I transfer my hooks from the packet to a fly box with magnetic compartments. I use a magnet made for picking up hearing aid batteries mounted in a wooden handle to remove them from the fly box. All the midge hooks I now tie with, the Gamakatsu C12-BM, the Allen N304 and the Ahrex models are straight-eye hooks and I use the Loon Ergo hackle plier to transfer the hook from the magnet to the vise jaws.



The author’s system for handling midge hooks without dropping them


Shock absorbing leaders 

Landing trout and yellowfish on a kg or more on 7-8 x tippets is proving challenging for Alan Hobson’s clients. In the book John Goddard’s Trout-Fishing Techniques (Lyons & Burford, 1996) we read of Goddard’s experiments with leaders incorporating Powergum
Alan had tried this but was not happy with it. In the UK and Europe, pole anglers use Slip Elastic for tiny fish like dace and up to and including carp.
Preston Slip Elastic seems to be a favourite (see here and here), so I got a friend in England to send some to Alan. He thinks it has great potential and will keep us posted.



Will the Preston Slip Elastic make 7-8x tippets feasible on our dams? Alan Hobson is keen to find out.

Mercury beads

Air bubbles which aquatic insects such as corixa  use to breathe  are obvious trigger signals for trout but they also feature in egg-laying Baetis adults and emerging simulium  adults. Pat Dorsey is the best-known modern exponent of silver-lined beads to exploit this characteristic with his Mercury series of nymph patterns.  The first mention I came across of the resemblance of the air bubbles clinging to aquatic insects like drops of mercury was in the 1960 book, Lake Flies and their Imitation – A Practical Entomology  For The Stillwater Flyfisher  by C.F.Walker.

"This may come as a surprise to those who have never looked below the surface, but the fact is that an air bubble under water looks exactly like a drop of quick-silver. There is a green algal growth at the bottom of my aquarium at this moment which is covered with small air bubbles, the effect being as if someone had broken a thermometer over a billiards table.”

The Miyuki 1.5 mm seed bead (called rocailles) in a colour called ‘Galvanised Silver’ most closely mimics this feature and you can get it along with other useful colours from Beads Directin Irene. Francene (012) 345 5466 or online@beadsdirect.co.za
 will be happy to help you.



Miyuki rocailles from 'Beads Direct' which the author feels will enhance midge patterns.


I’ve tied a CDC soft hackle in Tenkara style on an Ahrex 507 #18 hook incorporating this bead which I want Alan to try on the fish at Sterkfontein and Mountain dams.


The author’s CDC soft hackle incorporating the 15/0 Miyuki bead in ‘Galvanised Silver’.
 

Clients report that, at the moment, the trout are feeding in the Mountain Dam shallows on a smorgasbord of tiny insects most of which have been reduced by current action to an amorphous blob. The Mountain Dam Soft Hackle covers a lot of bases from emergers to dead adults.

Branksome Country Lodge



 

As I mentioned in my last newsletter, Rene Vosloo has converted the old homestead and sandstone sheds onBranksomeinto a five-bedroom lodge with a restaurant catering for guests and, happily also, to any passing anglers who might feel like spoiling themselves with a good meal, or maybe a cold beer, after a day of the Sterkspruit River. The added blessing is that this area has since had good rains and the rivers are once again flowing well. Rene tells me she has already had nibbles from overseas anglers wanting creature comforts and a spot of excellent fishing.

2020
I hope my Spirit of Fly Fishing Newsletter readers, now 2575 from 16 countries around the world, enjoy a peaceful New Year.

 

Tom Sutcliffe
 
 

September 2019 Newsletter

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September 2019 Newsletter

Thank you Alan. Are you in the UK now?

Best regards Tom

From: Alan Hatton [mailto:aehdullies@gmail.com]
Sent: 29 September 2019 04:33 PM
To: Tom Sutcliffe
Subject: Re: Fly-Fishing Newsletter September 2019

Thanks Tom ....... your newsletters are a delight.  Especially as we get into mid-Autumn here with blustery wet weather abounding

Kind Regards 

Alan Hatton

On Sun, 29 Sep 2019 at 12:27, Tom Sutcliffe <sutcliffe@mweb.co.za> wrote:

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SPIRIT of FLY-FISHING NEWSLETTER for SEPTEMBER 2019

Opening the season with slow, studied care...
 



Robin Douglas Opening Day, Lourens Stream 2019

 

The day was pleasantly warm, almost breathless, the fishing relaxed, the water just fine, the trout roughly where you'd expect them to be, in the plumpest parts of the better runs, which on small mountain streams can contrarily suggest they aren't on the feed. Or at least suggest they are not strongly on the feed, when they move out of primary lies to hunt hatching bugs in secondary lies, and on small streams these are often in the unlikeliest, shallowest places. This is not one of the immutable laws of the Medes and Persians, of course; nothing in fly fishing ever is. But it strongly points to the need for slow-paced, heron-like approaches on all clear-flowing mountain streams. (Maybe the non-negotiable need for heron-like approaches should be one of the immutable laws of the Medes and the Persians.)
 

'Sitting out'boldly on show in a secondary lie – Oh, so easily spooked! There's a lesson in this!


 

But we saw no bugs and the trout remained glued in primary lies, where they stayed more or less lukewarm to our drifting dry flies all day. The few we got were tiny, but then just as pretty and wild-looking as you'd expect on a stream like this.  



As pretty and wild looking
as you'd expect
 

I used my Tenkara rod – don't ask me why, perhaps for its simplicity, or its poetry, I'm not sure – and Robin Douglas fished his 2-wt Sage, which was more sensible. On a mainly bushy trickle like this a long rod – my Tenkara is over 11 ft – can feel like its purpose is to trim the leaves off high lying branches rather than drop dainty dry flies onto sweet little runs.
 


Bushy trickle

I don't think the patterns we used on the day mattered for much. Well, not as much as I always imagine they are going to matter when I sit down to tie them, all primed with entomology and quasi-river science and brimming with intent to high deception. The patterns I used – that is before they were variously treed or snapped off, and not on any big fish – included a Kite's Imperial (for nostalgia) and Peter Brigg's Spider (for bugginess and floatability), a marvellous pattern to imitate Wolf Spiders (Pardosa amentata, below), not uncommon on most streams.




Pete's Spider, a high-floating and very dependable imitation, especially on swift water

 

The Spider was easy to follow, even in the soda-bubbly water, though trout only took the fly when it had broken out of the swift white corrugations and settled into a sedate drift, as long as there wasn't any drag of course. Where, I wonder, do naive little stream-born trout learn about the dangers lurking in even the gentlest suggestion of drag? Is  there some mysterious sub-aquatic College of Drag that we don't know about, with as many satellite campuses as there are wild trout streams, colleges that teach kindergarten fish the advanced principles of drag detection and bulletproof ways to outwit us? If so, they provide a fine education. And it's free.


Where do these fish go to college?
 

The valley was hot by the time we left the fishing, mid-afternoon, to wade downstream, back through the water we'd just fished, over slippery boulders with boot-trapping cervices that by the time we climbed out hot, scratched and flustered made me realise I am old. Not getting old. I am old. In my youth I moved around these streams like a dragonfly darts across over water. Now I nurse myself along them with slow, studied care and for the next few days I hobble around as if I'd made an ascent on the north face of the Eiger. But the sweet sense of anticipation I get on streams, the sudden surprise of a sipping trout, the pleasant drag of cold water around my legs, swallows sewing loops in the riverbank sky, all this atmosphere of the river lingers on like a beckoning drug and I long to be back, never mind the tortured joints, the creaking chassis. So Robin and I have made plans, as you might have expected, to fish again next week. This time I'll take my 2-weight Sage.
 

Of RABs in a light breeze on a warm summer's evening – and things they don't teach you in fly-tying books ...



A pinch of 'talking' Zaks tied for my friend Sharland

 

I looked down the other day on a dozen Zaks I'd tied for my good friend Sharland Urquhart, who has resolute faith in this pattern, and I swear they spoke to me.
What they said was this; 'With a little more practise you will get this right. But so far it isn't bad. At least we feel just untidy enough to be buggy; under- not over-dressed, properly segmented in the abdomen, dark enough in the thorax, suitably tailed (barred, long and wispy; certainly not a toilet brush) and we note that you paid respect to the fact that our progenitors, the noble family of the mayfly nymphs, have only six legs not sixty. Which isn't to say you can't improve; just that you're getting better'. That's what I heard.

It's not unusual, of course, for flies to take on a life of their own after tying, just like Pinocchio did when the Blue Fairy answered his woodcarver father Mastro Geppetto's wish upon a star.

And here's further proof of flies taking on a life after tying:

Tony Biggs, the inventor of that commendable dry fly pattern the RAB, once told me, without a hint of its improbability, that years ago he woke after a long night tying RABs – he did flies for a local tackle store for pin money – to find them all moving in a shoebox he had them in. He said he realised then that he'd cracked it. I've sometimes seen this myself with RABs, though trembling is perhaps a better word than actually 'moving', so that whenever you look at a clutch of them, good ones that is, they never seem still, seem restless. Some -- especially the winged ones – look like they will get up and fly off as soon as they get near a riverbank in a light breeze on a warm summer's evening.
 



A clutch of seemingly restless RABs

And even more proof:

I once asked Jimmy Eagleton, aka the Shark Man, what crab patterns he likes best and he said, 'The ones that crawl sideways out of my fly box when I open it'. See what I mean?

Of course, this is not something they teach you in fly-tying books, though they should if only to add an anthropomorphic dimension to the usual characteristics of imitation; shape, colour and size. Then when someone picks up a fly you tied, holds it up to examine it carefully against the light, and asks, 'Does it catch fish?', you can keep a straight face and say, 'Go ahead and ask it'.

Yours truthfully,

etc. etc.

The Cape Piscatorial Society Conclave 
 

A function was held by the CPS in the Kelvin Grove pavilion in Cape Town last month with the late afternoon slot taken up by Ed Herbst, Tony Biggs and myself, respectively President (Ed Herbst) and Vice-Presidents (Tony and me). We were featured in an informal, Ask Me Anything, cluster interview with a wide audience of CPS members. I must say they all responded with tolerable patience to our rambling 'When we -' type answers.
Seen here in the hot seats:
 


Self, Biggs, Herbst.  Photographer James Leech.


There's the very rare Apache Trout – then there's the rarest trout in the world ...

The Apache Trout (Oncorhynchus apache) is not quite as rare as its neighbouring cousin the Gila Trout. The Apache is found only in the headwaters of the White, Black and Little Colorado Rivers above 1700 metres in the White Mountains of Arizona where it is the State Fish. They are discretely spotted, have olive-brown backs and golden-yellow bellies touched with hues of lemon and blue. Once near extinction, they have been restored to much of their natural range and limited fishing for them is now allowed. Because they live in small streams, most only grow to around 12 inches, which no one complains about.
 

Apache Trout. ( TS Watercolour 2019).
 

Another rare trout also native to Arizona and to parts of New Mexico is the Gila Trout (Oncorhynchus gilae), possibly now the rarest trout in the world and limited only to the high-altitude headwaters of a single stream and its tiny tributaries, the Gila River near Phoenix, Arizona, which is not far from Las Vegas, just to orientate you. Habitat loss due to a variety of natural and human causes, including drought, climate change and wildfires that leave toxic ash deposits, drastically reduced the population of Gilas.



Map of the Gila River course

 

The Gila was once very much on the threatened species list back in the 1950s, when fishing for them was closed as they were all but non-existent. But the recent Gila story is one of challenges, triumphs, and cautious optimism. Conservation work using anything from pack mules with panniers filled with young trout, to helicopters dropping tanks of fish along remote streams, or people carrying in freshly fertilized trout eggs in backpacks, has improved the lot of Gila Trout, and the number of places where you now catch them in their native habitat has steadily grown. In 2011, after the herculean efforts to re-establish them, fishing was opened for the first time in half a century under special provisions called the 4-D rule, Wildlife America’s 10-year vision for their endangered species.


The Gila Trout. This golden-brown and yellow trout is sometimes referred to as the 'Sunset Trout'. (TS Watercolour.2019).
 

Not at all similar in colouring to the Apache, Gila Trout have smaller, more profuse spots than the Apache and parr marks along the sides in younger fish, while parr marks are absent or very rare in Apache Trout. The Gila also has a faint rose pink flash along the lateral line, again missing entirely from all life stages of Apache Trout. Their natural habitat is obviously also small streams, so like the Apache, they rarely grow to much more than 12 inches. Again, who's complaining? Today, only a handful of fly fishers have ever caught a native-born Gila, and sadly, I am not one of them.

Father's Day

A lovely gift just recently christened.
 


Blessed I am with thoughtful daughters and the notion of Father's Day!
 

My books
Signed and personalised copies of Yet More Sweet Days are available from and buyers a welcome to ask for a drawing on the opening page.
The book sells for R320 and the courier fee within South Africa is R80. You can order through my email address sutcliffe@mweb.co.za
. I also have a few copies of The Elements of Fly Tying and Shadows on the Stream Bed which sell at R185.  Hunting Trout is sold out but my publisher is giving thought to a reprinted 3rd edition in 2020.

Overseas buyers are welcome and quotes will be provided for either courier or postal services. I have a small stock of Yet More Sweet Days with my daughter in Perth.

My artwork
 

At present, I cannot take orders for my watercolours as I am busy with commissions. However, a few of the original art used to illustrate the pages in Yet More Sweet Days is still available. Please let me know what page of any artwork you're interested in getting.




Blasts from the past
John Beams, born in the UK in 1932, died in KZN in 1984, was a fiery character, very, very bright, tirelessly competitive, the creator of the Beams Woolly Worm, author of a useful booklet, Introducing Fly Fishing in South Africa, a great fly fisher and a great friend.I used to say if I had to fish for my life against anyone in South Africa I'd fear John Beams the most. He was very much the thinking angler.



In this photograph, he has coffee mugs decked atop a frozen water trough somewhere in the wintery Midlands of KZN. Note too, the flies on his lapel, something of a sartorial signature adopted by many anglers of the time. In the photograph below, Beams is fishing a pretty stretch of the Little Mooi River on the farm Stagstones  in KZN.

 


Back on the streams – but with a twist...
 

There was an interesting twist to our second outing this week when Robin Douglas and I fished another clear mountain stream that we drop in on from time to time. The twist was that Robin announced he was going to fish a Kite's Imperial dry fly all day, and nothing else, come what may. Which he did. I thought it was risky. More about this to follow.
 


A traditional Kite's Imperial

 

We again had good weather, the stream was bubbling, the occasional trout took something off the surface, probably adult mayflies (I thought I'd spotted a dun drifting by just before a trout rose pretty near where I'd seen the bug), or maybe they were mopping up the last of a hatch of mountain midges, common enough on all our streams hereabouts. But rises were scarce and sporadic. I used a RAB, then a CDC and Elk tied by Gordon Van der Spuy, which caught fish, and then I changed to a One-feather CDC Midge for reasons not rooted in deep science, and got fish on that as well.



CDC and Elk by master tier Gordon Van der Spuy

 

Robin as he promised stuck to the Imperial and caught more than a few trout, even after the fly began to fall apart. It wasn't a traditional Imperial. He had no purple thread and no true honey-dun hackle, but I aim to fix that for him. I have supplies of both.



He fished this Imperial all day until it started to come apart. Note the neat thorax.

 

I suspect one particular fish will stay in his mind a long while, if not forever. In fact, he said as much. It went like this. We'd got to a pretty run with a belly of deeper water running through it and we nodded in agreement that it must hold a decent fish. Robin landed his bedraggled Imperial as light as a windblown dandelion seed and let the fly drift as free as a sailboat. A nice trout came up and hung under the fly for a few exquisite moments, at the same time neatly aligning itself so that the fly would drift precisely over its nose. How they do this so swiftly I don't know.  The fish took the fly, leapt knee-high, then ran downstream like giant crabs were after it. It was a beautiful hen fish, a fin-perfect wild rainbow and the best fish of the day. We photographed it underwater, released it carefully, then offered up a toast to the late Oliver Kite. I hope he heard it.


Fin-perfect wild rainbow on the bedraggled Imperial
 

The last fish of the day conveniently rose under our noses just as we were leaving the stream and Robin took it – again first cast – to a minor round of applause from me.

Reading this, it might sound like we got 100 fish. Well, we didn't. In fact, I don't think we made much more than double figures. But it felt like 100 fish. It was that sort of day. The trout were suitably cautious, but not overly fastidious, every run seemed to hold promise and if some disappointed many more didn't. The fish weren't huge, but I have stopped making excuses for my devotion to small-stream trout no matter their size because they make up for it in so many ways, and, well, because catching big fish actually isn't the point of this kind of fishing. 



Small stream trout. Not big, but they make up for it in so many ways.

 

We walked back to the truck through a garden of flowers scattered above the stream between the proteas and restio grasses.



Typical of the fynbos tapestry


 

There were stands of violet-coloured heather, blue sage, snow-white chincherinchee, scatterings of sulphur-yellow irises and daisies, the typical fynbos tapestry of an unspoiled Cape stream in springtime. My friend Taffy Walters once said of the Bushman's River in KZN that its banks were 'blushing with flowers'. You can't improve on that.
 

The Bushman's River 'blushing' with flowers
 

How to catch trout in Rhodes...
 


The Old Iron Bridge


...a view over three different trout streams in a single glance...

 

When I next arrive at the Old Iron Bridge that spans the Kraai River between Rhodes and Barkly East up in the Eastern Cape Highlands, a bridge that offers a view over three different trout streams in a single glance (the Bell to your left, the Sterkspruit to your right and the Kraai River right under your feet), I am going  to walk out to the middle of that famous bridge, lean over its railings and pay homage to the River Gods in the hope that it helps. The homage I have written goes as follows;  

River Gods, O' River Gods, view me with pity,
I am wearily-travelled from a far-distant city,
So bless me please with a few of your trout,
All pretty enough to write home about.'
 

So ends my lesson for the month.



 

Tom Sutcliffe  

 

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AUGUST 2019 NEWSLETTER

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AUGUST 2019 NEWSLETTER

Spirit of Fly Fishing Newsletter August 2019

Signing books...

Last weekend was strangely hot in Johannesburg, given that it's supposed to be mid-winter up there when Highveld evenings, as I remember them from my youth anyway, are shivering cold and daytime sunshine always feels like some heaven-sent blessing. In fact, basking in pools of sunlight like a somnolent rock rabbit is something I remember fondly from the winters of my Highveld youth.

Not so this last weekend. It was just plain hot – night and day. Global warming maybe? I don't know.

The purpose of my visit to Johannesburg was to sign copies ofYet More Sweet Daysat the Frontier Fly Fishing store in Bryanston, where I was the guest of the owners, Tom Lewin and Dean Riphagen. They had piled books on a table inside the store and outside they laid on fresh coffee and muffins. We stayed busy from 8:30 to 2:00, when I left to take a plane home from Lanseria.

The book signing was a success, if only, as Tom Lewin later remarked, in that we had managed to dodge John Gierach's amusing take on a book signing he once did where only two people approached his table all morning, one of them to ask if the toilet was out the back.

I met like-minded folk as you would expect, who uniformly made me feel a lot more important than I really am, although this, I now sense, is more the sort of reverence reserved for the older members of society than the simple reverence rightfully deserving of anyone with life's equivalent of a full-colours blazer for fly fishing. 

Among the many interesting folk I chatted to wereMarlon Nair, fly fishing's ultimate enthusiast; my friendAndrew Levy, author ofReflections On The River, who would make a fine professor of fly-fishing at a prestigious American university, like Yale or Harvard;Petrus Gouwswhose whole world is wrapped in high-end medical science, guitars, music and fly fishing (and not necessarily in that order);Roy Furywho I last saw when we played as schoolboys in a Transvaal Nuffield cricket trials (which we worked out was in 1959 when he was the most feared fast bowler around and had the surname to go with it); andKen Quick(there's another appropriate name for a fast bowler), who asked me to sign his books and then casually showed me the most impressive micro-patterns I have seen in a long while. He ties them with a neat quill body, a post and a parachute hackle, right down to size 32! That's the size of a match head!.(See below.)

