Where the monsters live by Andrew van Wyk

Andrew Van Wyk has lived in the Queenstown area for most of his life and has been an avid angler since a young child. His trout fishing journey started in 2008 and from that first trip Andrew knew that trout fishing would be a part of his life until he no longer had the strength to lift his fly rod. This is his story and insight into what you can expect from this beautiful and unspoilt trophy trout region of the Eastern Cape.

It’s a little past four in the morning and I’m standing on the front veranda drinking the last few sips of my coffee. It’s pitch dark and icy-cold outside as it is the middle of July and winter is in full swing. We have had some snowfall reported in the Snowberg and Winterberg Mountains area over the past two evenings and there is a definite chill in the air. I can feel my nose burning with each icy breath I inhale. I take my phone out my pocket and flip open the weather app. It says that it’s -5C outside and I am once again reminded just how cold this part of the country gets. half-Sasquatch to anyone that could see me now.

I head out of Queenstown, leaving the town and the lights behind me as I head in a north-westerly direction on a short journey of roughly 45 minutes to reach my final destination at Birds River. On route I head through parts the old Transkei, looking out of the side windows of my now warm and cosy car I can see off in the distance a single light on in someone’s home in one of the rural villages; I guess I’m not the only person awake at this time of the morning.

The icy cold is not enough to send me back under the warm covers of my bed - why would I do that, when all I have been thinking about for the past few days is my fishing trip? I plan to spend the day hunting trout at Birds River on Johan Wege and Ed Clark’s Farms where I will be able to fish Top Dam, Middle Dam, Bottom Dam and Quarry Dam.

There is no way I will let some last minute cold snap hold me back! My fly fishing gear has already been meticulously prepped and my rods and kick boat are already packed in the back of my 4x4. With my coffee finished I lock up and walk towards my car. I’m dressed in my warmest winter jacket, a woolly beanie covering my head and ears and my gloves and scarf to keep me warm. I can’t help but think I must look like some half-man, As I get closer to Birds River I take the turnoff and leave the tarred road behind me as I continue on a dirt road for a few kilometres. Knowing that I’m close to my final destination I can feel the excitement building in anticipation and I hope that today’s fishing trip will be one to remember.

On arrival at Ed Clark’s farm where Top and Middle Dam are situated the day is just barely starting to break and the sun’s rays are struggling to get over the mountain range that are the backdrop to the two dams. I pull up to the dam and park. I kill the engine, get out and am greeted by eery silence and fresh mountain air. It is a feeling that I can never get tired of; just me, the dam and whatever might be lurking beneath the water’s surface ready to take my fly.

I walk down the raised bank of the dam wall towards the waters edge. In the dim early morning light I can make out that the cold snap has completely iced the shallower water along the edge. While standing around and surveying the dam and landscape for a few minutes it starts getting

lighter and I look around and can now see that the small mountain range that the runs down the entire length of the valley is covered in snow. So is the hilltop to the left that creates the small valley that Top Dam is situated in. It’s cold, but the view is spectacular.

With light starting to fill the valley I get back to the car and set up. I pull out a pair of 12ft, 6- weight rods and set one up with a sinking fly line and the other an intermediate fly line. Both get a two meter long 20lbs mono leader - there’s no point in tying on fancy tapered

leaders here as the fish are large and I will be presenting mainly woolly buggers and minnow patterns. I decide that I will begin the morning fishing the bank, starting on the side where the dam wall is and working my way to the left side of the dam.

From there, later in the morning, I will switch over to the kick boat and fish between the two big weed beds looking for trout that are patrolling this zone.

All geared-up and set-up I head to the dam wall and make the first of many casts for the day. First cast goes out and my fingers are so cold that I lose control and the line falls down a few meters in front of me - “that’s not going to work”, I say to myself. So I gather up my line and start the second cast, release the line and nothing happens. Dumbstruck I look at my fly rod in dismay only to notice that the fly line is frozen to the guides. Well, that’s trout fishing in the middle of winter for you.

I decide to take a step back to evaluate the situation. There’s no point in giving up now as it’s feeding time for the trout and I can see that further out into the middle of the dam a few trout are feeding off the surface as they look for their morning meal. I press on and continue working the dam wall and as I’m going along the sun climbs over the peak of the hills that form the valley. I can feel its welcoming warmth and looking over the dam mist is rising off the water. This is a truly magical sight to see and it gives me further motivation to get into a fish as I know they are lurking just below the water surface on their morning patrol. For the next hour or so I work my way from the dam wall to the left side of the dam. It has a long weed bed about fifteen meters from the water’s edge and stretching along the length of the bank. Just in front of the weed bed there is deep water, an ideal spot to present a fly and to coax an eager trout onto my hook. I work up the bank and change out the fly pattern to a black woolly bugger. As I’m tying on the fly I watch the crystal clear deep water section and notice a flash of silver. “I see you”, I think to myself and eagerly cast towards the spot where I just saw the trout.

