This is certainly not an opinion that every fly fisher will share, as flies are as personal to the waters in which you fish, as they are to the angler who ties them. All my friends and anyone whose strapped on one of my creations will attest to the fact that I am to fly tying what crochet is to contraception. But my well worn retort is that pretty flies are for pretty fishermen! The Hydrocynus family […]

It’s hard to fathom a river system as vast as the great Zambezi. Traversing six countries, it’s epic 2500km journey ends by giving the Indian Ocean it’s largest injection of fresh water from any river in Africa. There are several hundred species of fish throughout the Zambezi system and it’s tributaries, some endemic, most indigenous, but they all pay homage to the Striped Water Dog. Only the Nile crocodile or flat dog ranks higher in the […]

The lengths that a man is willing to go to, is the measure of one’s character I’ve been led and grown to believe. Our reasons for embarking on these journeys might evolve the more we travel, but in our world they stem from an insatiable appetite to outwit.           That a cold-blooded opponent, some distance down the evolutionary scale can keep us awake at night, remains a mystery. But fixated we […]

Despite man’s appetites, the Kilombero valley in Tanzania remains one of the last great frontiers to explore. The Kilombero is the largest tributary of the Rufuji river, which from it’s source in the Livingston Mountains to the Indian Ocean is more than 600 km long. When flooded, at it’s peak in April / May, the Kilombero valley forms a massive freshwater wetland, providing a prolific breeding ground for the 38 species of fish that thrive […]

At long last the river season is officially now open in the Natal Midlands, although we are still waiting and hoping for some early rains to flush the system and get those big Brown Trout moving.   The Snow melt would have certainly helped and with a little luck assisting in some respect to their successful breeding.   There are many rivers to choose from in Natal, with the wealth of our Drakensberg Catchment, but […]