And then there wasNikki Lewin, the ever-patient wife of her bamboo-berserk husband, Tom, both good people to share time with. There were others, but editorial space and reader-tolerance have limits.

Ken Quick's size 32 dry fly pattern


Hook: TMC 518 #32,
thread: UNI-Caenis 20 denier,
tail: Spanish CDL,
abdomen: dyed peacock herl tip,
hackle: Whiting from the top of the neck,
post: TMC Aero Wing,
dubbing: 2 strandsHendsIce Dub in peacock.
 

What could go wrong...?

On the Friday evening before the book signing I held a fly-tying demo for a small group of Johannesburg and Pretoria-based tiers at a venue in my old school, St Stithians College, and predictably tied two of my own patterns, the Zak and the DDD, and then a high-water version of Tony Biggs' iconic RAB.



 

Tony Biggs' RAB (at least, my high water variants of it), with grizzly wings (above) and honey dun wings (below).



 

I knew there would be some skilled tiers in the audience (for a start, JP Gouws of Catskill school of dry flies fame was there), and, probably as a result, I had the disquieting feeling something would go wrong, which it did. First, in the middle of tying the DDD the hook suddenly sprung out of the vice with a loudping; and then as I was about to wind a hackle on the RAB one of its spent-wings mysteriously fell off. You can't write a script for things like this, except to say you can bet good money on something going wrong when you demo anything to a bunch of discerning cognoscenti?

Here they are:



Denise van Wyk; Self; Michiel van Rooy; Don Mc Lennon

Back Row: Peter Dilley; Alan Weakley; JP Gouws; Martin Rudman; Brett James Beattie; Alistair Franks. (Photograph by Darren Fowler).
 

Lest we confound future historians about the RAB dry fly, understand, please, that 'it depends...'

During the tying of the RAB, JP Gouws happened to ask when Tony Biggs winged his RABs and I answered,'Itdepended', which was a way of saying that although Tony and I fished together for more than a few years, I really didn't know, or worse, couldn't remember. It worried me a bit, though, so when I got back to Cape Town I called Tony to ask him when exactly he did, or if you like did not, wing his RABs, and he replied, after some thought, 'Well, Tom,that depended.'
I'm not making it up.

Of course, the exception would be when we fished in a rare fall of large mayfly spinners that the Holsloot River was known for. The adults were a speckled slate-grey with particularly long wings and often a bright yellow egg sack.

Tony also reminded me that there is no such thing astheRAB. Rather the RAB is atypeof dry fly that evolved into a pattern with many guises that is always at once impressionistic, untidy, long-tailed, long-legged, long-hackled, full of movement, as light as thistledown, aVarianttype dry fly combining any of mainly two hackles, from red, through black, brown, white, dun or badger – whatever was at hand and suitably long-fibred – and whether you winged them or not, well, thatdepended.

Then, yesterday, at the Cape Piscatorial Society Conclave held in the Kelvin Grove Club pavilion in Cape Town, Ed Herbst, Tony Biggs and I were on stage for an hour or so to answer member's questions. (You will read more on this below). At the conclave Tony outlined the origins of the RAB and described his earliest prototypes (from the 1960s) as being tied with red thread (no bobbin holder; he never used a bobbin holder all his tying life), a tail of three to 12 wisps of stiff white cock hackle, a stripped peacock herl abdomen, two or three turns of red, ginger or brown cock hackle at the back, a white spade hackle upfront and Egyptian Goose primary fibres for legs. (He later threw these out as too rigid and heavy). They were wonderful flies. I know. I stole hundreds from him.
The best illustration of the 'original RAB, and the most valuable historically, is to be found on page 42 ofSouth African Fishing Fliesby Peter Brigg and Ed Herbst, which I include below. (I find this a most important reference book by the way.)



The original RAB. 'Look, Ma, no wings!' from page 42 'South African Fishing Flies'


RABs tied by Tony Biggs (above and below) and photographed by Stephen Dugmore. Note the variation in hackle colour and the ultra-long wings.


 

A certain elegance and an unmistakable pedigree...

On the morning of the book signing Dean Riphagen gently dropped a few no-hackle dry flies on my table,all elegant and delicate, all tiny, all in naturally muted colours and tied in thatperfect proportional harmonythat left no question as to their high-end pedigrees. They looked like they were about to hatch and fly off the table.

They included a Pale Morning Dun (PMD), a Mahogany Dun, a Flav  (Lesser Green Drake), a Callibaetis and a Trico, all tied variously in sizes 16 through 20 I'd guess. They were from Rene Harrop of Henry's Fork fame. Dry fly tying just does not get much better than this. My view anyway.

  

The No-hackle Callibaetis, Mahogany Dun and Pale Morning Dun (PMD).

Rene Harrop, an angler I have always admired, has had lifelong ties with the Henry's Fork River, often known, and for good reason, as the Graduate School of Fly Fishing.More about this later.


From Clem Booth in London
Clem says

I had a lovely day on the Itchen on Friday. The same stretch fished by Lord Grey of Fallodon. As much as I fish these chalkstreams, the sense of history never leaves really. I left my camera at home so the images below are with the iPhone. Decent quality although using an iPhone is clunky in practice; I much prefer a “proper” camera. 


Some magnificent grayling and the odd trout too, so a good day! 



 

From Alex Hathorn
 

I’m heading off on Tuesday for a week on Kiritimati Island (Christmas Island – CXI) wading the flats chasing lots of bonefish, and hopefully trigger fish and maybe a giant trevally. Quite topically, I’ve filled up my tropical fly box for the trip and confess to using copious amounts of indispensable, clear, hard Solarez in the process. It protects the flies from hard mouths and abrasive coral as well as making the colours “pop”.

 Here is a photo of the one hundred or so Gotchas, Christmas Island Specials and Chilli Peppers that I take along in a wide variety of weights and sizes, not to mention another similar fly box packed with GT brush flies, small Clousers, shrimps and crabs.


California Golden Trout 

The State fish of California, the California Golden Trout, once occupied about 450 miles of stream habitat in the upper South Fork of the Kern River and the adjacent Golden Trout Creek. Currently, it is native only to two high-altitude watersheds in California’s rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Formerly called theVolcano Creek Golden Trout, this is one of the most colourful trout in the world.



 

California Golden Trout caught by Ian Douglas from a tiny creek in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and Ian seen fishing this creek below.
 


 

These fish are found at elevations from 6,800 feet (2,100 m) to 10,000 feet (3,000 m) above sea level. They are a threatened species and in 1978 the Golden Trout Wilderness was established within Inyo National Forest and Sequoia National Forest, protecting the upper watersheds of the Kern River and South Fork of the Kern River.

(I include this trout, and will be including other subspecies of trout in newsletters to come, as I am studying the species, subspecies and strains of salmonids thatmay havemade their way to South Africa from Europe and the United States. The California Golden Trout was not one of them – at least as far as I can tell.)
Brent Flack-Davison at  brentfd@gmail.com
 
Says Brent

 I have five Sage rods for sale. With a 14 month old, I don't have as much time to fish anymore and sadly they are just gathering dust - these rods deserve a better home.
All the rods come with bags and original tubes. 
 Sage ONE #6 – R6600. Sage SALT #9 – R6600. Sage Xi3 #10 – R6600. Sage Xi3 #11 (extended cork) -R6750

Tom Burgers
 


Tom Burgers

I was sad to hear from Tony Biggs that our friend Tom Burgers had passed away, a gently-paced fly fisher, wine connoisseur, would-be trombonist, writer and professional photographer who lived a creative life well into his 80s.  



Tom Burgers on the Smalblaar River circa the late '60s (Tom Sutcliffe photograph.)

 

I first got to know Tom on the Cape streams, mainly the Smalblaar River, in the late '60s and early '70s, and even back then he was not so much out to catch the Smalblaar's unsuspecting trout on dry fly as to capture its imposing grandeur on celluloid – with John Beams as a central figure in most of his compositions. They were lifelong friends. I was lucky enough to use one of his photographs on the cover of the first editionHunting Trout;John fishing in late afternoon light on the Smalblaar. A more evocative photograph of this beautiful trout stream I have yet to see.



The cover of the first edition of Hunting Trout by Tom Burgers

 

Later in his life, through the 80s and early 90s, Tom made regular trips to KZN to fish the lakes in the Impendle district above the Dargle Valley, especially the legendaryOld Damwhere his modest rigs – sinking line, level leader, Red Setter or Walker's Killer – produced enough trout to keep him a convert. One of those fish, at least, was memorable, a hen rainbow of 8 pounds, taken back when theOld Dam'srainbows often shaded nine pounds at just over two years old.

So Tom became known, at least in our circles, not so much for his angling skills as for his devotion to atmospheric studies of fly fishing in its rich variety of moods and occasions. He was an accomplished author, writing and illustrating two books on the Karroo, both photographic essays,The Cedar People,centred around the greater Cederberg area, andKarroo Pastoral,published in 2010, a ballad of words and images on the Karroo that Philip Todres described in a review as '... capturing Tom's love of the silence and timeless moments, the tremendous contrasts and the authenticity of the Karoo environment. '

From his book, The Cedar People
 

South Africa has produced exceptional photographers, the likes of David Goldblatt, Sam Haskins, and Alf Kumalo, but as a landscape and mood photographer, Tom Burgers was never out of place in their company. His love of fly fishing was not so much for the pure sake of fly fishing, as for the beauty he saw surrounding it.

Flies sold for R5000...

A bid of R5000 got Trevor Freestone a framed set of flies tied by Tony Biggs, myself and Ed Herbst. The flies were auctioned in aid of funds for theHaenertsburg Trout Association. The HTA, one of the oldest fly fishing clubs in South Africa, has rights on two streams, the Broederstroom and the Helpmekaar, and on seven pristine stillwaters.


Peter Bradfield, HTA Chairman, Trevor Freestone, and Giordano (Zamps) Zamparini.



The Broederstroom and a brown trout from it.


 

The Cape Piscatorial Society Conclave

As I said this function was held in the Kelvin Grove Club pavilion in Cape Town. We came in on a presentation by Garth Niewenhuis (Protea team fly fisher) on Euro-nymphing that was fascinatingly technical but lucid and logical and I am glad I didn't miss a word of it, if only to remind myself of the sage adage, 'Close your eyes and the world moves on'.

There was a late afternoon slot with Ed Herbst, Tony Biggs and myself, who variously hold positions of President (Ed Herbst) and Vice-President (Tony and myself) of the CPS.' It was an informal Reddit-style AMA (Ask Me Anything), and we were tasked with fielding questions from the audience on fly-fishing related topics, such as, 'Where have you poached the most?', that sort of thing. It was fun.

Finally, on graduate schools of fly fishing ... 

On the matter of theHenry's Fork Graduate School of Fly Fishing, just to let Tom Lewin and Dean Riphagen know that there is an equally prestigious department of fly fishing, apostgraduate facultyno less, situated on the banks of the Upper Itchen in Hampshire. Former alumni include Harry Plunket Greene, WM Halford, George Marryat, James Mottram, GEM Skues, Frank Sawyer, Dermot Wilson and, of course, Oliver Kite.



Faculty buildings, Stoke Mill Campus, Upper-Itchen Postgraduate Faculty of Fly Fishing.(Tom Sutcliffe photograph.)


A typical classroom.


A typical subject!

  1. Appreciations

    Many thanks to the boys atFrontiers, Dean Riphagen, Tom Lewin, Mike McKeown and Keegan Finlayson for hosting the book signing in their accustomed professional way, and my appreciations also to all who attended.

    My thanks to Denise Van Wyk (JacarandaFly Fishing Club) and JP Gouws (Fly Crew, Benoni) for the fly-tying evening's arrangements. A thank you toSt Stithians College, and to staff member Alistair Stewart, for providing an outstanding venue for the fly-tying evening.

    Thanks to theCape Piscatorial SocietyCommittee, (with a special mention for Tudor Caradoc Davies), for inviting us three senior members of council to bring our great collective wisdoms to the broadest attention and benefit of

    Next week I am fishing a stream with my buddy Robin Douglas and will report on it in my September newsletter.

    Of interest, there are now nearly 2500 subscribers to this newsletter that began in 2012 and goes to 16 countries around the world.

Tom Sutcliffe



 

JULY 2019 NEWSLETTER

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JULY 2019 NEWSLETTER

The July 2019 Spirit of Fly Fishing Newsletter.

Tim Rolston

I recently attended a fly-tying function hosted by the Cape Piscatorial Society (CPS) organised by Mission Magazine's Tudor Caradock-Davies (editor) and Conrad Botha (editor at large) and fly tyer, Gordon Van der Spuy, to celebrate the recovery of a South African fly-fishing notable, Tim Rolston and to raise funds to help him cope with his medical costs. He had a serious brush with pneumonia that kept him in hospital, and off work obviously, for over a month. When he's fit he's one of this country's premier fly-fishing guides, fly tyers and authors. See Tim Rolston.



 

Vice-president of the CPS, Tony Biggs with Chris Bladen (sculptor) and Gordon Van Der Spuy (fly tyer) in the CPS club rooms.
 

At the function were the President and Vice-president of this august society, Ed Herbst and Tony Biggs. Tony is the inventor, if that's ever the right word for it, of the now legendary South Africa dry fly, the RAB.
 


A typical (high-water) RAB


Ed Herbst I choose to think of, at least when it comes to fly patterns, as the inventor of Ed's Hopper and, of course, many micro- ant and beetle imitations. All enduring patterns.
 


Ed's Hopper in situ!

 

I will be auctioning an artwork through Mission Magazine to help support Tim. It's the original art used in Chapter 1 of Yet More Sweet Days, a large piece in pen and ink on art paper, 40 x 26 cms.



 

If you are interested in making a bid please drop me at this email.
 
There’s this nice little stream called the Lima...

Jay Lee writes of some Italian fly fishing he recently did.

Last week I was on a family vacation in Lucca, Tuscany, Italy, for a week.
During family vacations I usually don’t bring my fishing gear but this vacation I was allowed.



There’s this nice little stream called the Lima near the town of Bagni di Lucca.

Didn’t bring bamboo this time. I wanted a very packable rod to keep the luggage light so I chose the four piece 7ft #4 fibreglass rod. 




 

Fishing consisted of just one morning until around 1 PM. A local fisherman was so kind to show me the Lima. 
Weather was gorgeous, scenery is amazing, wild browns in a stream that mesmerized.
 


We did the regular visits to the famous spots in Tuscany like the tower of Pisa, the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. 
Early July I have a short fishing trip planned to the Spanish Pyrenees. Unusual lot of fishing for me this season – grin.

Best, Jay.
 
From Michiel Hendrix writes from Scotland...
Says Michiel

A couple of weekends ago I joined a group at Middleton-in-Teesdale on the upper reaches of the River Tees, in the North Pennines, the western part County Durham.
 


 

It’s a beautiful place, and the river is great for both trout and grayling. We ran a casting instruction course for a small group wanting to learn the Italian Casting Style, and had some great fishing as well. After dinner that night we fished till darkness at about 10:30 pm. Though we all caught and landed some fish, both trout and grayling, the fishing was a little disappointing. The insect hatch was copious enough, but the quality dry fly fishing we hoped for didn’t materialise.
 


 

The next day, as the weather was very settled, we decided to head upstream to the Widdybank beat, in the Upper Teesdale National Nature Reserve. This is fairly elevated and exposed moorland and can get very blustery. The river there is fantastic dry fly water, fast-flowing, lots of boulders making for a lot of pocket water, with some flatter parts; very challenging nymph fishing because the river bottom is all boulders from small to large. This also makes it a bit more interesting to wade. If one was a Tenkara artist, this place would be heaven. I had a very happy day, with a decent bag of small, feisty wild brown trout.

Quotes of the month...


'...buying a fly rod in the average city store, that is, joining it up and safely waggling it a bit, is much like seeing a woman's arm protruding from a car window: all one can readily be sure of is that the window is open.' 

Anatomy of a Fisherman by Robert Traver. (Traver wrote two notable angling classics, Trout Madness and Trout Magic.)


'The finest gift you can give to any fisherman is to put a good fish back; and who knows if the fish that you caught isn't someone else's gift to you?' 
-Lee Wulff

Lee Wulff on a visit to South Africa in November 1989at the invitation of FOSAF, with Ian Lehr (then CPS Chairman, left) and Dr Willie Van Niekerk (then Chairman of the Council of Provinces, right). He is pictured here at a dinner given in his honour at the Groote Schuur Estate, Cape Town on 3 November. The party of FOSAF guests also included Joan Wulff and Gary Borger, and from the UK, Taff Price and Peter Cockwill.

A temporary chaos comes with the arrival of a new book...

The eye of the storm has passed. I can live a semi-normal life again, but there was a time of great chaos and clutter after the printers dropped off a few copies of my new book, Yet More Sweet Days, at my home. The arrival of the books occasioned a hectic two-week-long routine of responding to emails, filling in courier forms, wrapping books, folding cardboard boxes, all the while navigating for free space in the clutter that was once a sacred place, my sanctuary for reclusive escape, my study.
 


The clutter that was once my study
– Steve Boshoff photograph
 

Addressing orders has gone smoothly enough, but here and there I hit a few bumps. One such bump was the order I got from one Carlos, a fly fisher who lives in a rural Western Cape town. He ordered a leather-bound limited edition, but in error I posted him a soft-cover. He sent a concerned email pointing out my error; I confessed; told him to keep the book (he paid for it anyway). Then in the brief space of a couple of days I repeated the same mistake. I sent him a soft-cover book, again; not once, but twice more !

He naturally got twitchy about ever receiving a limited edition, had the courtesy to stay relatively calm in our email exchanges, if, reading between the lines, a little dubious and concerned. So when it finally came to posting his leather-bound edition, I labelled the package as in the image below - just to lift his pulse rate a little. It did! (Carlos took the picture.)
 

 



Mentioned in dispatches...

Greg Carstens sent the photograph below of his son, Jason, with a decent fish from a late season Sterkspruit, saying, 'I was up in our favourite place just a week or so ago and the fishing was the best it’s ever been!'
(By 'our favourite place,' he means the Rhodes-Barkly-East area.)



Dave Lambroughton of Armstrong, British Columbia, sent this recent catch, a lovely steelhead taken on a Moose Hair Skater.
 



A tub of Dave's Moose Hair Skaters
 

Dave is a professional photographer specialising in fly-fishing scenes and he produces a wonderful calendar. If you are interested in a 2020 Lambroughton calendar, email Dave at Dave Lambroughton. It's going to be $18.




From Dr Vanessa Trewick, Norfolk UK
says Vanessa fishing an East Anglian chalkstream:
 


 

The DDD proved a winner again last week (it’s been too hot to fish this week - Norfolk has been basking in 32 degree heat), this time in natural livery....I have attached a photo of the trout...a lovely wild brown hen....safely released to fight another day.

Ed Herbst writes about some new innovations in fly tying:
When I started fly fishing in the early 1980s, Cape Town had only one shop catering for our needs, Lemkus Sports at the bottom of Adderly Street.
There you could buy a small range of flies from the garish Mountain Swallow to the very effective Caribou Spider and, if you had the money, fibreglass rods like the Hardy Jet.

That changed when Roger Baert acquired the Orvis agency for South Africa and opened 'The Flyfisherman' in Pietermaritzburg in 1982.
For fly tyers, the arrival of the annual Orvis fly tying catalogue was like Christmas for a child. Sadly, Orvis is no longer represented in South Africa, but whenever Morne Bayman at the online fly tying shop African Fly Angler puts in an order from the huge Hareline or Veniard catalogues, I order what I need.
John Geils says the Wapsi and Semperfli products will be loaded on the Xplorer website within a fortnight.

Hareline has a huge inventory and what I found most interesting in my latest order are the Ahrex FW 506/507 and FEW 516/517 midge hooks and the new Solarez colour UV light-cured resins.

The Ahrex midge hooks have a bigger-than-usual eye but, unlike the Daiichi 1110 dry fly hook (which is based on an Orvis patent) they are made of slightly heavier wire and have a wider gape.

This will make them ideal for the micro-patterns that Alan Hobson is, with increasing success, using for trout on the Mountain Dam in Somerset East and the yellowfish which he is catching in significant numbers on these tiny flies at the Sterkfontein Dam near Harrismith.
 