The cast is perfect and on the sinking line my fly quickly disappears under the water. I do a count of three seconds to get the line to sink a little further and then start a figure-ofeight retrieve. On the fourth retrieve I get the tell-tale pull on the end of the line and lift my rod to set the hook - fish on! With only a fifteen meter or so open stretch of water in front of me I have to put pressure on the fish or risk it running into the weeds. I quickly get the fish under control and after it takes one last run up the bank, skirting the weed bed with me following closely behind, I manage to land a nice 3.2kg rainbow cock, my first for the day. If I went home now I would be more than happy. I get the hook out, get the fish back into the water and safely release it.

I continue to work my way up the lefthand bank but don’t manage to get another bite. While probing the bank I keep seeing fish breaking the surface on the other side of the weed bank towards the middle of the dam so I decide to walk back to the car and get into the water in the kick boat. I paddle out into the middle of the dam in my kick boat and cast to the back of the weed bank. A few casts into this I decide that it’s time to change the fly pattern again. While selecting a pattern an emerald-green woolly bugger catches my attention and I wonder to myself whether some flies are tied to attract fish or the poor angler. None the less, I tie on the horizontally forward and an almighty tug on the other end of the line tells me I’ve got a fish on. In the split seconds while this is happening I notice that line is peeling of my reel faster than a F14 Tomcat launching from an aircraft carrier and that, to my horror, the beast on the end of my line is making a beeline away from the weeds that I was casting to and is heading off to the right side of the lake towards an even bigger weed bank.

While these thoughts are going through my mind I can feel the violent head shakes as whatever I have hooked into is fighting tooth

bugger knowing that a pattern mimicking a small bait fish or tadpole are part of the bigger trout’s daily diet and as a result my confidence is sky-high as I start my cast - a simple three strokes off my right side and I launch my line with as much precision as I can muster.

I watch my line and fly sail through the crisp winter air towards the edge of the weed bank that I am probing. My Intermediate fly line folds out perfectly and lands the woolly bugger down onto the water with a silent plop. I see the fly line just break the surface and start to sink when I notice the line stretch and nail to dislodge the hook and to set itself free. I catch myself saying out loud “don’t lose it, don’t lose it”, so intense is the moment. By now I have reluctantly brought my right hand up under the spool and am starting to apply as much pressure as I dare to in an effort to get the run under control and to get the fish turned away from the weed bank that it is gunning for. As if summoned, some fifty-odd meters way from me the fish breaks the surface in a spectacular jump, launching its full body out of the water the way that a tiger fish would do and I get to see it for the first time - the sheer size of the monster on the other end of my line!

As the fish re-enters the water my heart is pounding in my chest and I instinctively lean back into my rod with as much strength as I dare and putting a proper bend in my 6- weight rod I let the fish know I am on the other end of the line and that I’m fighting back. With line tension at its maximum my thoughts go for a second to my leader and the knot holding the fly. I feel another violent head shake and my focus shifts back to the battle and I lean back and pull harder than before and all of a sudden I see the line break left and away from the weed bank.

Thinking to myself that it’s now or never I lean forwards and start cranking in line. I gain about two meters of line and pull back hard one more time and the fish turns almost a full 180 degrees, heading back towards the first weed bank. Needless to say this was the fight of a lifetime and I was enjoying what felt like an eternity of bullying the fish closer and closer as I kicked my legs frantically in the water to make up the ground between me and the end of my fly line. I get almost on top of the fish that has now given up going for the weeds and is swimming in a circle that gets smaller and smaller with ever crank of my reel.

The fish breaks the surface and I instantly make out it’s a female rainbow trout - and she is big!

As I grab my net and aim to drop her in I realise the net is too small. So its Plan B, and I grab the leader with my right hand, drop my rod in my lap and with my left hand I grab the fish by mouth and haul it between my legs and half onto my lap.

“I got you...Woo Hoo!” I yell at the top of my lungs.

There between my legs I had the trout of a lifetime, a 74cm, 6.5kg rainbow trout - a Monster Trout.

