Blonde Flashers

If you are as fly fishing crazy as I am, you will understand the following article. This is a tale of my introduction to the seductive, sexy little blonde flashers, otherwise known as Natal Yellow Fish or Scalies. If you go down to a stretch of river holding these beauties, you are sure to find them flashing their blonde sides as the African sun catches their reflective scales. Each one tempting you as they feed on nymphs close to the bottom of the river bed. I was very late to the game with these indigenous fish. Being a self proclaimed trout snob, living in an area with some of the best rainbow trout fishing in the country, it took me a while to target other species. But now that I have branched out no finned blonde beauty is safe... I was incredibly lucky to be introduced to scalies by one of the best in the fly fishing community with a wealth of competition fishing experience. I jumped at the invitation from Shaun Dickson to fish for these indigenous blonde beauties. Like going to a strip club for the first time it helps to go with a friend who is more experienced and knows the ropes. I was in Durban visiting family at the time and they understand my fly fishing obsession so it wasn’t difficult to get away for the day to satisfy my fishy fetish. I drove through to Shaun’s house in Hillcrest and left my car there. We jumped into his car, dubbed the “Bunny”, and were off for my first blonde flasher experience at a secret spot with the expert.

What more could a person want? It didn’t take us long to get to the spot because of the good conversation and Coke (the cool drink) fuelled drive. We met up with another inexperienced Scaly fisherman, Josh Hackland. Both Josh and I were not really geared up for this style of fishing, we both had hopelessly short rods, flies that were too fat and light and no two tone indicator mono for Euro Nymphing. Shaun to the rescue. He helped us construct appropriate leaders and gave us a bunch of his beautifully tied euro nymphs (which were like cash in a strip joint, simply priceless). The blondes were flashing all around us. I couldn’t contain myself. It was like being in heaven surrounded by these beautiful fish. The trouble now was trying to cast these heavy nymphs and getting them down to drift past the blondes. I really battled to get

these flies to go where I wanted them to. It was like not being able to get that ten rand note to the thong you are looking at, and probably one of my most frustrating fly fishing moments. Luckily, Shaun was patient and like a good pimp to these blondes, he knew exactly what they needed to get them to cooperate. After some advice and a pep talk from Shaun I plucked up the courage to approach these flashers. This time I had success! I hooked into a beauty at the head of a long pool and my tiny 3wt click paw reel screamed with ecstasy as the line peeled off. When I eventually brought her to the net I was over the moon with my first scaly, she was beautiful and bigger than I could have hoped for. After breaking my Scaly virginity there was no stopping me. It was like a fishing orgy and we fished late into the dark, even getting a few on dries.

www.saflyfishingmag.co.za Return to contents 62 After that first blonde flasher experience I went on to try and improve my skills. I attended at Scallie clinic at Highover on the Umkomass near Richmond hosted by the Natal Fly Fishing Club. To really make the most of the trip Jayson van Skylkwyk and I came to the venue a day early from Underberg to try get some more fishing in. We had a blast catching small Blonde flashers almost everywhere we cast our euro nymphs even had a few threesomes aka double ups. We tend to fish two nymphs one on a short tag coming off the main line with a double surgeons knot and another fly on the main line at the point. These greedy fish would often eat at the same time as each other and you would end up hooking and fighting two fish at the same time. After some great fun on the water we made our way back to Highover to await the other participants of the clinic that was being presented by Jacques Marais from Hunter Fisher Safari’s.

Jacques was a true magician on the water managing to find fish in the most unlikely of places. In the evenings we had lectures from Jacques and he took all my annoying questions in his stride. We looked at leader construction, fishing techniques, river craft and of course flies. My buddy Mike had come up from Durban to attend the clinic and after dinner the three of us sat and tied flies for the next day and drank way to much beer. The next day we put some of our new found knowledge to the test and had even better results than the day before. We also managed to catch larger fish as I like to think our river craft and moves with the blonds improved from Jacques coaching. It was a great weekend and Mike, Jayson and I improved our skills and met some great fly fishing folk.