Alan Hobson’s micro-pattern imitating an adult chironomid

Alan Hobson with a trout that took a #22 midge on the Mountain Dam in Somerset East


In last month’s newsletter I wrote about mixing clear Solarez resins with Wilson & Maclagan glitter dust which comes in colours such as red, orange, black and green and is available from craft shops such as PnA.

Well, the new Solarez colour range includes Topaz Sparkle and Copper Shimmer which incorporates minute specks of glitter. I use the Solarez Copper Shimmer as a sighter on my Veniard Ultra Ant bodies and coat the underside of the fly with Solarez black resin mixed with black glitter dust.
 

A blood worm imitation which uses no thread. The red wire rib is ultrafine Semperfli, the bead is a Toho 15/0 silver-lined red bead and the fly is coated with fluo red Solarez resin mixed with orange glitter dust.


The principle is not new, nail polish manufacturers such as Sally Hansen's Top Coat Megashine also has these embedded specks - but it takes longer to dry.
 

The author’s version of Pat Dorsey’s Mercury Black Magic.

The first layer is Loon Fluorescing resin mixed with black glitter dust. The second layer is Solarez Topaz Sparkle which contains minute blue specks. The bead is a 15/0 Toho silver-lined grey and the hook is a #20 Dohiku 302


.

The author’s Mercury Black Magic under UV light which shows up the embedded black glitter dust.




 A Veniard foam body ant using Solarez Copper Shimmer as highly-visible and light-reflecting sighter. The hook is a #16
Dohiku 303
 

The best UV torches on the market at the moment, in my opinion, are the Loon Infiniti and the Semperfli because not only are they powerful but they can be charged through the USB port on your computer. The Semperfli torch does not need a separate charging cable and has a hooded lens. On smaller flies this means that you can cover the fly with the torch and your eyes are not exposed to the light. Its beam is not as bright as the Loon model, although I doubt this makes any difference to curing time. Both are available through Xplorer in Durban.



The author’s Semperfli torch being charged from his computer

 

Alan has brought to my attention that the Czech fly fishing company, Hends, has a representative, Hansie Meyer, in South Africa. Hends played a role in the evolution of the Czech-nymph technique more than a decade ago and their fine lead wire is in a class of its own.

Hansie, of CMF Fly Fishing sent me some Hends Synton thread which is probably a 17/0 and consists of two very fine threads in parallel.



8 Hansie Meyer, the Hends representative in South Africa

 

The bobbin spool is smaller than normal so I invested in a C&F Midge bobbin from Frontier Fly Fishing which, like my favourite TMC bobbin, is exemplary in design and finish.
 


Hends Synton thread and the beautifully finished C&F bobbin holder

 

Hends Synton has long been a favourite of micro-pattern tyers in Europe and, having a dual thread, is ideal for split-thread CDC patterns.
Even thinner is 20 denier Uni-Caenis, available from Morne Bayman at the African Fly Angler, which I demonstrated at last week’s fly tying function held at the Cape Piscatorial Society to help Tim Rolston defray his recent medical expenses.

As I pointed out, because it is so thin, you will break it sooner or later but, unlike thicker threads, it does not unravel on the fly and you simply start again.
Rubber leg threaders have been around in various forms for a number of years. There’s the Zuddy’s Leg Puller and the small threader made locally by Jay Smith in Durban.

Now Craig Thom of Stream-X in Milnerton, Cape Town has come up with an innovative and inexpensive leg puller.




From left, the Zuddy’s Leg Puller, the JVice model, Craig Thom’s new creation and the C&F threader

But there is another way as I discovered when I came across this video which shows a bobbin threader being used to insert a sighter into a foam rubber beetle pattern. The threader with the thinnest wire is the C&F model which I got from Frontier Fly Fishing.

Tom Sutcliffe
 

JUNE 2019 NEWSLETTER

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JUNE 2019 NEWSLETTER

FLY-FISHING NEWSLETTER – JUNE 2019

Yet More Sweet Days – Notes from a fly fisher's Life

 



My latest book, Yet More Sweet Days, was delivered to my home this week after a long time in the writing and in the protracted process of publishing and printing. But, happily, the finished product is lovely. The book has a feel of comfortable sumptuousness, the cover is pleasantly evocative and the pen and ink sketches have been excellently reproduced. So I am a very happy author, thanks to my punctilious publisher, Tim Richman of Burnet Media, and his professional team.


A pen and ink sketch from Yet More Sweet Days

 

The book will be available in bookstores and fly shops throughout the country and from Craig Thom at NetBooks, as well as directly from myself. If you want a specially personalised copy, or just want to know more about the book, please drop me an email at sutcliffe@mweb.co.za

To order a copy please send your physical address and your cell phone number. This is for The Courier Guy, who will be delivering the orders for me.
Yet More Sweet Days sells for R320 and the courier cost is R70 (for up to three books per courier bag).

I am still waiting to hear courier costs to the UK, the USA, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

To pay for an order my bank details are:
Account  Freestone Press, Standard Bank, Rondebosch, code 025009, Account number  071483861.


I still have a few copies of Shadows on the Stream Bed and The Elements of Fly Tying (both R185), but sadly Hunting Trout is sold out. My publisher, Tim Richman, spoke briefly about printing a third edition of Hunting Trout, but for the moment, Yet More Sweet Days is enough to keep my undivided attention.
Title: Yet More Sweet Days- Notes from a fly fisher's Life; Burnet Media, 2019; pages 472, chapters 20, pen and ink sketches 50. ISBN 9781928230717. Distributed by Jacana Media.
 


The Limited Edition of Yet More Sweet Days  

The leather-bound limited edition copies will be delivered this week hopefully. It is well over-subscribed with a long waiting list, so if you ordered one and have since changed your mind, please let me know. Again the book will be couriered to you so I will need your physical address and cell phone details.   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

A New South Wales mini-grand slam; rainbow, brook and brown trout from tiny Australian streams

In New South Wales, Australia, my friend Nick Taransky makes fine bamboo rods. He is also a small-stream fanatic and as we were coming to the end of our respective fishing seasons, and perhaps in recognition of our shared love of tiny, twiggy waters, he sent me an interesting email with a few photographs. They lit a bright fire in the small-stream-addiction-centre somewhere deep in my brain, and if you are similarly small-stream addicted, hold onto your socks right now!

Says Nick...

It’s feeling very Autumnal here, but some reasonably warm weather got me away from rods and renovations with my mate Troy to try for an Australian 'mini-Grand Slam'; rainbow, brook and brown trout.   We started out with rainbows and brookies.  
 


Targeting wild rainbows and brookies...
 

There were plenty of rainbows and Troy got a handful of brookies, but it took a few hours for me to get mine.  I fished my Madake 4 piece, bamboo ferruled 6’3” #3 weight, while Troy fished his 7’3” Japanese “Naoto Shibuya Favourite” Glassmaster #3.  


 
Then on the way back to Cooma we stopped at a tiny roadside creek for 20 minutes to catch a brown.  Again, Troy got one in 2 casts but I missed a few chances before landing one.  
 











Nick Taransky with the small stream rainbow...




 

We realised that a true grand slam needs 4 species, but that’s not really an option here on the mainland. So in the future, a diversion to a little dam on a tributary to catch a native galaxia minnow might be a cool thing to do.

Thanks, Nick for a lovely article and great images...

A different kind of fishing...

I fished with a bunch of well-known anglers recently in different circumstances. We were on two large ponds on the La Ferme Estate near Franschoek, at an event put on by Western Province Fly Fishing (WPFFA), hosted by disabled fly fishers Duggie Wessels and Mark Swartz.



Ponds at La Ferme near Franschoek
 

I have taken part in fly-fishing clinics for wheelchair-bound people on a number of occasions over the years, but this was different, in that us so-called 'able-bodied' anglers were also strictly confined to wheelchairs. We caught a few fish that, as you would imagine, were nowhere near as difficult to hook as they were uniformly difficult to land from a wheelchair. So it was a challenging and revealing spell of fishing where I discovered just how much I take my own mobility for granted. 

I now have added admiration for people in wheelchairs which, I guess, was the point of the exercise to begin with, and I was left with the strong feeling that it would be good to see more fly-fishing venues offering disabled people appropriate access, throughout South Africa.

Duggie Wessels is the WPFFA coordinator for disabled fly fishers. He is on 0827753180, or at duggiewessels@gmail.com should you have any ideas on how to help him.

'Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.' 
― Horace Mann.


 

Matching the Minnow by Ed Herbst – Streamers for yellowfish?

Writing ‘Matching the Hatch’ saw a young university student, Ernest Schweibert, join the pantheon of fly-fishing greats, but by serendipitous accident I discovered that a similarly analytical approach to imitation and selectivity is being used here in South Africa – but with minnows.

But to get back to my story. At the beginning of the year, my friend, Andrew Ingram, was planning a winter trip to fish the Orange River in the Richtersveld and I decided to tie some flies for him in anticipation of the trip.



A typical fly fishers’ camp on the Orange River in the Richtersveld. Photo by M C Coetzer

 

MC Coetzer, one of the country’s leading competition fly fishers, has often fished the area so I approached him for advice on what nymphs to use because Czech-nymphing the rapids can provide days when dozens of yellowfish are caught.
His answer surprised me. He said,

The fish in the Richtersveld are not picky at all. It’s generally more a question of finding them as some rapids are devoid of fish while others are jam-packed with them.
‘After my last two trips I have switched to fishing streamers for large- and smallmouth yellowfish. A 6-wt rod with an intermediate line, and black, tan or grey streamer patterns, works extremely well. This avoids the smaller fish and you will still end up with 20-plus fish a day.’



M C Coetzer with a typical yellowfish from the Orange River which separates South Africa and Namibia.


Alan Hobson, one of the country’s most innovative fly designers, guides lucky anglers to stellar fly fishing for trout, yellowfish, bass and barbel in beautiful surroundings from his Angler & Antelope guest house in Somerset East.

His research on the role played by predacious diving beetles and snails in the fish diet in his home waters saw him featured in a recent edition of The Mission magazine.

When I approached him for advice on streamers for Andrew Ingram’s trip to the Orange River, I discovered that he has adopted a similarly analytical approach when it comes to imitating our indigenous minnows.

His journey started when a guest gave him a poster produced by a Knysna company, Korckposters, which produces big and beautiful natural history posters.



 Alan Hobson with the minnow chart in his Somerset East fly fishing shop, the poster which started him on his ‘Match the Minnow’ journey was Freshwater Fishes of Southern Africa – the Smaller Species.


He found that there is a significant colour range within a single minnow species depending on the water conditions it is found in. Alan says,

My minnow patterns originate from either catching minnows at an actual venue, or observing what I see at the water's edge and then using the appropriate materials to match the hatch – shape, size, colour and movement. It is actually a lot more difficult than it looks.

'The Chubby Head Barb is very prevalent in many waters throughout South Africa. What is interesting is how the colours vary from water to water. For example, the Chubby Head Barb in Somerset East - DSCF 5757 on the poster - differs enormously from of the same minnow species found in the Winterberg waters.

'The more the water colour looks like rooibos tea with milk, the more silver the minnow appears and, in the Winterberg, where the water is dark brown, the minnow is more golden.

‘The same phenomenon is found in the Orange River system, with the Orange Fin Barb and the Namaqua Barb.

‘These area-related minnow patterns definitely excite largemouth yellows and bigger trout.

 
‘The internet’s ‘Global Village’ enables people from all over the world to order my bespoke patterns. I receive a lot of orders for the customised patterns from anglers doing trips to the Richtersveld, Van der Kloof dam, KZN waters and our trophy Eastern Cape waters and have the flies couriered door to door.’


Alan Hobson’s Chubby Head Barb imitation for Thrift Dam, a legendary large trout venue in the Eastern Cape.


The Chubby Head Barb


There are subtle material and design differences between Alan’s imitations of the Chubby Head Barb (above) and the Namib Barb (below) which is prolific in the Orange River in the Richtersveld.
 


The Namib Barb


Matching the Minnow – the Eastern Cape Redfin which is common in rivers and dams close to Somerset East

 
One of the staples in the diet of both yellowfish and trout in South Africa is the tadpole of the African Clawed Frog – known colloquially as the ‘Platanna’ – and Alan’s HOT Fly (‘Hobson’s Original Tadpole’) is a justifiably legendary imitation. He is now selling an articulated version which is receiving excellent reviews.
 


The articulated version of Alan Hobson’s Platanna Tadpole imitation

 

Another veteran Richtersveld visitor is Richard Wale who, with his partners, bought the Upstream shop from John Yelland and moved it to new premises in Main Road, Kenilworth in Cape Town.
 

 
Richard Wale (left) and Andrew Apsey outside the new premises of Upstream in Kenilworth, Cape Town

 
Richard says that gold materials have proven particularly effective on the Orange River yellowfish and the way he incorporates dumbbell eyes into his streamer is innovative. These flies are available from Upstream as custom ties.
 


Richard Wale’s Zonker for the Richtersveld yellowfish features gold materials and an innovative way of weighting the fly.

 

My own contribution to Andrew Ingram’s trip to the Richersveld was designed for largemouth yellowfish, which is a 'wait-and-ambush' predator. It was based on the smaller version of the Mangum Dragon Tail which has exceptional movement in the water.

I tied it on a #6 Hanak H950 BL streamer hook and, between the tail material and the dumbbell eyes, I palmered in some Zonker fur trapped in a dubbing loop of 12/0 Nanosilk thread. I tied some foam rubber beneath the tail to stop it from wrapping around the hook.
 

 

The author’s Mangum Tail streamer which targets largemouth yellowfish.
 

MC Coetzer pointed out another advantage of fishing a streamer down and across rather that high-sticking a heavily-weighted nymph in the rapids is that it is not as tiring as constantly wading against the current.

Sadly, the Orange River was in spate when Andrew got there and the water was too high and too swift to fish safely. This was a useful reconnaissance trip however and he is planning another trip in spring.

Thanks, Ed for a delightful piece, as always, from South Africa's supreme investigative fly fisher!
 

Tom Sutcliffe
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

NOVEMBER 2019 NEWSLETTER

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NOVEMBER 2019 NEWSLETTER

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OCTOBER 2019 SPIRIT OF FLY FISHING NEWSLETTER
 
I  was fishing alone and lazily on a bright morning on a quiet stream last week. The stream was still early-summer cool and full and it was enough just to be there. The gentle passage of the day was punctuated only by the happy shock of a few cooperative trout.


The stream was a mosaic of familiar shapes and colours, and then, slowly, as if seen through the tumbling glass colours of a child's kaleidoscope, a garland of autumn-coloured leaves gradually blended in my eyes to the unmistakable shape of a slow-sliding puff adder.



Not the first snake I've seen on this stream, it won't be the last, and it's always the same; there's the electric jolt, even before my mind registers; then the moment of recognition when I sum up the danger and if its small, stand quietly to enjoy the macabre fascination of being in the close presence of a snake in the tumble of a river.

The snake left the stream slowly like an unfolding conjuring trick, its yellow and black patterned chevrons moving rhythmically along it sides like hinged leaves, until it was swallowed in the shadows of the riverbank.

Every step I take then is a very cautious one until I relax enough to accept I'm not actually wading through a wall-to-wall spread of hovering serpents, and my world settles once more into the harmless tapestries of a familiar trout stream and life goes on.

The One Feather CDC Midge

Shortly before I bumped the puff adder I was thinking of fly patterns. I am not particularly obsessed with the relative merits of one fly over another, well not on small mountain streams, but something interesting happened this day that I thought warranted a few words.

I'd started the morning after a brief downstream hike at a run so perfectly pretty it belonged in a text book. The Elk Hair Caddis I floated though it looked like it would be swallowed at any moment, but no fish showed. After two more drifts, I changed to a Para-RAB, but again if the look of the drifts and the fly on the surface pleased me, they didn't please the trout.

I remembered my friend Robin Douglas telling me he'd recently had repeated refusals to a number of dry flies throughout a morning's fishing on a nearby stream and could only hook fish on a One Feather Midge. So I changed to it and hooked a trout on my first cast in that same pretty run, and another on my second. And the story was repeated, twice, on different runs in the same stream on the same morning with the same patterns. The Elks and Para-RABs were refused, the One Feather Midge not.



A clutch of CDC Midges
 

It will require a lot more evidence before this becomes anything like some biblical truth, but let me put it this way: early season, on a bright morning on a Western Cape stream I'd not wager money that One Feather CDC Midge won't work. And that's mainly because hatches of tiny mountain midges on all swift-flowing upland streams are common and often go unnoticed.

I fish the Midge in sizes 16 and 18, tied with natural dark dun CDC. Use a spotter of your choice. I like orange Poly Yarn. It's easy to follow and easy to use.
The tying of the CDC Midge is on my website.

From Rene Vosloo - Escape to Branksome Country House

Branksome Country House is the brainchild of Rene Vosloo, Basie Vosloo's sister, Basie being the owner of the farm Birkhall up in the Eastern Cape Highlands about whom I have written more than a few pages.



Branksome sits at the top right of this loop of the Sterkspruit  
 

Branksome is the next farm up the road from Birkhall on a section of the Sterkspruit River I have also often written about; and with good reason, because it includes one of the Sterkspruit's most productive beats, the Gorge section, and above that, the water up-and downstream of a pretty bridge with a weir above it is also productive and very picturesque.


A fish in the Gorge section


The weir and the bridge sections of the Sterkspruit


 

Rene tells me she has converted two of the historic sandstone sheds on Branksome into a fine country house. The milking parlour, built in the 1920’s, has been converted into five large rooms with bathrooms en suite and patios to take in the vast mountain views. What I really liked hearing is that each room is decorated with old family furniture collected over many generations of Vosloos.

The shearing shed and bull stable are now The Trout and Hound, a pub and restaurant, with little change to their original and beautiful sandstone structures. Most of the material used in the bar has been repurposed – a Bedford Chassis with poplar planks hewn from trees felled on the farm and the old floorboards were used to set up the shelves.
 
Says Rene,

The restaurant offers a farm-to-fork dining experience using seasonal local produce. Our meat is sourced from the certified Birkhall Butchery providing the best quality grass-fed lamb and beef. Breakfast is catered to suit your schedule and Ploughman platters are available all day. The dinner menus are created each day.'


Crossing the Bokspruit River on horseback
 

'Hiking and mountain bike trails and horse rides are a different way to explore the countryside. Branksome’s horses are famously sure-footed, coming from blood-lines specially bred for endurance in mountain country. The area surrounding the farms has wonderful birdlife with sightings of vultures, lammergeier, crested cranes and many raptors.


Mario Cesare on Branksome

 

'Many of the sandstone caves are decorated with rock art documenting Bushman life in the valleys.
'The room rate is R950 and includes breakfast.

'The Trout and Hound pub and restaurant menu changes daily and booking is recommended. Horse rides can be arranged for guests and day visitors. Please call ahead to book rides. The cost per rider is R250 for the first hour and R500 for half a day.

'The Sterkspruit River is easily accessed from the guest house. A day permit is R150 and a half-day is R100, payable to The Wild Trout Association (WTA).'
For more information, visit www.branksome.co.za email info@branksome.co.za
, or Whatsapp Rene on 082 606 1359.

Micro-midges for Mountain Dam - by Ed Herbst
(This is a long article, but it is a very valuable resume of the latest on fishing micro-patterns in stillwaters. My many thanks to Ed Herbst.)
 
Two years ago Alan Hobson posted an article on this website about a substantially increased yellowfish catch rate at Sterkfontein Dam through using 7-8 x tippets and flies size 18 or smaller.
 
Since then, as Alan has progressed to yet smaller flies, his catch rate at Mountain Dam at Somerset East has improved significantly and 2kg trout are regularly being caught on #24 flies.
 


Alan Hobson with a Mountain Dam rainbow trout which was fooled by one of his micro-patterns

 
Wanting to contribute to this research, I ordered some #26 Gamakatsu C12-BM barbless big-eye hooks.
 


 A #26 spent mayfly imitation tied on the big-eye Gamakatsu midge hook

 
I also ordered the #24 Allen N304 which, like the Gamakatsu, is a medium-wire, scud-type hook. Looking at it through the 4x magnification of my Donegan Optivisor, I was delighted to find that it has a spear-point design pioneered by Tiemco on models like the TMC 2499 SP – BL.
 