Operating a Remote Wilderness lodge

Luke A Saffarek

Each summer I find myself standing in shindeep water in the middle of nowhere watching a guest’s dry fly floating down an unnamed stream toward an unnamed lake with an unknown amount of 20-plus inch rainbow trout...

A Cessna 185 on floats sits behind me ‘heeled’ up against the shore where the stream meets the lake. We are literally hundreds of kilometres away from anything.

The only life around is a bald eagle perched atop a spruce tree, rainbow trout drowning hatching mayflies and our bush pilot, binoculars in hand, surveying nearby mountains for grizzly bears and other wildlife.

Over the last number of years I’ve been head guide for Spatsizi Wilderness Vacations – a truly remote fly-in/fly-out fly fishing lodge with some of the best dry-fly fishing in the world. The lodge is located in northern British Columbia, Canada, approximately one thousand kilometres north of Vancouver. Access is solely by float plane, or a 3 and a half day horse ride from the nearest road 120km away. I’d recommend the plane.

As you can imagine, the logistics of any flyin lodge need to be spot on. Everything is flown into the lodge - food, fuel, cooking gas, cleaning supplies, spare parts, etc., and flying isn’t cheap. Each plane needs to be full to make it work, and with the nearest shop 300km to the south you better not forget the toilet paper. The logistics of operating a true wilderness lodge in a northern climate go far beyond getting things to the lodge. Masses of effort are put into simply maintaining the lodge itself.

At the end of each season the lodge is winterised and left. Winterising means draining water lines, removing boats from lakes, storing boat motors, storing all food products, boarding up windows, pulling water pumps, removing gutters, sealing chimneys, animal proofing cabins, reinforcing roofs to hold the snow load, and a whole lot more. All of this is done in hopes that when we return eight months later things will still be as we left them.

If things are not put away, treated, or stored properly a long winter of temperatures down to minus 40 Celsius degrees, wolverine and hungry bears waking up from hibernation can cause for a lot of headaches when you return in the spring.

It has happened where a wolverine spent the winter in some poor soul’s cabin and when they returned in the spring it was easier to burn the cabin down and build a new one than to clean up after the beast. After hearing that story, finding a bit of weasel poop in a cabin doesn’t seem so bad.

During the long winter months a small crew flies into the lodge on ski-planes for about four days. Their job is simple, but critical - get firewood for the coming season. With the lakes frozen and snow covering the bush, snowmobiles and large toboggans make accessing and moving firewood easy. What would be a near-impossible job in the summer is made simple in the winter.

Once the firewood crew leave the wait is on for the ice to thaw so we can get in and prepare for the season. Ten days is typically the amount of time we have once we arrive in the spring to get everything ready for our guests. Re-connecting water lines and pumps, re-launching boats, checking boat motors, splitting and stacking small mountains of firewood, cleaning cabins, re-hanging gutters, painting, digging new long-drop pits and any other maintenance and improvements that need to be made. Over and above the the outdoor work there is also the not-so-small task of getting the lodge ready for guests by cleaning cabins, prepping the kitchen and making everything presentable.

Being as remote as we are means you can’t just call a plumber or electrician. All the work is done by myself, my three guides and our housekeeper. In this environment you are forced to learn and adapt to the situation before you. Over the years I have been forced to learn about solar electric systems, boat motors, plumbing, septic systems, water systems, generators and more. I’ve learned how to solder burst pipes, move a 200kg generator up a hill with just two people, install a wood stove, build a proper horse fence and so much more.

A few years ago it took three days just getting the dock back to the lodge after the melting ice flow left it high and dry on the shore some four kilometres down the lake. I personally have spent two full days just finding and fixing leaks in water lines that froze during the winter.

Once myself and the lodge owner spent three and a half days sorting out a blocked septic system.

You gotta do what you gotta do.

If everything survived the -40 temperatures and the wildlife have left the cabins alone it just means ten days of hard work. If things haven’t gone so well it means ten long days of stressful work with looming pressure to have everything ready for the guests when they arrive. Even then, there are many things that can and do happen during the season – leaky roofs, gas stoves packing up, and who knows what else. Yet, we adapt because this is simply our way of life here in remote northern British Columbia.

… As I watch the gaping mouth of a Spatsizi rainbow inhale my guests’ dry fly and his line go taught, I forget about the ridiculous amount of effort put in to bring us to this moment. As our faces light up, in a way only a dry fly eating fish can cause them to, the only thing on my mind is ‘Dude, that is a nice fish!’

Contact Luke through: www.spatsizi.com or www.tigerflyoutfitters.com