The lure of these blondes never seemed to go away. So whenever the conditions were not conducive to catching trout (high water temps, low rivers etc) I would make a plan to fish for them. This meant a trip to the Umkomaas, which was fun but a bit of a drive and not convenient for a day trip. I was lucky enough to have a chance meeting with a local Underberg farmer, let’s call him farmer Brown for the story. He told me that on the stretch of the Umzimkulu that flowed through his property you could catch both blondes and trout, as the natural barrier (waterfall) to the blondes was upstream. This sounded too good to be true but then it got even better, he invited me to come fish for them when I got a chance.

Of course I took him up on this and fished the upper most reaches of the Umzimkulu where the Blondes can get to. It is a truly beautiful stretch of river that you can only access via a labyrinth of farm gates, a strenuous hike into the gorge and a scramble down a small slot in the rock walls. On my first trip to find these blondes of different lineage, I went alone as Farmer Brown was not available to join me. He sent me screen shots of google earth maps on which he had drawn the route to get to his private joint for blondes. It was like following a treasure map to get to the quarry. After finding the spot without getting lost, which is a testament to his directions more than my navigating skills, I rigged up and had a fantastic time euro nymphing for these indigenous beauties. The fish to me looked slightly different from the ones I had caught before and as the drainage systems are distinct from each other and do not meet before they reach the ocean this makes sense. I have been back a few times to this special spot to try fooling these blondes. I have even managed to catch a few trout in-between the Blondes. It’s a strange thing when trout become bycatch to a trout snob...

I have a very understanding girlfriend, almost all of my time off I use for something fishing related. Whether it is fly fishing, fly tying or fly rod building or my actual work trying to keep hatchery trout alive it is all fishy. This trip away was no different. I managed to convince her that we should go to Highover for a weekend away, of course this was because I wanted to see my beloved Blondes but I did not make that obvious, she knew of course. This trip was a little different than normal, the water was clean and cold, we had the whole of Highover to ourselves and there were new managers running the place and the stay was fantastic.

There is a good fishing spot in the tribal land above Highover where a pump house has been erected on a deep pool that you can drive up to. So we took a drive there to start fishing. As we got there we came across two Indian guys from Pietermaritzburg bait fishing. They had been fishing there all morning and had very limited success only two small blondes in their keep net to show for their efforts. I made contact with the two

fishermen to see how friendly they were and if I could join them at the spot. Like most fisherman they were friendly, shared some fishing stories and spoke of massive fish they had caught there before. After feeling them out for a bit I asked if I could fish next to them. They had no problem with that but you could tell they had very little faith in the effectiveness of flies to catch Blondes. their faces.

Catch and release is a strange concept to most and if you think about it a bit from an outsiders perspective it just seems silly. I know my girlfriend, a blonde flasher herself, finds the idea of catch and release a bit cruel. Their excitement evaporated as the valley heated up and I caught small blonde after small blonde under their noses. Figuring that the blondes willingness to eat my flies was starting to make the other fishermen feel a bit left out in the cold, I moved up river to give them their pool back. Here the fishing slowed down considerably, from my experience this tends to happen when the water is cool. Blondes are warm water fish and become less active when water temperatures are down. They retreat to the deeper pools until the water temperatures have improved.

What I find really interesting about these fish is how, over time, the fly fishermen’s perspective of them has evolved. I have been reading some old texts about fly fishing and if they do mention the Blondes it is

normally with distaste. Partly I think this is due to the Eurocentric mindset that was held at the time and how man endeavoured to tame the African landscape to resemble more of what he was accustomed to in his home country. Blondes were not easily caught using the fishing techniques of the time because of the way they feed compared to trout. The status bestowed to trout was not the same for other fish so the Blondes were seen as inferior. Of course the aim has also changed. In the old days most fly fishermen kept fish for the pan, Blondes are very bony and do not taste great in my opinion so this would negatively impact their perceived value. Today the Natal Blonde is a prized freshwater game fish that readily takes flies and puts up a great fight on fly tackle. I still have trout as my mistress but Blondes are a close second and might therefore be my side chick (to use a modern equivalent). But because I see her so infrequently, she would more likely always be... just a cheeky flasher.