Alan finds most micro-pattern hooks of #22 or smaller straighten on the fish in Mountain Dam and at Sterkfontein and he is also partial to the superb medium-wire Ahrex hooks which are made in Finland. Craig Thom of Stream X can source them for you.
 


Three of the medium-wire micro-pattern hooks favoured by Alan Hobson for his trout and yellowfish flies. They all have larger-than-normal eyes.

 
In his 1996 book What the Trout Said:  About the Design of Trout Flies and Other Mysteries, Datus Proper wrote that trout accept size 16 and smaller flies with less suspicion than larger patterns.
 
Five years ago, in an article on this website, Tom Sutcliffe posted photographs of trout stomach contents that showed that most trout prey is less than half a centimetre in length.
I have watched trout feeding hard on mountain streams near Cape Town, darting from side to side and capturing prey too small for me to see.
 
Ralph Cutter who has spent dozens of hours snorkelling trout rivers in the USA makes the same point from an underwater perspective in his stellar book Fish Food :
 
'Scientists will tell you that a trout's vision is somewhat less acute than a human’s. How they know that, I can’t tell, but I can tell you that in a fish's world, a trout sees much better than we do. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times I have finned in the water just behind a trout and watched as it cocked its fins, flared its tail, and raised its nose in eager anticipation of an approaching morsel of food.
 
It is a body language common to all trout in all waters across the world.
 
Rarely do I see the food item drifting toward us before the trout sees it. Invariably it is the fish’s behaviour that alerts me to the item. Many, many, many times I can't see the item until it is inches from the trout’s nose, and far too many times to count, I'm unable to figure out what the trout saw at all. From several feet away, trout can see Daphnia and copepods and mayfly egg masses the size of the period at the end of this sentence. They see, or otherwise perceive, these minute flecks against a swirling background of bubbles, swaying vegetation, and drifting debris.
 
I don’t have a clue how they do it.
 
Nine out of ten people use a fly that is too big. Three reasons: It is easier to get the tippet through the eye of the fly; it is easier to see on the water; and to us, live flies simply appear larger than they really are.'
 
Alan Hobson says Mountain Dam is a veritable soup of tiny insects - spent Caenis, micro-caddis, Chironomid and Chaoborous (Phantom Midge) not to mention the even smaller Daphnia upon which it preys.

 


Chris Wood fishing Mountain Dam during a Caenis hatch

 
During the late afternoon there are huge Caenis hatches and a fascinating article on the Partridge website reveals how trout feed at such times.
 


A typical late-afternoon Caenis hatch on Mountain Dam


Spent Caenis at the margins of a dam. A scanned photo from Dean Riphagen’s stellar book
Stillwater Trout in South Africa (Struik, 2004)

 
As the sun dips behind the horizon, dipterans in their thousands emerge, crawling up one’s waders. In the morning, their bodies blanket the margins and the wind lanes and they are dispersed at all levels of the water column by wind-generated currents.
 


 Emerging Phantom Midges use Alan Hobson’s waders during a hatch after sunset on Mountain Dam.

 
For me the breakthrough tying tiny flies came when I discovered Uni-Caenis thread, the thinnest on the market. I had bought it about two years ago from Morne Bayman at the African Fly Angler online shop, but had never used it because I had been told, incorrectly as it turned out, that it was so weak that it would not hold the weight of a bobbin.
 
I put a spool onto my favourite bobbin, the Tiemco Adjustable Arm Bobbin, lubricated the spool holes and the bobbin arms with Mucilin to make the spool turn with less friction, and, after that, tying  size 24/26 flies became routine.

After a dab of superglue is applied to the hook shank with a toothpick, I wind on a few turns of spaced Semperfli or UCT ultra-thin wire using a Stonfo Bobtec bobbin.
 


The two bobbins used by the author for tying midge patterns and the invaluable Optivisor equipped with the
Quasar LED lighting system

 
The first layer of UV light-cured resin – (Loon Fluorescing) - is applied to further lock the wire onto the hook shank and because it adds a subtle blue glow. After that, I apply some thicker Solarez Topaz Sparkle resin which contains minute blue specks of reflecting material.
 
You can replicate this effect by mixing glitter dust - which is available from craft shops - into your favourite UV resin.
The Wasatch cement applicator is very helpful in holding a tiny drop of UV resin and then applying it evenly to the hook.
 


 The UV light-cured resins used by the author when tying midges and the Wasatch cement applicator

 
The Uni-Caenis thread is now attached between the eye of the hook and the resin-covered wire. You will, at some stage, break this thread but it does not immediately spiral off the hook shank in coils – you just re-attach it and continue tying.
I find it easiest to attach a single wing pointing backwards using Fishient Gliss’n Glow Clear Ice which is a clear plastic strip with horizontal striations. Other possibilities are pearlescent micro Crystal Flash, Antron, CDC or Coq du Leon barbules.
 
To illustrate the tying sequence and make the photography easier I have used the #24 Allen N304 hook
 

 

Step 1 – the wire is wound onto the hook shank which is covered with superglue dispensed  via a toothpick from a Zap-A-Gap bottle equipped with Flexi-Tips


 Step 2 – the wire is covered with fluorescing resin which shines through the second coat


Step 3 – Solarez Topaz Sparkle is used for the top coat. Note the blue glints


Step 4 – The completed midge showing the Gliss ‘n Glow wing

A midge tied on #26 Gamakatsu hook using Micro Crystal Flash for the wing

 
To cover the wing at the tie-in point and mimic the insect’s head I use Quick Descent Dub which is made of extremely fine aluminium shavings.
 
The late Shane Stalcup raved about this dubbing in his book Mayflies from Top to Bottom and with good reason because I have never tried a dubbing material that is easier to use and there is nothing better for tying tiny flies. It almost magnetises itself to the thread and you need about two strands for midges which means a packet goes a long way.
 
The suggestion that it sinks nymphs ‘like a rock’ is simply advertising hype written by someone who has never used it.
It is no longer made unfortunately, but some shops still stock it.
I also wax the thread and use the fuzz stripped from peacock herl. Other alternatives are mole fur and Kreinik silk dubbing, a favourite of Ed Engle, author of Tying Small Flies.
 


 Micro-midge success for Alan Hobson on Mountain Dam in Somerset East.

 
Alan’s research into the importance of predaceous diving beetles in trout diet was a singular step forward in the evolution of dam fishing tactics for trout.
 



 A photograph on Alan Hobson’s cellphone of predaceous diving beetles eaten by a Mountain Dam trout along with examples of the closely imitative flies he crafts to imitate them

 
The air bubble on a predacious bubble which is trigger for the fish feeding on them. Photo by Charles Griffiths.
 


The air bubble as imitated on this Diving Beetle pattern tied by Alan Hobson

 
Here’s Alan’s advice on fishing micro-patterns for stillwater trout and yellowfish:
 
Fishing midges is challenging but oh, so rewarding. What is so special is that it is far from an exact science, as what works today does not necessarily produce the same success the next day.
After a 45- year fly fishing journey I can say that identifying what is hatching is imperative as correct fly selection does increase one’s success dramatically.
 
The other big factor is observing the fish’s behaviour to see how they are feeding.  What makes fishing midge hatches so exciting is that ninety percent of the time you can see where the fish are feeding. Presentation, however, is always key element in success - you must get your flies into the zone of vision of the fish - to where it is in the water column.
 
My leader set –ups vary according to the species I am targeting and the prevailing conditions. I prefer using a longer leader, ten to fifteen feet. Ten feet if you are fishing with a wind blowing and fifteen feet to eighteen feet if it is a calm day. Generally I always use two or three flies.
The main section of the leader is made of Maxima Ultragreen and I use Stroft tippets.
To use long leaders effectively, slow your casting stroke down and open your loop.
 
I connect my leader to the fly line using a Surgeon’s Loop and build my own leader using blood knots. The blood knots act as a buffer for the free running dropper system. What is critical is that the mono the dropper runs on is at least two pounds breaking strain heavier than that of the dropper, i.e. if your dropper is 5x then make sure it runs on 4x, preferably 3x, the dropper should be a maximum of 6 inches long.
 
At the end of the dropper, opposite the fly, I tie a small loop. The loop is held against the leader and the fly is threaded through the loop which is then tightened.
 
This enables one to quickly change flies without cutting the leader.
 
I use a Uni-Knot to attach my fly to my tippet for two reasons. The small loop allows the fly to move and, on the strike, there is a little give as the knot tightens which makes the tippet less likely to break
 
The key factor in fishing micro-patterns on dams is that the fish are not prepared to chase them down, because they would expend more energy chasing tiny insects than they will receive in protein-return.
 
The takes are either a very quick, fast bump or, when the water surface is covered in tiny insects, more subtle. In the latter case you have watch the leader with concentration because they reject a fly in a split-second.
 
Don’t waste time casting blindly and furiously because the result is always a spooked fish. Rather wait until you see the fish or its movement and present without lining it. If you battle to detect takes then use a small strike indicator - one that does not make a loud plop - to help spot any deviation in the leader.
 
If the wind blows a bow in your line, keep moving the tip to maintain one continual bend with the rod and line. Don’t hold the rod at ninety degrees to the line because you will battle to set the hook. Let the wind do the work for you as it drags the flies below the surface. If conditions are calm, ensure you are in touch with the flies and watch the line for the slightest movement. If you spot or sense a take, lift the rod gently to strike and let the reaction of the fish set the hook.
 
When I started researching stomach contents of fish caught in the Somerset East area, I quickly discovered that predacious diving beetles were a staple in the diet of trout and yellowfish throughout the year. I now use them on all my three-fly leader set-ups with the beetle sometimes functioning as a strike indicator on the point.  If I want to fish it beneath the surface, I’ll use a weighted nymph on the point to pull it down a few centimetres.

 

My close-copy diving beetle patterns have proved extremely successful. The foam is shaped with a Dremel tool and the decoupage paint is applied in separate drying stages which take four days.  I use  the technique pioneered on Sterkfontein Dam by Dr Hans van Zyl with his ‘Good Doctor’s Beetle’.
 

One of the problems that Alan’s clients have is snapping the required 7-8x tippets on the strike and he is collaborating with Pretoria-based custom rod builder, Koos Eckard on a fibreglass model based on a CTS blank which will cushion fine tippets more effectively than carbon fibre rods do.
It will incorporate the Ritz-based grip which he has developed.

The range of flies that Alan has developed and are for sale is shown on his website.

Useful information on the role of midges can be found at the following links:

http://www.mtfa-springfield.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Midge-article-Master-Naturalist-Blog.pdf

http://www.mtfa-springfield.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Midge-Fishing-Techniques-3-3-2018.pdf
http://www.mtfa-springfield.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Green-Gilled-Tubing-Midge.pdf
 
 
 Tom Sutcliffe

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

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July 2021 Fly-fishing Newsletter

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From: Jonathan Clark
Sent: 18 August 2021 04:47 PM
To: Tom Sutcliffe <sutcliffe@mweb.co.za>
Subject: Re: JULY 2021 SPIRIT OF FLY-FISHING NEWSLETTER

Dear Tom

I too was a friend of Basie’s and was lucky enough to be with him at Birkhall a few weeks before he died.  I’m writing to thank you most sincerely for sending out your thoughtful and kind email.  Your pictures are fabulous.  Thank you.

Best wishes, Jonathan

jonathan clark

mobile: +27 83 267 6968

e-mail:  jonathan@agglethorpe.com

From: Tom Sutcliffe <sutcliffe@mweb.co.za>
Reply to: Tom Sutcliffe <sutcliffe@mweb.co.za>
Date: Tuesday, 3 August 2021 at 12:23
To: jonathan clark <Jonathan@Agglethorpe.com>
Subject: JULY 2021 SPIRIT OF FLY-FISHING NEWSLETTER

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JULY 2021 FLY-FISHING NEWSLETTER

About this month's Newsletter

This edition of my newsletter is largely devoted to my dear, departed friend Basie Vosloo, written from my sense of loss but also from a sense of gratitude; loss because his passing has left a hole in my life as if an important chapter had closed, and gratitude, which is never a good enough word in most circumstances, for the quarter of a century I was the fortunate recipient of Carien and Basie's limitless largess and friendship.

For those to whom Basie Vosloo is unknown, he was fabled in South African fly fishing circles, and to add some reference to my homage I have included a few of my most cherished photographs of him, and of Carien, and Birkhall and Gateshead and sprinkled the text with a few passages from Shadows on the Stream Bed, Hunting Trout and Yet More Sweet Days. These quotes are in italics and I centre the text. I hope the words help to conjure some imagery for you in what was a difficult passage of words for me to write.

Beyond Basie's sad passing, July was also very challenging in other ways and also rewarding. Let me explain. There were two cataract ops to restore my failing eyesight, done by young Cape Town ophthalmic surgeon Dale Harrison. Take a bow, Sir. The improvement is beyond miraculous, the delay getting it done (due to my concerns around Covid and the lockdown) intensified the improvement between my pre- and post-op eyesight. The world's colours seem bright again and detail sharper than ever before. I can now spot moths on the moon. Dale Harrison, by the way, is a keen fly fisher.

Then there was the week of mid-July madness when two provinces in South Africa, particularly KZN, staggered under a siege of lawless pillage that went unchecked long enough (around four days) to risk blowing our young democracy clean out of the water until an unaccountably somnolent government woke up and the police and army brought stability. Over 300 people died and looters left countless shops, factories, supply lines, even some strategic infrastructure like cell phone towers, destroyed or damaged. And I couldn't help thinking as I watched these anarchic incursions unfolding on television hour after hour, that they carried the hallmarks of an orchestrated insurrection. I’ve used the word ‘insurrection’, and on the face of it, that seems about right.

It's too soon to predict a final outcome, but not too late to point out the silver lining around these tempestuous clouds, namely the counterpoised and very evident successes of so many good South Africans from all walks of life to rise above these forces of evil. Still, the naysayers suggest South Africa hasn't the capacity to recover. I don't agree. I think South Africa has that capacity. We are nothing if not a resilient nation. But recovery will need swift justice for offenders and rigorous self-examination by the government.

My thanks to the many fly fishers from around the world who sent me messages of sympathy, hope, encouragement, and unity.

Two lovely pieces of writing

All this aside, there are a few other lovely pieces in this edition. One is by Justin McConville on fishing a stream in Wales and the River Loddon a chalkstream – my word he does write well.

Another is a most interesting book review by my friend and expert on global, but especially South African angling literature, Paul Curtis, who shares what will become a regular feature in this newsletter, a book by book account of the gems in early South African angling literature.

Then please have a look at Gordon van der Spuy's limited edition prints of all the yellowish species, drawn in exquisite detail and professionally scanned, an ideal companion piece for your fly fishing/fly tying den.

But let's first speak of Basie...

Johannes Arnold 'Basie' Vosloo - 24 May 1957 – 4 July 2021
The passing of a near-mythical figure in many South African fly-fishing and hunting circles.

I was introduced to Basie Vosloo 25 years ago by Ed Herbst when we arrived one night for a protracted fishing stay on his farm Birkhall, the car immediately swamped by enormous dogs with barks that rattled the windowpanes. I was scared stiff until Basie arrived with a torch to see me in. It was an embarrassing but portentous moment. Ten days later I'd got used to the dogs – or they to me – and had grown fond of Basie.



The farmhouse on Birkhall



Basie and Carien at home in Birkhall

 

My initial characterisation of Basie (in line with my narrow orthodoxy that farmers are generally rough and largely uninterested, or unversed, or both, in the affairs of the world), was way off. He had a gentle side, far-ranging intellectual horizons, as at home with the arts and literature (particularly the writings of Oscar Wilde), as he was grading wool or planting potatoes.
 


Basie and his mother, Patricia, in the shed at sheep-shearing time

 

But he was still your typical farmer in so many ways: in his warmth of spirit and generosity; in his love of the veld; in his industrial-grade self-belief in his farming skills; in his total delight in any bit of running water. And, not least, in appearance; a big man, with legs of a billiard table, always in shorts and open-neck shirt, even when that high-mountain cold turned our breath to clouds of frozen vapour.

But above all Basie had a presence; that opaque quality a few people have of radiating a definable sense of their own space.



Looking over Birkhall


Life on Birkhall:

Basie became known to hosts of South African fly fishers, if not personally, then certainly by reputation, as a man who took any angler's visit to Birkhall seriously, when a day's fishing might easily end around his pub for a celebratory libation. Accounts of many unsteady late-night departures of anglers in happy and assorted stages of incipient tailspin are now storied enough to be part of fly-fishing folklore.




Carien points to a trout taken from the Sterkspruit and mounted in that much-storied pub



Ed Herbst, one of Basie's dearest friends, on Birkhall's veranda; with ubiquitous pipe and matches.'

 

There were days, countless of them over the years, when we just sat chatting on the veranda on Birkhall, gazing across views along the tree-laced river valley, sometimes with an early mug of coffee seeing in a sunrise, or watching the unfolding drama of a thunderstorm or, commonly, a sunset gradually turning the surrounding blue-shadowed mountains to flame-orange.



View in a mirror of the valley from Birkhall

 


Sunrise over Birkhall

Down the tree-laved river valley
 

'We had a farm-style lunch the last day on Birkhall, a roast leg of home-grown mutton prepared by Carien. Later that afternoon a majestic storm played itself out in the Birkhall valley and pretty soon the Sterkspruit was too high and too discoloured to fish. In a way, I liked that. It’s easier leaving a place when you know the river is going to be out for a day or two anyway.'



The unfolding drama of a Birkhall thunderstorm

...the setting son turning blue-shadowed mountains flame-orange
 

'That evening on the Birkhall veranda, Basie grilled steaks as thick as roof rafters. He did them on a steel wok connected to a portable gas cylinder. The white-marbled meat was good in ways it’s hard to put your finger on, other than to say you can’t lose sight of the fact that it hadn’t come from a fridge in some city supermarket, but from a grass-fed animal slaughtered on the farm.'


Basie Birkhall veranda steaks
 

Basie was proud of Birkhall; proud of the way he and Carien farmed it, each with their own focus and energy and love, proud too of Birkhall's unmissable beauty.  
 


Rainbows over Birkhall tend just to gild the lilly


Basie with anglers on Birkhall

'I’ve got into a loose routine over the years on my visits to Birkhall. I’m up early, at about 6 a.m., pad into the kitchen, switch on the kettle, add a heaped teaspoon of coffee to one of the mugs that hang in the glass-fronted cupboard directly above the kettle. They are white mugs with big red polka dots on them. They have been in the kitchen since I can remember. I add farm milk, thick with cream, and a spoon of sugar. I sip the coffee and wait for Basie. Or else Basie has beaten me to it and he’s there sucking on his pipe in clouds of blue smoke, his wet hair combed flat. The dogs are let out and they bark at the fading moon or the rising sun, whatever. They just bark. We talk farming or fishing, and then eat breakfast; eggs and bacon and (homemade) Russian sausages, toast and marmalade, more coffee. Then Basie is gone, Carien leaves on one of her endless errands, and I am alone. I have a hundred choices where to go fishing. Or I might write up my diary, or set up my vice to tie flies on the veranda... Life here is richly coated with choices, all strung across lazy days that drift slowly by like sail ships on a light breeze.'


...they just bark at the fading moon, or the rising sun, whatever...

 

Some years there was drought and I seemed to live through those with Basie, right down to the sorry day the Sterkspruit stopped flowing ...


'The rivers had perked up a bit but, despite the rain, it was still pretty dry. Basie said the only thing still green on the farm was the indicator light on the dashboard of his old F 100 truck.'
 

Basie and pointer Biggles, Archer at the back in the old F 100 adorned with Koki penned Adams dry flies (tied Catskill-style?).


Birkhall spring water

 

Birkhall has a garden pond fed by fresh spring water where Carien grows watercress and at times Basie grew out trout. We hooked countless fingerlings on wet flies in the Sterkspruit, kept them in laundry baskets immersed in knee-deep runs, later loaded them into buckets to stock the Birkhall lake below the house.


