I was recently invited to join the Wildfly crew on an epic expedition on South Africa’s largest river, the Orange River in the Northern Cape. The guys were to be fishing with fly, but invited me to come and try my hand at seeing what I could get to eat artificial lures in the Orange. The part of the river that we were headed for is just below Augrabies falls. Our journey started with a sixteen hour car ride through the basckwaters of South Africa. Fortunately for us Mercedes Benz had given us a couple of fatastic vehicles to travel with, which made our trip so much more comfortable! We arrived at our base, Tutwa Lodge, a beautiful natural lodge, which fits in with the environment of the game farm that it is built on.

We were treated like royalty by Craig and Charmaine, who run Tutwa lodge and Kalahari Outventures. The meals produced at the lodge are some of the best I have had anywhere!

How is the view from this pool?

The main dining area at Tutwa Lodge.

After a night in the wonderful comfort of the lodge, we packed our gear and headed down to the banks of the river to start our canoeing and camping part of the adventure. We were pretty excited about this, as we wanted to get stuck into some fishing as soon as we could. I started flicking a small Sebile spin shad into the river while we were being briefed at the put in point and landed a small largemouth yellowfish, which whetted my apetite.

The canoes that we used were stable and safe, we carried all of our luggage packed into buckets with lids that were tied onto the canoes in case of any accidents. We travelled two to a canoe and were able to stop at any nice looking water along the way and have a cast wherever we felt like it. This was a great way to explore the river and by the end of the first day everybody had got stuck into a number of very decent smallmouth yellows as well as a few small to medium largies. I cast a surface popper in the dark that evening and was rewarded with a barble, which I thought was a big largemouth yellowfish for a while. Oh well, who would have expected a barble to eat a popper off the surface?

Having breakfast at our little rustic camp on the river bank.

 Camping right at the water’s edge.

We were able to start fishing even before the sun rose in the mornings as we camped in great spots.

One of the quality smallmouth yellows that I caught on a spinner. Small lures such as dropshots, spinners, bucktail jigs, small crankbaits etc produced a variety of fish and I got some lovely specimens on the trip.

The landscape around the river is arid and bare, but the water was clean and full of fish!

A labeo that I caught (hooked fair and square in the mouth) on a berkley sandworm rigged on a light jighead.

The river is just beautiful, and we saw nobody else in our four days of paddling down that section. It was a pleasure to experience unpolluted and undisturbed waters for miles and miles.

A small largemouth Yellowfish that I caught on a dropshot at our camp on the third evening. This size largemouth were plentiful, but the big ones didn’t want to come out and play, cauing us to wonder if they aren’t in fact mainly nocturnal on this part of the river.

Paddling down the river looking for good spots to fish.

When we reached the end of our canoeing trip we loaded the canoes onto the trailer, before heading back to Tutwa for a much deserved shower and some cold beverages.

The guys took advantage of the lodge hospitality and facilities and relaxed after the camping part of the trip.

The following day we had to start the long drive home, but everyone was psyched after an awesome experience. We all agreed that this was a trip that we would like to do again.