"The Life and Times of John Beams and a trip to the moon. Tom Sutcliffe When all is said and done, we don't really know a great deal about the early, or even the middle days of trout fishing in South Africa. Andrew Levy TCFF Magazine, December 2015.
John Beams was a powerful force for change in the history of South Africa fly fishing yet his life remains largely unrecorded. Mark Mackereth, an angler from the same era and from the same crucible of streams in the Western Cape has had more recognition. I fished with both during my student years, grew to like and respect them, learned from them, and after I had left Cape Town for KZN in 1968 I sent each a regular fishing letter, like a soldier on a distant battlefront sending dispatches to High Command. In my regular www.saflyfishingmag.co.za
reports I naturally went on a bit about KZN's big stillwater trout. Mackereth was little impressed. After all, these weren't big trout taken from quick streams on dry flies. But my letters caused Beams a serious itch, which he eventually had to scratch, and did, on a famous visit to Natal in 1970, when we fished the Old Dam and one or two other cosmic spots, caught heaps of trout, some large, even a few browns, and he was smitten. 37
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