Birkhall
Lake


Reservoir

Some fingerlings went into a reservoir in the garden for 'the sheer joy of having a few trout nearby' Basie said. I once hooked a monster here on a dry fly with Ed, that I never landed.
And the presence of fish and frogs and tadpoles meant kingfishers were common visitors. It's a lovely feature in their garden.
 

Basie and fly fishing...
 

When Ed and I first met Basie his approach to fly fishing was a little downstream of high culture, but over years he moved from stripping Buggers on heavy rigs to dry flies on light rods and gradually acquired an appreciation of small stream fishing with all its obsessive oddities and minimalist refinements Ed and I had obsessed over almost exclusively from the day we first met him.
 


Basie fishing the Sterkspruit


But on the rare occasions I actually fished with Basie, mainly on the Sterkspruit and the Bokspruit at Gateshead, he was always only part-fly-fisher-part-farmer, never totally able to surrender to the day without half an eye on the farm. So you might look up from a run and suddenly find him high up a bank straightening a fence post or counting ewes in a paddock.



Basie on the Birkhall Sterkspruit


Basie on Bokspruit River at Gateshead
 

Of all the rivers in the district, and there are many, Basie loved the Sterkspruit beyond all, not for its strong fish alone, but for its winding beauty, its endlessly interlinked tapestries of runs and riffles and braids and pools that are so characteristic of this stream's anatomy no matter where you step into it.
 


Sterkspruit river landscape


The gorge water on Birkhall as it borders Branksome


Typical tapestries of the Sterkspruit River  




The Sterkspruit above and below the Lindesfarne Bridge
 

Basie and Gateshead...



Basie and Carien at Gateshead cottage


 

Basie also loved their high mountain farm Gateshead, a place where the essence of life is dressed in its loveliest simplifications. He was proud of its remoteness, at the very end of a road that crossed bridges of cold water straight off mountains; the clear, clean air; the timeless Victorian pastiche cottage, prettily latticed veranda fronted by privet hedges and flanked by fruit trees over a century-old...


 


Gateshead cottage

 

On the way up to Gateshead...
 

' The flow of water spilling under the bridge made the steady, softly sibilant, sucking sounds of a stream in good flow. We stepped out of the truck and could smell the water and the leaves, a compressed mix of cold freshness, wet loam, and mulch, the air so saturated with a fragrance that made you want to breathe in deeply. Above the bridge was a long pool of clear, thigh-deep water; below it the stream ran white and rough. A trout weaved in the pool above, at first not easy to see but later so obvious it seemed strange we hadn’t spotted it straight off...'


At a bridge on the way to Gateshead

 

'The cottage sat on the lower slopes of the Gateshead Mountain facing a narrow, steep-sided sweep of hills and falling river...'



Basie just loved to gaze across the hills from the Gateshead veranda



Nights on Gateshead were good, cold, starlit, around a campfire, crate of beer, watching shadows lengthen, lapsing under jeweled night skies into assorted philosophies until the cold of dying embers (or the fast aggregating heaps of empty bottles) saw us off...



Simplicity. The kitchen stove on Gateshead


'An orchard of fruit trees so old that naming them wasn’t something you could ever feel sure about.' (I now know they are a mix of cherry trees, apricots and apples.)



'We laid in a wood fire between stones in the tiny boma off the kitchen at the back of the cottage, cooked thick streaks on the fading glow of hot coals, drank good red wine, and relived a spiritual day where we had all hovered briefly on the outskirts of heaven.'


Formal dinner on Gateshead: Phil Hills, Luke Rossler, Basie, and self.

 

Horses...
 

Days out with Basie on horses were glorious but too rare, he always the master of these animals, often on Apla his headstrong black steed that everyone else was too scared to ride.

Basie rounding up at Gateshead


Basie on Apla

 

The dogs...

Basie had a special love for Archer, an English pointer. Feathers, also an English pointer, was next in the line of Birkhall's canine hierarchy, then followed a later pointer, Thomas, that I collected for Basie as a puppy from a breeder in Johannesburg and drove down to Birkhall with him in my truck. Don't ask me about that trip. The dog arrived safely and ended up named after me. But Archer somehow lifted himself to near holiness among the many gun dogs in Basie's life, and he has since had a room named in his honour in the Branksome Country House, a lodge run by Basie's sister Rene on the next farm upstream of Birkhall. (By the way, there's also the Ed's Hopper room in that lodge. As I said, Ed held a special place in the Vosloo's lives.)



His Royal Highness Archer


Archer on a day out with me on the Bokspruit River

'That night we tied a few flies by gaslight .... When we finally turned in, the air was like frozen steel. I crawled under a heavy mountain of blankets and blew out the candle. Moments later Feathers started to inch her way onto my bed with deliberate and measured stealth, trembling paw by trembling paw, convinced I was unaware of her subterfuge. I let her sink onto the bed. She lay dead-still and eventually we fell asleep. In the morning she was curled up warmly at my feet and her son, Archer, still a puppy, was deep inside my duffel bag with only his nose showing.'


On Gateshead : Feathers and Archer


If the dogs sit out in the morning sun on Birkhall, they sleep inside at night around the warmth of the Agar stove.
 

A momentous visit with Basie to a lake under construction...

One morning we visited Basie's new lake above Birkhall. He was finishing the wall with heavy machinery. I left him in dust clouds and hiked up the thin feeder stream, a wisp of water no wider than a stride, and discovered in its meager flows a brace of trout and a bunch of fingerlings. Basie said I was hallucinating, so we wandered back up the creek, found the evidence and I watched first Basie's astonishment and then I saw utter delight appear on his face. 'Thomas,' he said 'you have your uses.'



A slip of stream


...with fingerings in it


Finally completed. The new lake on Birkhall

Friendship…

To explain more aptly my privilege in knowing the Vosloos, here's what I wrote under the appreciations in Yet More Sweet Days:
'Those who stand out are Basie and Carien Vosloo of Birkhall, who are more part of my family than just good friends. ...Without them there would be no story to tell. '
 

A moment with a humourous side...
 

'That night Basie said it was too cold to snow and I offered to light the fire in the lounge. He quickly said, ‘Don’t worry, leave it to me.’ I suspected this was a deep survival response that got embedded in his mind when I last lit the fire in his lounge one particularly cold evening on a previous trip. The wood was slightly damp and the flames just wouldn't take hold. Basie suggested I add a little ‘starter’, a turquoise-colored, high-octane inflammable gel. I poured a little gel onto blackened embers that I could have sworn were nowhere near still smouldering. Bad call. The bottle burst into flame in my hand, and I reflexively tossed it straight into the fireplace. There was a massive whooshing sound, and the entire chimney lit up in a blinding sheet of orange flame. For a few long moments, it looked like the Taliban had scored a direct hit on Basie’s lounge. No serious damage done, but Basie needed a stiff drink before he could speak. Around nine that night the colour finally came back into his face.'

 

On leaving Birkhall...
 

'That afternoon I packed my fishing gear and loaded my truck. I left the next morning later than planned because Basie insisted on cooking a grand breakfast. We ate in the kitchen, just the two of us...'


Basie maling breakfast on Birkhall

 

Final thoughts ...

It was as hard not to respect Basie as it is to fall upwards, his life lived in primary colours rather than in any anti-climatic shades of grey, even into the backwash of his cancer and then the pandemic. I called him often. He was always the same; no confected dressing up his dire situation; the same jovial human being; the same connectedness with family, friends, farming, hunting, fishing, the weather, especially rain, with the community, in fact just as he was from the first time we met one night in wobbling torchlight amid a bunch of baying dogs.

We are all of us lifted by our most cherished moments, not so?

Tom Sutcliffe 03 August 2021

*
Oh! I have slipped the surly bounds of Earth and danced the skies on laughter-filled wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence.
 John Gillespie Magee (1922-1941)



On Apla
 

Rest in your well-earned peace my dear friend.

Justin McConville on fishing a stream in Wales and the River Lodden
Says Justin

I was meant to travel to Normandy in the last week of June to fish two of the French chalkstreams, but Covid restrictions put paid to the trip. Limited to the confines of mainland Britain, I chose to visit Wales instead. Not a chalkstream in sight, of course, but Wales does possess some of the finest trout fishing in the world. Innumerable rivers drain the country’s verdant valleys, and almost all of them will have brown trout. Our holiday cottage sat perched on a hill above the River Cothi, once famed for its runs of sea trout. I spent a warm day on the thin upper reaches of the river, at the site where a Roman fort once guarded a valuable gold mine, soaking in the sheer sense of history that pervaded the place and occasionally tempting the river’s wily trout to take a dry fly. The waters of the Cothi are acidic and the trout I caught measured no more than 6 or 7 inches. Tiny slips of life in a harsh environment, hardwired to survive against the odds. It felt like ‘proper’ fishing.




The Cothi in Camarthenshire, running as clear as a chalkstream.

 

Back home in the south of England, the weather has been very unsettled from mid-June, with some locations in Hampshire being the wettest in the whole country with over three times their average June rainfall. Several of my fishing plans were washed out. We seemed to turn the corner in mid-July and on a glorious day when the mercury went north of 30°c I took up a kind invitation to fish the Loddon, a small chalkstream which rises in the town of Basingstoke in Hampshire and flows north for 28 miles until it joins the Thames.
 

My host casting a fly in a likely looking run of the Loddon
 

The clear water hurried over gravels and ranunculus, the perfect picture of a chalkstream in miniature. Lush bankside vegetation grew tall, and watercress and reeds flourished in the river’s course, confining the lower summer flows into an even narrower channel, where ranunculus thrived untended. It called for precise casting, aiming the fly for the small gutters of gravel and leafy margins, where the trout were willing to take a well-placed fly. My best was around 12 inches.
 


A typical wild brown trout from the Loddon

 

The Loddon is a private chalkstream in its upper reaches and I was pleased to tick it off my list and receive an invitation to return next year to fish its even smaller tributary, the Lyde. 

Thanks Justin. Please let us know when you have dusted the Lyde. TS

Paul Curtis on African fly-fishing books – Book No. 1
Trout Fishing in the Cape Colony (1908) by Dumaresq Manning ­– Argus Printing and Publishing (Cape Town)
 

I doubt that when Cape Colony civil servant, Dumaresq Manning, sat down to write 'Trout Fishing in the Cape Colony', he realised he was the first in a long line of authors writing books about trout fishing in Africa. Or that his 97-page book (plus 30-page appendix) guide was the first book on any sort of sport fishing on the continent. Fresh or saltwater.

There had been earlier articles on fishing and trout in magazines such as Cape Illustrated and in the UK in Fisherman’s Gazette and Hardy Bros catalogues, and a few chapters in books – but not that many.

'Trout Fishing in the Cape Colony' was written, as the author says: ‘primarily to bring into prominence that [trout] acclimatisation in the Cape Colony is an encouraged fact, and to encourage angling’.

The book has a detailed history of trout acclimatisation in the Western and Eastern Cape and a large map of where trout had been stocked – which is almost everywhere from Table Mountain in the south, to Carnarvon in the north and eastward to the Natal Colony border. In fact, everywhere the South African Railways network covered. Which was not surprising as the early head of the railways, ardent fisherman Sir William Hoy, had instructed his train drivers to release ‘carboys’ (large glass flagons) of trout at the end of every line and branch line they went to – wherever there was water.

Manning also gives a district-by-district review of the fishing and suggests what flies to use: ‘March Brown , Alder, Zulu, Teal and Claret, and Alexandra, and where there is no rise of any natural fly such as would be seen on any English river, it is only expected that trout, naturally cannibalistic should take those feathered monstrosities known as Salmon Flies’.
 


 

What is surprising that in his list and description of the species of trout that the angler might expect (brown trout, Loch Leven, and rainbow) he mentions Atlantic salmon stocked in the Breede!

There is also a chapter, of particular interest today, on catching indigenous fish, the wittevisch on the fly. Manning writing; ‘This fish, a species of barbel and very like a chub in appearance running to several pounds in weight’.

There are appendices including the legal requirement to fish, the closed seasons, how to build fish weirs, hatching boxes and several government proclamations on the protection of trout under the signature of Governor-General Sir Walter Francis Hely-Hutchinson. God Save The King!

There are numerous black and white photographs of fishermen and large bags of fish and one full colour plate of a brown trout.




 

'Trout Fishing in the Cape Colony' is an extremely rare but important cornerstone of any African fishing library. I was fortunate in my early days of collecting to find a copy (map included) in good condition. But I was even more fortunate not too long ago, to buy on auction in the UK a second copy – this originally belonging to, and with the signature of, G.E.M. Skues in it and dated in his hand ­– I VIII 08.

 


G.E.M. Skues

 

Manning doesn’t appear to have written any other fishing books, although one was planned – I have a pre-publicity leaflet put out by Cape publishers Maskew Miller promoting The Golden Rivers of the Western Province. In the leaflet there is even a note on the Mayor of Cape Town’s letterhead with the then mayor, the aptly named William Fish, claiming he had read the book and recommended it. Maskew Miller has no records of publishing it though. Let me know though if you ever find a copy …



The Golden Rivers of the Western Province

 

Limited edition prints of all yellowfish species

 



The artist in Lesotho


Print size 68 x 44 cms

Says Gordon van der Spuy:
The project started during lockdown last year after I completed my book. It was commissioned by a young man named Luke Leatherbarrow from Johannesburg. The brief was to draw SAs nine yellowfish species with the focus on capturing the character of each species. Along the way we learnt that yellowfish taxonomy is pretty much incomplete currently and that there are probably more species than we believe there to be. The project took over a year to complete. Many thanks to Garth Wellman, Leonard Flemming, Horst Filter ,  Warren van Tonder and Luke Leatherbarrow for reference pictures. 
Those interested contact Gordon on email gordon.vanderspuy@gmail.com


(If I may add a word of advice. If you don't get one of these prints you will be kicking yourself down the road 5 years from now ! TS)

Finally, I just spoke to Ed Herbst who said he wanted to add a piece on Basie's passing. It's an important read.
says Ed,

I first met Basie and Carien Vosloo in Barkly East in April 1992 at a function held to establish the Wild Trout Association.
I attended the function as editor of Piscator, journal of the Cape Piscatorial Society and you can read my account of that meeting here.
A three-decade friendship with Basie has now ended and, like so many others who knew him, I have a hole in my heart because he and Carien were family to me.

The rivers in Barkly East produce double-figure rainbows and most of these fish have been caught in deep pools or from undercut banks using streamers and, when I first met Basie, he was firmly wedded to this technique.

“The trout in Barkly East want steak not sandwiches”, he would tell me as his  #6 Mrs Simpson produced another five-pound trout.

He was using a five-weight fly rod when I met him which I called the G5 after the 155 mm howitzer used by the South African infantry at the time.

Every time I acquired a new ultra-light line fly rod, I passed its predecessor on to Basie and he quickly changed tactics, fishing the flies which Tom and I tied for him.

I remember fishing the Sterkspruit with him using a laboriously-constructed double-taper leader which I suggested he try.
His first cast saw the fly firmly affixed to a rock face on the opposite bank and, without hesitation he stripped off on a cold and cloudy day and swam across the river to retrieve it.

Over the decades hundreds of fly anglers have sat in the lounge at Birkhall enjoying the hospitality for which Basie and Carien were justifiably renowned.
He played a singular role in establishing the Wild Trout Association which has been instrumental in promoting fly angling tourism in region to the benefit of the local economy.

He invited Dave Walker of Walkerbouts Country Inn fame to move from Bloemfontein to one of his farms and it was there that Dave and Martin Davies conceptualized the idea of a conservancy which would protect and promote the resource to the benefit of both farmers and fly anglers.
His son Arnie and his daughter-in-law, both doctoral graduates from the University of Stellenbosch, have given up their academic careers and moved to Barkly East to help run the Vosloo farms.

I draw comfort from this seamless inter-generational transition which will see fly anglers continue to walk the banks of the Sterkspruit at Birkhall and Branksome and the upper Bokspruit at Gateshead which Basie once fished with so much joy and vivacity.

Great words and sentiments, many thanks, Edward.

Tom Sutcliffe 03 August 2021
 

             

 
 
 

 

 

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July 2021 Fly-fishing Newsletter

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July 2021 Fly-fishing Newsletter

 

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JULY 2021 FLY-FISHING NEWSLETTER

About this month's Newsletter

This edition of my newsletter is largely devoted to my dear, departed friend Basie Vosloo, written from my sense of loss but also from a sense of gratitude; loss because his passing has left a hole in my life as if an important chapter had closed, and gratitude, which is never a good enough word in most circumstances, for the quarter of a century I was the fortunate recipient of Carien and Basie's limitless largess and friendship.

For those to whom Basie Vosloo is unknown, he was fabled in South African fly fishing circles, and to add some reference to my homage I have included a few of my most cherished photographs of him, and of Carien, and Birkhall and Gateshead and sprinkled the text with a few passages from Shadows on the Stream Bed, Hunting Trout and Yet More Sweet Days. These quotes are in italics and I centre the text. I hope the words help to conjure some imagery for you in what was a difficult passage of words for me to write.

Beyond Basie's sad passing, July was also very challenging in other ways and also rewarding. Let me explain. There were two cataract ops to restore my failing eyesight, done by young Cape Town ophthalmic surgeon Dale Harrison. Take a bow, Sir. The improvement is beyond miraculous, the delay getting it done (due to my concerns around Covid and the lockdown) intensified the improvement between my pre- and post-op eyesight. The world's colours seem bright again and detail sharper than ever before. I can now spot moths on the moon. Dale Harrison, by the way, is a keen fly fisher.

Then there was the week of mid-July madness when two provinces in South Africa, particularly KZN, staggered under a siege of lawless pillage that went unchecked long enough (around four days) to risk blowing our young democracy clean out of the water until an unaccountably somnolent government woke up and the police and army brought stability. Over 300 people died and looters left countless shops, factories, supply lines, even some strategic infrastructure like cell phone towers, destroyed or damaged. And I couldn't help thinking as I watched these anarchic incursions unfolding on television hour after hour, that they carried the hallmarks of an orchestrated insurrection. I’ve used the word ‘insurrection’, and on the face of it, that seems about right.

It's too soon to predict a final outcome, but not too late to point out the silver lining around these tempestuous clouds, namely the counterpoised and very evident successes of so many good South Africans from all walks of life to rise above these forces of evil. Still, the naysayers suggest South Africa hasn't the capacity to recover. I don't agree. I think South Africa has that capacity. We are nothing if not a resilient nation. But recovery will need swift justice for offenders and rigorous self-examination by the government.

My thanks to the many fly fishers from around the world who sent me messages of sympathy, hope, encouragement, and unity.

Two lovely pieces of writing

All this aside, there are a few other lovely pieces in this edition. One is by Justin McConville on fishing a stream in Wales and the River Loddon a chalkstream – my word he does write well.

Another is a most interesting book review by my friend and expert on global, but especially South African angling literature, Paul Curtis, who shares what will become a regular feature in this newsletter, a book by book account of the gems in early South African angling literature.

Then please have a look at Gordon van der Spuy's limited edition prints of all the yellowish species, drawn in exquisite detail and professionally scanned, an ideal companion piece for your fly fishing/fly tying den.

But let's first speak of Basie...

Johannes Arnold 'Basie' Vosloo - 24 May 1957 – 4 July 2021
The passing of a near-mythical figure in many South African fly-fishing and hunting circles.

I was introduced to Basie Vosloo 25 years ago by Ed Herbst when we arrived one night for a protracted fishing stay on his farm Birkhall, the car immediately swamped by enormous dogs with barks that rattled the windowpanes. I was scared stiff until Basie arrived with a torch to see me in. It was an embarrassing but portentous moment. Ten days later I'd got used to the dogs – or they to me – and had grown fond of Basie.



The farmhouse on Birkhall



Basie and Carien at home in Birkhall

 

My initial characterisation of Basie (in line with my narrow orthodoxy that farmers are generally rough and largely uninterested, or unversed, or both, in the affairs of the world), was way off. He had a gentle side, far-ranging intellectual horizons, as at home with the arts and literature (particularly the writings of Oscar Wilde), as he was grading wool or planting potatoes.
 


