XFA River Trout Clinic The Zen of MODERN ANGLING SAVS We arrived at Tierhoek during loadshedding, our headlights cutting through the evening gloom to reveal a smiling group of men standing around a fire. Despite Warren and I being among the first to sign onto the XFA river clinic we were, by some hours, the last to arrive. The comedy of frustrating errors that lead to our tardy arrival were all but forgotten as Daniel Factor stepped out of the throng to greet us warmly. The format for the weekend was straightforward: dry fly fishing on Saturday and nymphing on Sunday. Friday and Saturday nights were set aside for some theory and prepping gear for the next day. The only instructions given were to bring along a soft-tipped ten foot, three weight rod and a matching Euro and conventional floating line. A small selection of imported gear that is not available locally was to be available at the event. It couldn’t be simpler, really - a fact that Warren and I ignored by bringing a forest of fly rods and sundry other gear well in excess of what was mandated. We reasoned that these are our home waters and that we’re fairly competent anglers with a pretty effective fishing formula, so why wouldn’t we? That was our first mistake. Daniel held court at the bar cum lecture hall. At his side were his able, if not entirely lovely, assistants, Gary “let’s draw a vector diagram of that” Glen-Young and Marius “I’ll just tie a few flies while we wait” Grobler. A whiteboard appeared as if from nowhere and our re-education began. Discussions were informal and started with some theory, most of it aimed at how to recognise drag and strategies to overcome it. The message was, basically, that setting yourself up to achieve a perfect drift is www.saflyfishingmag.co.za
something worth becoming painfully obsessive about. Marius busied himself with passing out gear while everyone else set about lashing unusually tapered leaders to fly lines and attaching long lengths of gossamer-fine tippet. It was no different on Saturday night when the fundamentals of “Euro” nymphing and how to properly gear up for it was discussed and demonstrated. Questions ranged in complexity from “what do you mean by drag?”, “is this a floating line?” to “but surely the dropper, with a force and at a distance, exerts a moment of force on the point fly and results in micro-drag?”. It speaks well of the XFA crew that every question was discussed and answered fully and without making the angler needing to feel self-conscious about asking it. Daylight hours were spent on the stream. The looks on the faces of a guy and his son fishing a run on the Bushmans as the twelve of us, rods in hand, made our way down the hill in their general direction was priceless and was worth the price of admission alone. To their obvious relief we behaved like perfect gentlemen and slipped in downstream of them. Daniel demonstrated drag and how the longer rod and unusual leader could negate it. After this we broke into three groups, each under the close tutelage of one of our instructors, and we went after some wild browns. Now I’ve fished that river more times than I can remember (the truth) and I’ve caught on the dry fly more of its brown trout than I can possibly count (probably a lie), but I have never fished it with such ease. The combination of the longer rod, specific leader configuration and modified cast resulted in the longest, sweetest drifts that I have ever been able to achieve. 39
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