ROMANCE Savs His itchy feet began to develop barely three weeks into isolation. The Sensei is not given to overt displays of emotion and I can’t imagine that he was pacing the floor exactly, but he couldn’t have been a riot to live.
We fished some way up what turned out to be a remarkably pretty stream. Just as we were far enough from our vehicles to be too far from our vehicles the dull, overcast day was rent without warning by a massive thunderstorm. It swept together the filth from the adjacent highway and deposited it in impressive volumes by means of an otherwise rather striking waterfall into the river and onto us.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that coexisting with the man is easy at the best of times, but being holed up in an apartment with a three-year-old for weeks on end will drive the most reasonable man to to ‘act out’ a little.
In minutes the river smelled like a runaway fire in a merkin factory.
In times of stress dark thoughts will inevitably creep their way into the most balanced mind. The least of these thoughts, and a truly victimless crime, would be to travel for reasons not, in the contemporary legal sense, ‘essential’.
Our second attempt yielded better results. We fished another urban stream that we knew for a fact to hold a small population of fish and caught just enough to be able to say with some conviction that we “got some”. It was fun, in it’s own way, and having company again was great, but by the time that we were able to venture beyond the city limits I think that we were both grateful for it.
Decisions involving the lessor of two evils most often make themselves and before long my phone began pinging with incoming satellite images of various rivers that flow through the city. The images had been painstakingly marked-up to show likely productive areas, safe parking and easy access points. By ‘easy access’ I mean ‘well-concealed’. Like bunking English class to smoke behind the woodwork room the whole endeavour had a certain rakish romance about it and I immersed myself in the role of enthusiastic accomplice.
We were of course targeting Natal yellowfish. As far as species go the scaly is certainly en vogue these days. And sure, why not? They’re a cool enough catch on a fly rod and will keep you entertained for a while, although my overwhelming impression of them is that they’re not exactly bright. Unless a scaly is of almost trophy size it just zips around aimlessly in the belly of a pool until it tires out and pretty much allows itself to be landed. Granted, they’re hardly ugly to look at and when they reach trophy proportions they take off like bullet trains, casually breaking tippets and anglers’ hearts. The only problem is that there are just not a lot of trophy sized scaly around - if there were they wouldn’t be trophies, right?
Any preconceived notion of romance ended pretty damned smartly when our first meeting point was described to me as being “straight down the road, right next to the sewage plant”. Now I try in most things to maintain a positive disposition. It wasn’t easy with the fetid tang of a million shits hanging heavily in the air about me as I strung up my rod. www.saflyfishingmag.co.za
5
Return to contents