Basie and his mother, Patricia, in the shed at sheep-shearing time

 

But he was still your typical farmer in so many ways: in his warmth of spirit and generosity; in his love of the veld; in his industrial-grade self-belief in his farming skills; in his total delight in any bit of running water. And, not least, in appearance; a big man, with legs of a billiard table, always in shorts and open-neck shirt, even when that high-mountain cold turned our breath to clouds of frozen vapour.

But above all Basie had a presence; that opaque quality a few people have of radiating a definable sense of their own space.



Looking over Birkhall


Life on Birkhall:

Basie became known to hosts of South African fly fishers, if not personally, then certainly by reputation, as a man who took any angler's visit to Birkhall seriously, when a day's fishing might easily end around his pub for a celebratory libation. Accounts of many unsteady late-night departures of anglers in happy and assorted stages of incipient tailspin are now storied enough to be part of fly-fishing folklore.




Carien points to a trout taken from the Sterkspruit and mounted in that much-storied pub



Ed Herbst, one of Basie's dearest friends, on Birkhall's veranda; with ubiquitous pipe and matches.'

 

There were days, countless of them over the years, when we just sat chatting on the veranda on Birkhall, gazing across views along the tree-laced river valley, sometimes with an early mug of coffee seeing in a sunrise, or watching the unfolding drama of a thunderstorm or, commonly, a sunset gradually turning the surrounding blue-shadowed mountains to flame-orange.



View in a mirror of the valley from Birkhall

 


Sunrise over Birkhall

Down the tree-laved river valley
 

'We had a farm-style lunch the last day on Birkhall, a roast leg of home-grown mutton prepared by Carien. Later that afternoon a majestic storm played itself out in the Birkhall valley and pretty soon the Sterkspruit was too high and too discoloured to fish. In a way, I liked that. It’s easier leaving a place when you know the river is going to be out for a day or two anyway.'



The unfolding drama of a Birkhall thunderstorm

...the setting son turning blue-shadowed mountains flame-orange
 

'That evening on the Birkhall veranda, Basie grilled steaks as thick as roof rafters. He did them on a steel wok connected to a portable gas cylinder. The white-marbled meat was good in ways it’s hard to put your finger on, other than to say you can’t lose sight of the fact that it hadn’t come from a fridge in some city supermarket, but from a grass-fed animal slaughtered on the farm.'


Basie Birkhall veranda steaks
 

Basie was proud of Birkhall; proud of the way he and Carien farmed it, each with their own focus and energy and love, proud too of Birkhall's unmissable beauty.  
 


Rainbows over Birkhall tend just to gild the lilly


Basie with anglers on Birkhall

'I’ve got into a loose routine over the years on my visits to Birkhall. I’m up early, at about 6 a.m., pad into the kitchen, switch on the kettle, add a heaped teaspoon of coffee to one of the mugs that hang in the glass-fronted cupboard directly above the kettle. They are white mugs with big red polka dots on them. They have been in the kitchen since I can remember. I add farm milk, thick with cream, and a spoon of sugar. I sip the coffee and wait for Basie. Or else Basie has beaten me to it and he’s there sucking on his pipe in clouds of blue smoke, his wet hair combed flat. The dogs are let out and they bark at the fading moon or the rising sun, whatever. They just bark. We talk farming or fishing, and then eat breakfast; eggs and bacon and (homemade) Russian sausages, toast and marmalade, more coffee. Then Basie is gone, Carien leaves on one of her endless errands, and I am alone. I have a hundred choices where to go fishing. Or I might write up my diary, or set up my vice to tie flies on the veranda... Life here is richly coated with choices, all strung across lazy days that drift slowly by like sail ships on a light breeze.'


...they just bark at the fading moon, or the rising sun, whatever...

 

Some years there was drought and I seemed to live through those with Basie, right down to the sorry day the Sterkspruit stopped flowing ...


'The rivers had perked up a bit but, despite the rain, it was still pretty dry. Basie said the only thing still green on the farm was the indicator light on the dashboard of his old F 100 truck.'
 

Basie and pointer Biggles, Archer at the back in the old F 100 adorned with Koki penned Adams dry flies (tied Catskill-style?).


Birkhall spring water

 

Birkhall has a garden pond fed by fresh spring water where Carien grows watercress and at times Basie grew out trout. We hooked countless fingerlings on wet flies in the Sterkspruit, kept them in laundry baskets immersed in knee-deep runs, later loaded them into buckets to stock the Birkhall lake below the house.


Birkhall
Lake


Reservoir

Some fingerlings went into a reservoir in the garden for 'the sheer joy of having a few trout nearby' Basie said. I once hooked a monster here on a dry fly with Ed, that I never landed.
And the presence of fish and frogs and tadpoles meant kingfishers were common visitors. It's a lovely feature in their garden.
 

Basie and fly fishing...
 

When Ed and I first met Basie his approach to fly fishing was a little downstream of high culture, but over years he moved from stripping Buggers on heavy rigs to dry flies on light rods and gradually acquired an appreciation of small stream fishing with all its obsessive oddities and minimalist refinements Ed and I had obsessed over almost exclusively from the day we first met him.
 


Basie fishing the Sterkspruit


But on the rare occasions I actually fished with Basie, mainly on the Sterkspruit and the Bokspruit at Gateshead, he was always only part-fly-fisher-part-farmer, never totally able to surrender to the day without half an eye on the farm. So you might look up from a run and suddenly find him high up a bank straightening a fence post or counting ewes in a paddock.



Basie on the Birkhall Sterkspruit


Basie on Bokspruit River at Gateshead
 

Of all the rivers in the district, and there are many, Basie loved the Sterkspruit beyond all, not for its strong fish alone, but for its winding beauty, its endlessly interlinked tapestries of runs and riffles and braids and pools that are so characteristic of this stream's anatomy no matter where you step into it.
 


Sterkspruit river landscape


The gorge water on Birkhall as it borders Branksome


Typical tapestries of the Sterkspruit River  




The Sterkspruit above and below the Lindesfarne Bridge
 

Basie and Gateshead...



Basie and Carien at Gateshead cottage


 

Basie also loved their high mountain farm Gateshead, a place where the essence of life is dressed in its loveliest simplifications. He was proud of its remoteness, at the very end of a road that crossed bridges of cold water straight off mountains; the clear, clean air; the timeless Victorian pastiche cottage, prettily latticed veranda fronted by privet hedges and flanked by fruit trees over a century-old...


 


Gateshead cottage

 

On the way up to Gateshead...
 

' The flow of water spilling under the bridge made the steady, softly sibilant, sucking sounds of a stream in good flow. We stepped out of the truck and could smell the water and the leaves, a compressed mix of cold freshness, wet loam, and mulch, the air so saturated with a fragrance that made you want to breathe in deeply. Above the bridge was a long pool of clear, thigh-deep water; below it the stream ran white and rough. A trout weaved in the pool above, at first not easy to see but later so obvious it seemed strange we hadn’t spotted it straight off...'


At a bridge on the way to Gateshead

 

'The cottage sat on the lower slopes of the Gateshead Mountain facing a narrow, steep-sided sweep of hills and falling river...'



Basie just loved to gaze across the hills from the Gateshead veranda



Nights on Gateshead were good, cold, starlit, around a campfire, crate of beer, watching shadows lengthen, lapsing under jeweled night skies into assorted philosophies until the cold of dying embers (or the fast aggregating heaps of empty bottles) saw us off...



Simplicity. The kitchen stove on Gateshead


'An orchard of fruit trees so old that naming them wasn’t something you could ever feel sure about.' (I now know they are a mix of cherry trees, apricots and apples.)



'We laid in a wood fire between stones in the tiny boma off the kitchen at the back of the cottage, cooked thick streaks on the fading glow of hot coals, drank good red wine, and relived a spiritual day where we had all hovered briefly on the outskirts of heaven.'


Formal dinner on Gateshead: Phil Hills, Luke Rossler, Basie, and self.

 

Horses...
 

Days out with Basie on horses were glorious but too rare, he always the master of these animals, often on Apla his headstrong black steed that everyone else was too scared to ride.

Basie rounding up at Gateshead


Basie on Apla

 

The dogs...

Basie had a special love for Archer, an English pointer. Feathers, also an English pointer, was next in the line of Birkhall's canine hierarchy, then followed a later pointer, Thomas, that I collected for Basie as a puppy from a breeder in Johannesburg and drove down to Birkhall with him in my truck. Don't ask me about that trip. The dog arrived safely and ended up named after me. But Archer somehow lifted himself to near holiness among the many gun dogs in Basie's life, and he has since had a room named in his honour in the Branksome Country House, a lodge run by Basie's sister Rene on the next farm upstream of Birkhall. (By the way, there's also the Ed's Hopper room in that lodge. As I said, Ed held a special place in the Vosloo's lives.)



His Royal Highness Archer


Archer on a day out with me on the Bokspruit River

'That night we tied a few flies by gaslight .... When we finally turned in, the air was like frozen steel. I crawled under a heavy mountain of blankets and blew out the candle. Moments later Feathers started to inch her way onto my bed with deliberate and measured stealth, trembling paw by trembling paw, convinced I was unaware of her subterfuge. I let her sink onto the bed. She lay dead-still and eventually we fell asleep. In the morning she was curled up warmly at my feet and her son, Archer, still a puppy, was deep inside my duffel bag with only his nose showing.'


On Gateshead : Feathers and Archer


If the dogs sit out in the morning sun on Birkhall, they sleep inside at night around the warmth of the Agar stove.
 

A momentous visit with Basie to a lake under construction...

One morning we visited Basie's new lake above Birkhall. He was finishing the wall with heavy machinery. I left him in dust clouds and hiked up the thin feeder stream, a wisp of water no wider than a stride, and discovered in its meager flows a brace of trout and a bunch of fingerlings. Basie said I was hallucinating, so we wandered back up the creek, found the evidence and I watched first Basie's astonishment and then I saw utter delight appear on his face. 'Thomas,' he said 'you have your uses.'



A slip of stream


...with fingerings in it


Finally completed. The new lake on Birkhall

Friendship…

To explain more aptly my privilege in knowing the Vosloos, here's what I wrote under the appreciations in Yet More Sweet Days:
'Those who stand out are Basie and Carien Vosloo of Birkhall, who are more part of my family than just good friends. ...Without them there would be no story to tell. '
 

A moment with a humourous side...
 

'That night Basie said it was too cold to snow and I offered to light the fire in the lounge. He quickly said, ‘Don’t worry, leave it to me.’ I suspected this was a deep survival response that got embedded in his mind when I last lit the fire in his lounge one particularly cold evening on a previous trip. The wood was slightly damp and the flames just wouldn't take hold. Basie suggested I add a little ‘starter’, a turquoise-colored, high-octane inflammable gel. I poured a little gel onto blackened embers that I could have sworn were nowhere near still smouldering. Bad call. The bottle burst into flame in my hand, and I reflexively tossed it straight into the fireplace. There was a massive whooshing sound, and the entire chimney lit up in a blinding sheet of orange flame. For a few long moments, it looked like the Taliban had scored a direct hit on Basie’s lounge. No serious damage done, but Basie needed a stiff drink before he could speak. Around nine that night the colour finally came back into his face.'

 

On leaving Birkhall...
 

'That afternoon I packed my fishing gear and loaded my truck. I left the next morning later than planned because Basie insisted on cooking a grand breakfast. We ate in the kitchen, just the two of us...'


Basie maling breakfast on Birkhall

 

Final thoughts ...

It was as hard not to respect Basie as it is to fall upwards, his life lived in primary colours rather than in any anti-climatic shades of grey, even into the backwash of his cancer and then the pandemic. I called him often. He was always the same; no confected dressing up his dire situation; the same jovial human being; the same connectedness with family, friends, farming, hunting, fishing, the weather, especially rain, with the community, in fact just as he was from the first time we met one night in wobbling torchlight amid a bunch of baying dogs.

We are all of us lifted by our most cherished moments, not so?

Tom Sutcliffe 03 August 2021

*
Oh! I have slipped the surly bounds of Earth and danced the skies on laughter-filled wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence.
 John Gillespie Magee (1922-1941)



On Apla
 

Rest in your well-earned peace my dear friend.

Justin McConville on fishing a stream in Wales and the River Lodden
Says Justin

I was meant to travel to Normandy in the last week of June to fish two of the French chalkstreams, but Covid restrictions put paid to the trip. Limited to the confines of mainland Britain, I chose to visit Wales instead. Not a chalkstream in sight, of course, but Wales does possess some of the finest trout fishing in the world. Innumerable rivers drain the country’s verdant valleys, and almost all of them will have brown trout. Our holiday cottage sat perched on a hill above the River Cothi, once famed for its runs of sea trout. I spent a warm day on the thin upper reaches of the river, at the site where a Roman fort once guarded a valuable gold mine, soaking in the sheer sense of history that pervaded the place and occasionally tempting the river’s wily trout to take a dry fly. The waters of the Cothi are acidic and the trout I caught measured no more than 6 or 7 inches. Tiny slips of life in a harsh environment, hardwired to survive against the odds. It felt like ‘proper’ fishing.




The Cothi in Camarthenshire, running as clear as a chalkstream.

 

Back home in the south of England, the weather has been very unsettled from mid-June, with some locations in Hampshire being the wettest in the whole country with over three times their average June rainfall. Several of my fishing plans were washed out. We seemed to turn the corner in mid-July and on a glorious day when the mercury went north of 30°c I took up a kind invitation to fish the Loddon, a small chalkstream which rises in the town of Basingstoke in Hampshire and flows north for 28 miles until it joins the Thames.
 

My host casting a fly in a likely looking run of the Loddon
 

The clear water hurried over gravels and ranunculus, the perfect picture of a chalkstream in miniature. Lush bankside vegetation grew tall, and watercress and reeds flourished in the river’s course, confining the lower summer flows into an even narrower channel, where ranunculus thrived untended. It called for precise casting, aiming the fly for the small gutters of gravel and leafy margins, where the trout were willing to take a well-placed fly. My best was around 12 inches.
 


A typical wild brown trout from the Loddon

 

The Loddon is a private chalkstream in its upper reaches and I was pleased to tick it off my list and receive an invitation to return next year to fish its even smaller tributary, the Lyde. 

Thanks Justin. Please let us know when you have dusted the Lyde. TS

Paul Curtis on African fly-fishing books – Book No. 1
Trout Fishing in the Cape Colony (1908) by Dumaresq Manning ­– Argus Printing and Publishing (Cape Town)
 

I doubt that when Cape Colony civil servant, Dumaresq Manning, sat down to write 'Trout Fishing in the Cape Colony', he realised he was the first in a long line of authors writing books about trout fishing in Africa. Or that his 97-page book (plus 30-page appendix) guide was the first book on any sort of sport fishing on the continent. Fresh or saltwater.

There had been earlier articles on fishing and trout in magazines such as Cape Illustrated and in the UK in Fisherman’s Gazette and Hardy Bros catalogues, and a few chapters in books – but not that many.

'Trout Fishing in the Cape Colony' was written, as the author says: ‘primarily to bring into prominence that [trout] acclimatisation in the Cape Colony is an encouraged fact, and to encourage angling’.

The book has a detailed history of trout acclimatisation in the Western and Eastern Cape and a large map of where trout had been stocked – which is almost everywhere from Table Mountain in the south, to Carnarvon in the north and eastward to the Natal Colony border. In fact, everywhere the South African Railways network covered. Which was not surprising as the early head of the railways, ardent fisherman Sir William Hoy, had instructed his train drivers to release ‘carboys’ (large glass flagons) of trout at the end of every line and branch line they went to – wherever there was water.

Manning also gives a district-by-district review of the fishing and suggests what flies to use: ‘March Brown , Alder, Zulu, Teal and Claret, and Alexandra, and where there is no rise of any natural fly such as would be seen on any English river, it is only expected that trout, naturally cannibalistic should take those feathered monstrosities known as Salmon Flies’.
 


 

What is surprising that in his list and description of the species of trout that the angler might expect (brown trout, Loch Leven, and rainbow) he mentions Atlantic salmon stocked in the Breede!

There is also a chapter, of particular interest today, on catching indigenous fish, the wittevisch on the fly. Manning writing; ‘This fish, a species of barbel and very like a chub in appearance running to several pounds in weight’.

There are appendices including the legal requirement to fish, the closed seasons, how to build fish weirs, hatching boxes and several government proclamations on the protection of trout under the signature of Governor-General Sir Walter Francis Hely-Hutchinson. God Save The King!

There are numerous black and white photographs of fishermen and large bags of fish and one full colour plate of a brown trout.




 

'Trout Fishing in the Cape Colony' is an extremely rare but important cornerstone of any African fishing library. I was fortunate in my early days of collecting to find a copy (map included) in good condition. But I was even more fortunate not too long ago, to buy on auction in the UK a second copy – this originally belonging to, and with the signature of, G.E.M. Skues in it and dated in his hand ­– I VIII 08.

 


G.E.M. Skues

 

Manning doesn’t appear to have written any other fishing books, although one was planned – I have a pre-publicity leaflet put out by Cape publishers Maskew Miller promoting The Golden Rivers of the Western Province. In the leaflet there is even a note on the Mayor of Cape Town’s letterhead with the then mayor, the aptly named William Fish, claiming he had read the book and recommended it. Maskew Miller has no records of publishing it though. Let me know though if you ever find a copy …



The Golden Rivers of the Western Province

 

Limited edition prints of all yellowfish species

 



The artist in Lesotho


Print size 68 x 44 cms

Says Gordon van der Spuy:
The project started during lockdown last year after I completed my book. It was commissioned by a young man named Luke Leatherbarrow from Johannesburg. The brief was to draw SAs nine yellowfish species with the focus on capturing the character of each species. Along the way we learnt that yellowfish taxonomy is pretty much incomplete currently and that there are probably more species than we believe there to be. The project took over a year to complete. Many thanks to Garth Wellman, Leonard Flemming, Horst Filter ,  Warren van Tonder and Luke Leatherbarrow for reference pictures. 
Those interested contact Gordon on email gordon.vanderspuy@gmail.com


(If I may add a word of advice. If you don't get one of these prints you will be kicking yourself down the road 5 years from now ! TS)

Finally, I just spoke to Ed Herbst who said he wanted to add a piece on Basie's passing. It's an important read.
says Ed,

I first met Basie and Carien Vosloo in Barkly East in April 1992 at a function held to establish the Wild Trout Association.
I attended the function as editor of Piscator, journal of the Cape Piscatorial Society and you can read my account of that meeting here.
A three-decade friendship with Basie has now ended and, like so many others who knew him, I have a hole in my heart because he and Carien were family to me.

The rivers in Barkly East produce double-figure rainbows and most of these fish have been caught in deep pools or from undercut banks using streamers and, when I first met Basie, he was firmly wedded to this technique.

“The trout in Barkly East want steak not sandwiches”, he would tell me as his  #6 Mrs Simpson produced another five-pound trout.

He was using a five-weight fly rod when I met him which I called the G5 after the 155 mm howitzer used by the South African infantry at the time.

Every time I acquired a new ultra-light line fly rod, I passed its predecessor on to Basie and he quickly changed tactics, fishing the flies which Tom and I tied for him.

I remember fishing the Sterkspruit with him using a laboriously-constructed double-taper leader which I suggested he try.
His first cast saw the fly firmly affixed to a rock face on the opposite bank and, without hesitation he stripped off on a cold and cloudy day and swam across the river to retrieve it.

Over the decades hundreds of fly anglers have sat in the lounge at Birkhall enjoying the hospitality for which Basie and Carien were justifiably renowned.
He played a singular role in establishing the Wild Trout Association which has been instrumental in promoting fly angling tourism in region to the benefit of the local economy.

He invited Dave Walker of Walkerbouts Country Inn fame to move from Bloemfontein to one of his farms and it was there that Dave and Martin Davies conceptualized the idea of a conservancy which would protect and promote the resource to the benefit of both farmers and fly anglers.
His son Arnie and his daughter-in-law, both doctoral graduates from the University of Stellenbosch, have given up their academic careers and moved to Barkly East to help run the Vosloo farms.

I draw comfort from this seamless inter-generational transition which will see fly anglers continue to walk the banks of the Sterkspruit at Birkhall and Branksome and the upper Bokspruit at Gateshead which Basie once fished with so much joy and vivacity.

Great words and sentiments, many thanks, Edward.

Tom Sutcliffe 03 August 2021
 

             

 
 
 

 

 

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August 2021 Newsletter

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AUGUST 2021 FLY FISHING NEWSLETTER

Contents…

This is a marathon review of favourite angling books, but be warned it is long article, so if the subject doesn’t interest you, rather skip to the end. Wolf Avni has a piece on how to take better landscape photographs, Justin McConville on discovering two chalkstreams and there’s an obituary to a truly international fly tyer, Taff Price, by Peter Cockwill.

Favourite angling books

When I asked 16 friends (the panel) to name their five favourite fishing books I realised a little late that the question was near impossible to answer. The reason is simple. There are just too many good angling books to ever settle comfortably on a final shortlist.

But why trouble to do it at all?

Because of all sports, fishing has the richest literature, which suggests many anglers enjoy reading about fishing as much as actually doing it; because I’ve been a disciple of angling books nearly all my life and enjoy spreading the word; because there are sure to be a few titles here that you may need reminding of and a bunch of new writers fresh on the scene. And finally, because I hope this piece will serve as a useful source for future reference.

I mentioned new writers, but what comes across in the replies I got is how the old classics are timeless, be they instructional books, like Marinaro’s A Modern Dry Fly Code or the poetic essays of writers like Haig-Brown whose well-crafted words and descriptive sentences so paint you into his fishing that you feel you have caught that steelhead not him.

To stress the importance of fly-fishing literature, here’s an email I got from Dean Riphagen. He says …

It is truly sad to see so many younger fly fishers not reading books on the subject. To me books are a supremely important aspect in the growth of a person’s fly-fishing career. Charles Ritz’s book was part of our school library and I read and re-read it probably three or four times a year every year over the five years I was at high school. Many young anglers who know the book (or any book of that era) will consider it outdated and that there is nothing to be learnt from the books. Nothing could be further from the truth! Books like Ritz’s or Schwiebert’s (or whoever you choose the think of from bygone eras) are as relevant today as they were when they were published. Because it’s all about reading them and appreciating the history that the sport was built around. You can learn from YouTube BUT you will never get the fly-fishing education that you’ll get from reading books. I look at a young angler like Pieter Taljaard who is 37 and then look at other anglers his age and see the huge difference between him and them. He chose to read books and has a huge appreciation for the sport because he’s chosen a path that involves buying and reading fly-fishing books and understanding the traditions that come within their pages. Other anglers his age will know what a Pheasant Tail Nymph is, but they’ll never know who Frank Sawyer was, or what he did for a living, (or how or why he came to develop the pattern) [my input in italics]. Or who Halford and Skues were.

I was honoured that a couple of my books got a mention here, but I worried that including them may be self-serving and conflictual. So, I asked a couple of pals their opinions. A few said, ‘Just take them out’ and others said, ‘Respect the choices of the panellist and leave them in’. Finally, I left them in. It’s a great honour to be mentioned, but that was not my intention with this piece.

The panel

The panellists are obviously people to whom books are important. All are avid readers, some voraciously so, like Ed Herbst and Darryl Lampert. Many have authored angling books themselves, like Duncan Brown (Are Trout South African?), Peter Brigg (Call of the Stream and
South African Fishing Flies), Andrew Fowler (Stippled Beauties), Andrew Levy (Reflections on the River) and Dean Riphagen (The South African Fly-Fishing Handbook and Stillwater Trout in South Africa), or have published and written angling books, like Paul Curtis and Nick Lyons (has anyone in the world published more angling books than Nick, or books of such quality?). A few panellists are editors of angling magazines; Tudor Caradoc-Davies (Mission), PJ Jacobs (TCFF), Ian Cox and Andrew Savides (SA Flyfishing), and others are knowledgeable and passionate angling bibliophiles, like Clem Booth, Tom Lewin and Steve Boshoff.

What’s also important is that we have good angling writers in South Africa, some well-seasoned, like Avni, Herbst, Riphagen, Levy, Brigg, Truter, Brown and the late John Beams and Bob Crass; some are just coming into bud but oozing talent, like Andrew Fowler and Andrew Savides. All of them are easily able to hold a candle in any global angling arena.

Some revelations

This was a month-long exercise and not unexpectedly it turned up a few revelations, one being that Ted Leeson’s book, The Habit of Rivers, is the firm favourite of many. Another revelation, and very pleasing, was how a few long past angling giants appear evergreen; like Charles Ritz, Vince Marinaro, Robert Travers, Lee Wulff, and Ed Zern.

And finally, as I have said, I was struck by the number of new writers entering the stage left, like Dave Coggins, John Profumo, Bob DeMott, John N. Maclean (son of Norman Maclean) and Jerry Dennis.

The editing

Overall, the responses I got to my question were lengthy, interesting, well thought through and a pleasure to receive. I had to edit out parts for want of space and my apologies to my panel for that.

Let me start by listing my own most read fly-fishing books:

A Fisherman's Diary. Oliver Kite.

This is one of the books permanently at my bedside, charming vignettes mainly about fishing chalkstreams in Hampshire, masterfully written with humour and economy of prose, each sketch just enough to read before, with lovely sleep-inducing thoughts in mind, you turn the light out at night.

 


 

A Fly fisher's Life. Charles Ritz.

There are few lives in fly fishing I have enjoyed reading about more than his, the father of Pezon et Michel bamboo fly rods, founder of the celebrated Fario Club dinners held for friends at his Ritz Hotel, 15 Place Vendôme, Paris. I was not surprised to see other panellists select this book.

Trout Madness. Robert Travers (John D Voelker).

Voelker was a supreme court judge who in spare moments wrote a bestselling novel, The Anatomy of a Murder. When Hollywood bought the film rights, he retired with a stash of cigars and an ample supply of bourbon to fish the streams and ponds in the hills of Michigan. To our good fortune, he then began to write about angling under the pseudonym of Robert Travers.

 


 

The Habit of Rivers. Ted Leeson.

In my view this is the best angling books of its kind in my library. His others great works are Jerusalem Creek and Inventing Montana. The man is a genius at putting into words the kind of internal dialogues and on-stream debates we often have with ourselves, that somehow, when we see those same thoughts in print, have the power to jolt you. Here’s an example, from The Habit of Rivers…

‘There are a lot of advantages to being self-taught. Quality of instruction is not one of them.’

Bush Pilot Angler. Lee Wulff.

This is Lee’s own account of how he opened remote unchartered lakes and rivers in Newfoundland and Labrador, waters popping with salmon and trout that he landed on in his tiny Piper Cub floatplane.

 


 

Presentation. Gary Borger.

In my view, still the best book on a subject that is the beating heart of the practice of fly fishing.

The South African Fly-Fishing Handbook or Stillwater Trout in South Africa. Dean Riphagen.

I couldn’t pick a winner in this duology. Both are still among the best in their genre worldwide, certainly the best instructional fly-fishing books this country has ever produced.

 


 

Having named my favourites, I immediately regret not including Hemmingway's Big Two Hearted River, Nick Lyons' Bright Rivers, Negley Farson’s Going Fishing, Gierach's Trout Bum, Sparse Grey Hackle’s Fishless Days, Angling Nights, Harry Middleton's books (any of them), Haig Brown’s fisherman’s seasons (again, any of them), John McDonald's The Complete Fly Fisherman (the letters between GEM Skues and Theodore Gordon), Peter Brigg's Call of the Stream (both as a book and as well as a work of art) and many more. But that’s the point I was making. This is a very difficult question. But then the prescription of limitations is a confounder in all walks of life.
 


 

Here are the choices of the panellists:

1. Nick Lyons, Former Professor of English, angling book author and publisher extraordinaire and for 20 years wrote ‘The Seasonable Angler’ column for Fly Fisherman magazine…

Says Nick of his choices,

‘This isn't my kind of question since I just don't rank favorites and literally hundreds of angling books have something special that I like about them. But I'll try, after a fashion…’

Silent Seasons. Tom McGuane.

Simply the best essayist on fishing; a first-rate novelist and we're lucky to have anything of his about fishing.

Notes and Letters of Thedore Gordon, edited by John McDonald.

Wonderful observations about fly fishing for trout and fly tying, by a master we all can learn from.

A Man Can Fish. Kingsmill-More.

One of four or five superb memoirs about fly fishing in the UK.

Golden Days. Romilly Fedden.

A great memoir by a watercolorist, of days before WW I, with memorable friendships and fine days afield.

 


 

Where the Bright Waters Meet. Harry Plunkett Greene

A memorable account of fishing the lovely Bourne River, by a tall opera singer.

Fishing a Highland Stream. John Inglis Hall.

Originally written for a how-to series but far exceeding this: a highly literate, joyous celebration of a Scottish highland stream.


 


 

The Habit of Rivers. Ted Leeson.

One of our finest looks at the theory and practice of fly fishing - and its underlying philosophic underpinnings. Ted Leeson was perhaps the greatest ‘find’ I made as an editor. I had seen an essay of his, a writer I'd never seen a word by, and wrote him about it, and eventually published the book. He is terrific, in all three (of his) books, and in his co-authoring of several practical books on fly tying. He has retired from teaching at Oregon State.

Fishing Days. Bob DeMott.


One of the newest and most literate memoirs, by a seated Professor of English who kept the best of journals.

2. Tudor Caradoc-Davies – Journalist, fly-fishing columnist, editor of Mission magazine…
Says Tudor,

If there’s anything that connects these books (except for The Feather Thief), it’s that they celebrate failure as much if not more than they do the idea of success in fly fishing. It’s an approach that resonates heavily with what we try to do at The Mission. Who wants to read endless stories of piscatorial success? Failure is a lot more real, relatable, and fun to read about and when success happens, it’s that more precious.
Trout Magic and Trout Madness. John D. Voelker (Aka Robert Travers). 

 


 

These books are a package deal and that is how they used to sit on the shelves of my school library. One of my oldest friends is Chris Clemes (of Chris Clemes Fly Rods in London). We were at school together and used to fish together, but we also shared similar tastes in books and we both took these out of the library again and again and again. Years later when I heard the school was getting rid of a bunch of old unwanted books, I enquired after these two and managed to buy them both complete with the catalogue cards showing just how often Chris and I took turns at booking them out. Witty and engrossing, Travers is a master storyteller, and these are two books I will always return to.  

The Habit of Rivers. Ted Leeson.

This must be one of the most brilliant books on fly fishing ever written. Leeson, a (former) creative writing professor at Oregon university, is so comfortable in his prose that even if you care little for trout or have no frame of reference for where he fishes in the USA, you will enjoy this book.

The Longest Silence. Thomas McGuane.

A modern classic for good reason. From his hell-raising tarpon days in Florida with Jim Harrison and co., to his travels chasing trout and salmon, McGuane’s timeless stories are as vivid and as relevant now as they were when this was published in 99.  

 


 

The Optimist. David Coggins.

Charting his journey from a novice to a seasoned fly-fishing veteran, Coggins takes you from his beginnings fly fishing for smallmouth bass, across the world chasing trout, bonefish and other species. Told with humility and great humour, he has an incredible ability to cut through the bullshit and lay bare the idiosyncrasies and hoodoo intertwined in what we love to do. I’ve just reviewed this in issue 29 of The Mission and I’d go so far as to say if anyone is putting his hand up as the successor to McGuane, my vote goes to Coggins.

The Feather Thief. Kirk Wallace Johnson. 

I loved this book because of how different it was. It’s a whodunnit of sorts, even though you know who the perp is all along.

3. Tom Lewin – Proprietor of Frontier Fly Fishing, small stream and bamboo nut…

Trout Bum – John Gierach, A Flyfisher’s Life – Charles Ritz, Trout Hunter – Rene Harrop,  A Passion For Tarpon – Andy Mill, and Hunting Trout – Tom Sutcliffe.

 

4. Andrew Levy – Professor of law, angling author, regular ‘Last Cast’ columnist for the TCFF magazine…

How does one choose five titles from the huge canon of fishing literature?  I have been an ardent collector of fishing books since the age of twelve and have four separate large bookcases housing them in my study.

Does one look for literary merit, practical advice, generally accepted classics of the genre, books dealing with a specific country, books focusing on a particular species (as I do with salmon and trout), or books of a more literary and cerebral nature – or best of all, a mixture of all the above?  In pulling five volumes from my shelves, I chose titles that mean something to me.  Unfortunately, a lot of them will now be out of print, and you will need to search them out second-hand at church sales or charity shops.

Finally, I know Tom is going to be embarrassed by one of the titles.  Believe me, it is there on pure merit, and it means a great deal to me, because I know the author. 

Here they are:

A Trout Rod in Natal. Helen B Hilliard.
A rather strange lady, this was the book that started it all, and I bought it at age 12.  At the time, we were both staying at the Sani Pass Hotel.  She saw I was keen, but incompetent, and took me under the wing. 10 minutes in each hour was on casting and fishing the fly, and fifty minutes were on manners, which she obviously saw as a necessity for small boys. I do not regret these sermons on a fly-fishers code of behaviour. While the book is somewhat amateurish, I owe Mrs. Helen Hilliard a great debt.

A Fisherman’s Fall. Roderick Haigh-Brown.
The book, in the main, deals with autumn fishing in Canada, and I have chosen it for the simple beauty of Haigh-Browns writing, and his ethos of knowledge, decency, and fair play.  A principled angler and conservationist, Haigh-Brown authored twenty or more books, and any one of them are worth reading for their clear and direct prose, and the quality of his descriptive writing.

 


 

Fly Fishing. J.R. Hartley. 

Simple, short stories, with a humorous self-deprecatory and gentle style, the book became a best seller, and spawned a sequel – J.R. Hartley Casts Again.  There is however a twist in the tale.  J.R. Hartley does not exist.  He was the fictitious creation of an advertising agency who based a campaign for the Yellow Pages on this fictional character. He phones second-hand bookshops to see if they had a copy the book, and the answer is always, disappointingly, negative. Finally, thanks to Yellow Pages, he finds it.  The shop asks his name, and he replies “Oh - J.R. Hartley”.  The campaign was so successful, that it created a huge demand for the book, so someone had to assume this persona, and produce it. The book. is worth its every word, and J.R. Hartley, rather like sherlock Holmes, is in my mind, a real person.

The Fisherman’s Companion edited by Kenneth Mansfield. 

This is a collection of extracts, short stories, and verse, the ideal bedside or travelling book.  I am a sucker for collections, for there is something in them for everyone, and if you find an extract you like, you can follow the author in depth.  Anyone of these anthologies will do, but this collection ticked all the boxes for me.

Yet More Sweet Days by Tom Sutcliffe.

Just read Chapter 2 of this book where Tom describes his drives from Cape Town to Barkly East, and you will be in the cab beside him. Simple elegant prose, with a subtle humour, and descriptive writing of the first order, the book is packed with more advice than ten ordinary fishermen will gather in a lifetime. This is a volume, of nearly 500 pages, which slip by in a moment.  A book of truly world class and then some.  But more than that, my copy is signed “… to my dear friend Andrew…”.  What more could one ask for?

5. Ed Herbst – Professor of the Department of Micro-patterns and Dean: Global University of Small-Stream Fly Fishing…

My choice is hardly eclectic – instructional rather than literary and narrowly focused on tying small flies for fishing small streams.
In order of publication and with a quote from each that sticks in my mind:

A Modern Dry Fly Code. Vincent Marinaro. 1950.

‘Very early in this strange game, I was immensely impressed by the abundance of ants, in the meadows, on the water and as revealed in autopsies of trout. And, truthfully, if I were to choose one pattern above all the others, day in and day out, from fish to fish, the most enduring in its season, it would be the ant in its various sizes and colours.’

The Dry Fly New Angles. Gary LaFontaine. 1990.

‘In rough water, it isn’t merely size that control’s the trout’s acceptance or refusal. A fish here wants a “wide fly”. The lateral dimensions of the body, the flared hair of a downwing, or even the spread of a palmered hackle along the hook shank of a flush-floating pattern attracts fish better than a normal upwing fly with a simple, elongated body.’

 


 

The Orvis Guide to Prospecting for Trout. Tom Rosenbauer. 1993.

‘And I grease the daylights out of my leader. The whole thing, right down to the fly. I originally started greasing my leader with silicone dry-fly paste because I had trouble following my fly in a pocket water stream that never seemed to see the sun. I found I could trace the fly better by looking for the shine of the leader on the water, and it didn’t bother the trout at all.

Micropattern. Darryl Martin. 1994.

‘A twenty-inch trout on a size-20 pattern is success in the highest degree. There is pleasure in the bone flats, pleasure in wild steelhead but, as angling becomes smaller it becomes richer.’

Presentation – Gary Borger – 1995.

‘Equipment is the only thing.’

6. Peter Brigg – Acclaimed angling author, artist, photographer…

When I was asked by Tom to list my five most treasured fly-fishing books it turned into quite an exercise. I’m bibliophile so the restricted choice needs some explanation. Here goes.

I have a modest library compared to some anglers. While I have books that delve into the science of fly fishing, the ‘what and how to’ books, they represent the smaller portion and include authors like Borger, LaFontaine, Skues, Wyatt and Engle and others. 

I enjoy story telling where the authors subtlety weave into the fabric of the narrative sage advice, explain their deeper thoughts on relative subjects and even incorporate a little technical information from their years of experience and, here I’m talking of respected authors the likes of Sawyer, Travers, Middleton, Gierach, McGuane, our very own Sutcliffe and others.



Part of Pete’s library

 

But, my greatest interest lies in tracking down and acquiring copies of South African angling literature, from the early pioneers to current. These have become the most treasured of all the books in my library. So, to the point of the request, these are the five I’ve chosen in this genre and because in one way or another, I have a personal connection with each of them.

1. The Rapture of the River. Sydney Hey
2. Hunting Trout. Tom Sutcliffe.
3. Trout in the Kloofs. Cape Piscatorial Society.
4. Trout in South Africa. Bob Crass.
5. Trout Fishing in South Africa. South African Railways.

7. Duncan Brown – Professor of English literature, author and just a very nice, humble person …

Says Duncan,

The choice is so massive that I've decided to list six books that I know changed the way I approached fly fishing and writing. Each of them came at a different time in my life, and each seems to stand out as a milestone in my fishing and writing. In some cases, the author has written many other books which I own and love, so I'm tempted to add "and all his other works", and in some cases (Roderick Haig-Brown) the contribution is so sustained that I find it difficult to choose just one. Anyway, enough throat-clearing. Here we go.

The Habit of Rivers. Ted Leeson.

I could say so much about this book, but the point is actually quite simple. The Habit of Rivers is simply the best fly-fishing book I have ever read.

 


 

My Way with a Trout. Tom Sutcliffe.

From my earliest years, I was a mad keen angler and reader. I read everything I could lay my hands on about all aspects of fishing, most of it rather technical and rather stolid in its prose. I read widely in the field of literature and would later go on to study it. My Way with a Trout was a bolt out of the blue for me - showing me that fishing literature could be beautifully written and philosophical, while remaining informative. I have probably read it thirty or forty times, and Tom's words have accompanied me on many a day on the water.

Death, Taxes and Leaky Waders. John Gierach.

This is a selection of his work, and I now own pretty much everything he has written, but this book gave me my first glimpse of an author who really 'got' this flyfishing life. He writes with a wry humour combined with passages of sheer lyricism, and some good, solid woodsman know-how. 

A Mean-Mouthed Hook-Jawed Son of a Fish. Wolf Avni.

As I have said elsewhere, Wolf's book showed me that you could write about fly fishing without sounding like an old fart. The zaniness of what he was doing felt liberating. 

 


 

The Philosophical Fisherman. Harold F. Blaisdell.

This book weaves its way across a wonderfully diverse set of narratives and locales, offering answers to the age-old question of 'why we fish' which I find both illuminating and confirming. There is a deep wisdom in Blaisdell's words.

A River Runs through It. Norman Maclean.

For everything Maclean does in this novella, not just those sublime last lines. I have reread this little book more times than I have anything else in the world of literature.   


8. Steve Boshoff – Bamboo rod maker and craftsman divine…
Says Steve,

Tom asked for a list of five books. Yet, I want to depart from that ‘rule’ a little. In some cases, I really cannot select a favorite from an author: I think their work needs to be read together; they form an integrated fly box if you will.

There are the four collections of essays by James R. Babb, the one-time editor of Gray’s Sporting Journal: River Music: A Fly Fisher’s Four Seasons,
Crosscurrents: A Fly fisher’s Progress, Fly-Fishin' Fool: The Adventures, Misadventures, and Outright Idiocies of a Compulsive Angler, and Fish Won't Let Me Sleep: The Obsessions of a Lifetime Flyfisherman.
 


Crosscurrents: A Fly fisher’s Progress

 
Then Tom Sutcliffe’s trilogy: Hunting Trout, Shadows on the Stream Bed, and Yet More Sweet Days.

Datus C. Proper’s What the Trout Said and Running Waters.

George Black’s Casting a Spell, a narrative on the people and context of 150 years of bamboo rod making in the US.

 


On the Water: A Fishing Memoir, by Guy De La Valdene. De Valdene was known as one of the “fat boys” who fished for tarpon – and partied hard – at Key West in the 1970s and 1980s. (The group included Jim Harrison, Russell Chatham, and Thomas McGuane).

9. Clem Booth – Retired super-executive, certified trout bum, bibliophile, bamboo fanatic…
Says Clem,

Starlight Creek Angling Society. Harry Middleton.

This is an unparalleled, for me seminal work! It’s short, quirky, funny; Harry’s descriptions of the interesting, enigmatic people in his life knows no equal. He left us far too young, but what a wordsmith! 

 


 

(TS: I see a copy sold recently for R21 000!)

My Way with a Trout – Reflections of a Flyfisherman. Tom Sutcliffe.

Sorry if I make you blush Tom, but ‘Reflections’ has been a constant and much-cherished companion since 1985. It’s more than well-thumbed! In many ways, this book was the bedrock of my fly-fishing life. 

Casting a Spell – The Bamboo Fly Rod and the American Pursuit of Perfection. George Black.

I’m a split-cane fanatic and this book is a must-read if you’re similarly afflicted. There are others on the subject, but to my mind Mr Black’s work is right up there. He is a splendid writer! 

Around the Next Bend – A fly angler's journey. Jerry Kustich.

Jerry is a legendary rodmaker along with his friend and collaborator Glenn Brackett. Jerry is also an accomplished, interesting author. What I especially love about his work is the unpretentious authenticity. Jerry allows you to walk alongside him, and such fun that is. 

 


Where the Bright Waters Meet. Harry Plunket Greene.

This is a wonderful book! It depicts my world of more than three decades – the English chalkstreams – like no other. I walk his banks, wade his pools and, now and then, pay respects at Harry’s grave in Hurstborne Priors. Two Harrys on my list of five! 

 


Harry’s grave in Hurstbourne Priors where anglers leave fly boxes to pay homage…
 

As an afterthought:

John Profumo The Lightning Thread is unparalleled in angling literature. His craft as an extraordinary wordsmith is beautiful to behold. The River Home by Jerry Dennis is likewise beautifully written and as an American outdoor writer he is up there with the very best. He takes you on the journey, you get to walk beside him. And John N. Maclean (son of Norman Maclean of A River Runs Through It has written a masterpiece in Home Waters. The story of this family and their love affair with the rivers of Montana is the stuff of legend and anyone who’s seen the movie or better still read his father Norman’s novella, simply must read this. 

 


 

10. Andrew Fowler – Angling author, environmental activist, bibliophile, Chairman of the NFFC…
Says Andrew,

Hunting and Fishing from A to Zern. Ed Zern: 

Whacky!  If you love a good story, as I do, and if your sense of humuor is up to it, this is a delight. Some who have borrowed it, handed it backstraight faced. Suffice to say I just don’t get them.

Chalkstream Chronicle.  Neil Patterson.

While on the thread of whacky….Patterson is a delight of zany, off the wall, psychedelic descriptions of things like trout smacking their lips and his rubbish bin flying around the woods all night. Since I read his articles in Trout Fisherman magazine in the 1980’s (and an article called Bring me a rod and make it snappy), I have been hooked. His no nonsense, practical technical innovation and ideas are so colorfully woven into the fun stories that you are barely aware that you are being taught some deep stuff as you read.



 

Hunting Trout. Tom Sutcliffe.

Like reading Patterson, you are absorbing a wealth of very useable technical information when you read this delightfully South African treasure of prose. I think the ability to dissolve dry fly-fishing theory in a readable story is an artform and a skill not possessed by some of the world's most famous fly-fishing authors. Tom has that skill.

Trout. Ernest Schwiebert. 

Here again, the man starts his chapters with descriptions and anecdotes that have you lowering the book to your lap and closing your eyes just to take in the beauty of what he describes. He then saunters into the most in-depth research and cross referencing that you will ever find in fly-fishing literature. Stand back Google…..if you want to research a fly fishing topic, you are better off in the index of this book that in front of your keyboard. Oh, and like Sutcliffe…he does his own illustrations!

And for number five, I am going to break the rules set for us by Tom, and list some authors of wonderful fishing stories, because I am simply unable to fine it down to just one of their books. They would be:  Ted Leeson, Harry Middleton, David James Duncan, John Gierach and Howard T Walden. Each of them is an entertainer of the very highest order. They can lift you in your evening armchair into upward swirling thermals of cerebral delight. Like I said ….this stuff has you pausing and closing your eyes just to take in the beauty of their prose.

11. Dean Riphagen – Angling author, fly shop proprietor, fly fishing's consummate perfectionist…
Says Dean,

 


Part of Dean’s library

Didn’t really have to think too hard here!

A Fly Fisher’s Life. Charles  Ritz.



 

Trout (Double Volume). Ernest Schwiebert.

My Way with a Trout.  Tom Sutcliffe.

In the Ring of the Rise. Vincent Marinaro.

The Year of the Angler. Steve Raymond.

If I could add a sixth book it would be that little gem by John Beams’ Introducing Fly Fishing in South Africa.

12. Paul Curtis – Angling author, novelist, book publisher…
Says Paul,

From the point of what books I'd take to read on a desert island - (in no particular order:

Fly Fishing. Sir Edward Grey.

A Fly Fisher's Life. Charles Ritz.

The Fishing in Print. Arnold Gingrich.

The Rapture of the River. Sidney Hey.

Hunting Trout. Tom Sutcliffe.

There’s one other African fly-fishing book I want to sneak in here:

Trout Fishing in Natal (1909). A.H. Tatlow (editor)– S.A. Railways Publicity.
This 27-page publicity booklet compiled by A.H. Tatlow is the Holy Grail of African angling book collecting. The only copy I have ever seen for sale was on the Antiquarian Auctions website in March 2015, where it was knocked down for $1,800.00! (R25 500.)
It begins with the admirable line: It is a shallow as well as a dismal scheme of life which ignores or undervalues the importance of recreation, and it is crammed with interesting info about trout fishing in the early days of Natal fishing.

 



13. Andrew Savides – Artist, fly-fishing columnist…
Says Andrew, 

My list won’t take anyone by surprise.  When technical skill and storytelling ability intersect the product is art, if not actual magic. The authors on my list, if you’ll allow me a mixed metaphor, are alchemists of the highest order, delivering results that are so much more than the sum of their ingredients. 

In a country with such a rich writing heritage, I feel somewhat self-conscious about a list comprising solely of North American authors, but I shot from the hip and selected those that came immediately to mind. I’m guessing though that the power of literature to move you to places that you aren’t familiar with is part of its magic - but I try not to overthink these things lest I expose the sleight of hand and ruin the trick. 

There are a few titles missing from this list. Hunting Trout and The Starlight Creek Angling Society are the most conspicuous by their absence. But ask me again tomorrow, I’ll give you a wildly different list. 

The Longest Silence. Thomas McGuane.

In the 70’s people would write “Clapton is God” on club walls. How nobody writes “McGuane is God” on library walls is beyond me. 
When Jim Harrison says that ‘Thomas McGuane writes better about fishing than anyone else in the history of mankind’ you‘ve been told as much as you’ll ever need to know about him. 

A River Runs Through It. Norman Maclean.

Say what you want, this is remains one of the finest bits of writing that you’ll find anywhere and in any genre. So much modern angling writing has every experience on a stream shoehorned into a string of revelations about the nature of the world and our place in it. Trite epiphany follows trite epiphany. It’s too dishonest for words. 

In contrast, Maclean treats trout fishing as a basic component of that complex arrangement of relationships and experiences that coalesce into what is, simply, life. His honesty and authenticity as a writer is unparalleled.

Big Two-Hearted River. Ernest Hemingway. 

If this story doesn’t move you then you are without a soul. Period. 

Dumb Luck and the Kindness of Strangers - John Gierach.
When Gierach writes I can hear his spoken voice. This is a rare skill. 

The River Home - Jerry Dennis.

I just like this book. I read it and I thought, “man, I like this book”, so I read it again and thought, “man, I really like this book”. The River Home is like Levi 501s, Fender Telecasters and two-piece Sage LLs. When someone asks you what’s so great about them you shrug and say, “dunno man, I just like them”and know that you’ve said enough. 




 

14. PJ Jacobs – Lawyer, publicist, founder and editor of TCFF, world class guitar maker…
Says PJ,

There are books that have a lasting impact. Some even mould you as a fly fisher and put you on a path that is hard to change in later life. It produced (for me) a mindset that some may label as ‘old school’, but although I appreciate that, I am much too big a fan of advances in science to be able to lay claim to that moniker.

Still, these are books that have relevance for me even today, in part for that very mindset they encourage, but also for their honesty. Thus, I must choose from titles that may be familiar, and include authors like Vincent Marinaro, Sparse Grey Hackle, Haig Brown, John Voelker and a host of others. Obviously, some of these need to go on the list. A Modern Dry Fly Code was piped at the post by In the Ring of the Rise, but it could really have gone the other way, notwithstanding that there are some twenty-five years between the two titles. The same for Roderick Haig-Brown. I’ve enjoyed what I refer to as Haig-Brown’s seasons books (A Fisherman’s Summer and others), but I choose A River Never Sleeps, which coincidently, seems to have disappeared from the library.

Then at a very impressionable time I read My Way with a Trout and immediately became aware of how fly fishing in all its grandeur was equally at home in our own backyard. I have three copies. I would not be honest if I left it out.

A little while later came Gierach’s Trout Bum and while I love all his books (especially The View From Rat Lake), Trout Bum scored for its honesty which I think he has lost a little of in (some) later publications.

I obviously must include Thomas McGuane. The Longest Silence will remain a book I can reread many times over. It’s just got to be on the list.
 
And damn. There’s goes five. You said it would test any fly fisher to choose. I cannot but wholeheartedly agree for I find myself sorely tested.


15. Ian Cox – Magazine editor, lawyer, environmentalist…

Flyfishing for South African Boys. Pennington.

The Angler in South Africa. B. Bennion.

A History of Fly Fishing for Trout. Waller Hills.

Keeper of the Stream. Frank Sawyer.

Caddisflies. Gary LaFontaine.

16. Darryl Lampert –The most committed fly fisher I have known outside of the late John Beams…
Says Darryl,

Tom asked me to write about my five most cherished flyfishing books. To a large degree Tom is responsible for my selections, as over a period of years he introduced me to many (all I think) of the authors below and was kind enough to share from his extensive library. The books I read and liked (which was most of them) I went out and bought for myself.  So, the five I am going to list are books that I have reread multiple times and keep going back to. In no particular order:

Return to the River - The Classic Story of the Chinook Run and the Men Who Fish It. Roderick Haig-Brown.



 

Probably my favourite of Haig-Brown's books and one I have reread many times. Beautiful writing by a man who had a deep understanding of the fish he chased and the environment they live in. He wrote a children's book with a similar theme called Silver - The life story of an Atlantic Salmon, also a beautiful story that is worth reading.

The River Why. David James Duncan.

Big-Two Hearted River. Ernest Hemingway.

Tom introduced me to this short story some years ago. Simple, beautiful writing by one of the masters. After reading this I stopped trying to write anything.
 
Travers on Fishing. Robert Travers.

This way I don't have to choose between Trout Magic and Trout Madness as it has the best from both books combined with some other work and an intro by Nick Lyons. The only story missing that I would include is The Dancing Fly from Trout Magic.
The Best of Ed Zern. Ed Zern.

Don't read it at night when your wife is lying in bed asleep next to you!
 
THREE TIPS FOR BETTER LANDSCAPE PHOTOS by Wolf Avni
Says Wolf,

Composition
Aside from keeping the horizon level, I’m not much for rules when it comes to formal composition. It’s not that they don’t signify anchor points, rule of thirds, leading lines, resolved foreground, aspect ratio manipulation…etc, but that, as formulae they cramp the natural eye when it franticly searches for them to have something to compose around.




 

All the world itself is Art and all you need really do, is FEEL it.  The mind is a wonderful servant, but terrible master it is said - and too much of it through a viewfinder easily kills any possibility of ‘vision’, overwhelming it by imposition of a ‘view’ constructed around preconceived templates. Form, texture, shadow, light, tonal ranges, the golden ratio - these exist everywhere in the natural world. We don’t have to manufacture them. It is the natural dynamic tension between them, the play between visual elements, that fill the frame and make the image. Sometimes it’s what you include IN… and sometimes it’s what you include OUT.

Timing.
Timing is everything, and I preach and follow a simple mantra: “If not here… where? If not now… when?  A bit like fly-fishing, that way. First light and last light are good times to be prowling around in the landscape. Any landscape.  The more unstable the atmospherics the better. Pre-frontal skies are gravid with natural dynamic tensions. All cloud types catch and play with the light, reflecting, refracting, selectively absorbing and transmitting different wave lengths of light.  So too smog, smoke, fog and mist. They selectively filter and soften the VIBGYOR spectrum (violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red), rendering pastel shades and subtle hues.

 



 

Right tool for the job.

It is a common fallacy to believe that if you took a picture with a wide angle, and then, from the exact same position shot the same scene through a longer lens, that in fact all you would be doing is enlarging a portion of the wide-angle picture.  This would only be true if the curvature of the front lens element were the same on both lenses, which they are not. The wider the angle, the greater the curvature to the front element. The more the curvature, the greater the angle of refraction of light rays passing through the lens elements. This creates a shift, focal length by focal length, of ASPECT RATIO. Another way of expressing it is as proportionality between near and far objects.  Wide angles accentuate foreground and represent it as larger, relative to distant objects or structures. Long lenses on the other hand tend to compress the perceived distance between near, far and further objects, i.e.; the background behind a subject appears relatively closer than it actually is. The photographer, thus, can exercise a high degree of perspective manipulation, or aspect ratio control, simply by switching focal length. Convention teaches that wider angle lenses are more appropriate to landscape, and though I might shoot a great deal of landscape between focal lengths of 14-24mm, I tend to shoot a great deal more at focal lengths between 80-200mm. Sometimes best effect of detail requires even longer focal lengths… 300mm, or even 400mm.  The thing is to comprehend the specification limitation of any piece of equipment in use for a particular image, and to work comfortably within those limitations.

 



 

I always carry a range of camera supports and invariably shoot off one or other. Permanently in the car are 2 badger beanbags and a light, ancient Manfrotto… like me it has bits beginning to fail, specifically in the head (tilt mechanism).  Fact is, the vast majority of my landscapes are shot resting on a badger bag in the car window… especially winter dawns where the comfort of my aging ass and frozen fingers choose what is and what isn’t a reachable image.

You know that old chestnut for blank days…. the trout are just a bonus?  it’s crap. Not an option in the photon phishing game. The shot is all there is! Get it or don’t. there ain’t never no next time. There ain’t no coming back.

From Justin Mc Conville
Says Justin,

August has followed the pattern set in July with rainfall far more than the typical norm in the south of England. I fished two very different chalkstreams for the first time this month and needed a sturdy raincoat each time. Both were thoroughly enjoyable days, the first spent in the company of a new acquaintance recently emigrated from South Africa. The warmer days of August often mean having to work a little harder to enjoy success on the chalkstreams, but it is also a time when these rivers look their bewitching best.

The River Anton
I found everything I desire in a chalkstream in the River Anton, a tributary of the River Test in Hampshire. The Anton is graded by experts as a pure example of a chalkstream, in that it rises and flows entirely from the underlying chalk strata. Its limpid waters flowed swiftly and smoothly over a quilt patchwork of weeds and bright gravels of no discernible order except that which had been dictated by the blade of the keeper’s sickle. A verdant opulence of summer-blooming wildflowers grew among the reeds and watercress in the margins of the river, from delicate clusters of sky-blue Forget-me-nots at water level to proud Purple-Loosestrife with spear-like flowers that stand shoulder high. Trout thrived in the fertile water and I soon learned they had grown fabulously fussy.

 


The Anton running swift and clear

 

The best pool of the beat was created by a pinch point where the water quickened between the overgrown bricks of a disused weir and an Ash tree, scouring a tremendous pool with competing currents and eddies. The silhouettes of large trout and grayling could be seen in the depths, disappearing intermittently in the bubbles and boils. The weir harked back to a time when chalkstreams were heavily manipulated by the hand of man, lending the river a romantic charm. The deep water masked my presence and I caught my best fish of the day from the pool, a brown trout of around 16 or 17 inches long, still some way short of the largest specimens witnessed in the pool.
 
 


The weir pool on the Anton, under a brewing storm

 

The River Nadder

The River Nadder, a tributary of the River Avon in Wiltshire, is termed a mixed geology chalkstream. It flows over chalk where the main fishing action takes place but springs to life in the sands and clay beyond the chalk. As a result, it carries the slightest tinge of opaqueness – not very much – but can colour more severely after heavy rainfall. It is deeply incised in the ground, with a series of serpentine bends slowing its flow and creating tremendous sequences of riffles to pools.

 

The Nadder in the evening, after the rains
 

The beat I fished had an 8 fish catch and release limit which meant I could take my time, observing the water, and targeting each fish in turn. My 7th fish, a brown trout of 19 inches, stands out from the others because it followed my shrimp pattern downriver and slashed at it aggressively. I missed the take in the commotion but waited until the trout settled and cast to it once more. Again, it was only after the shrimp has passed the fish before it sprang into action. It turned and pursued the fly downstream as if it might never see another meal in its life. This time I set the hook and the mystery of its animated behaviour was perhaps explained when I lifted its hefty bulk into my net. Within the net I found a minnow no longer than my pinkie finger. My intervention was most fortuitous for the little minnow which I suspect had recently been swallowed!      

Taff Price passes on
Says Peter Cockwill,

A genius at fly tying, entomology and communication, not just with the written word but through his travels, club nights and shows! That’s the best way to describe the character that we fly fishers all know as Taff Price.
Born in 1934 he was raised at Barmouth on the Mid Welsh coast, and then spent most of his life in what he lovingly described as ‘tropical Sidcup’ in Kent.

 



 

‘Taff’, as we all knew him, gained enormous respect for his depth of knowledge and his passion to use all things fur and feather creating imitations of the insects he studied and researched. That was so evident in his masterpiece Fly Patterns: An International Guide where he was able to gather information from friends all over the world to compile what remains the standard reference work.

There was a celebrated period in the 80’s when Taff joined forces with John Veniard, Donald Downs and David Jacques to establish a fly tying, retail outlet at Westerham in Kent. This very quickly became a mecca for anglers far and wide.

His travels to Europe led to immense research into his books on sedge (caddis) flies which are characterised by Taff’s incredibly beautiful and detailed drawings of each insect and the various stages of its life cycle.

There were trips to South Africa and Alaska along with long periods in the Amazon where Taff revelled in the culture, along with the enormous wealth and diversity of life.

All of these experiences were shared with readers of Trout and Salmon as well as publications in many Countries and Taff had the most wonderful way of transmitting his love of all the things that touched his life.

As you might expect from a committed Welshman, Taff had a love of music and along with a guitar he loved to sing the ‘blues’.
Taff leaves his wife Madeleine who shared so much of his life on so many rivers and stillwaters. His daughter and three granddaughters knew and loved him as a committed family man, while to us he will always be the man who inspired so many to become absorbed by the world of entomology and fly tying.

A truly ‘great man’ in our fishing lives who will be very much missed.

Tom Sutcliffe
 
 
 
 
 
 
           
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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