The XFA River Trout Clinic The Zen of Modern Angling by 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 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.

From the braai to the whiteboard

It really was something of a revelation, and I don’t say that lightly. I took a fish on my first cast and Rob one-upped me by taking fish on each of his first two casts. We all landed more fish than would have been strictly necessary to call it a good day and we arrived back last, again just in time for the steaks to hit the braai.

I was less successful at the following day’s Euro nymphing session. It’s not something that I’ve done before but I left confident that even though I’m not much good at it yet, I at least have a grasp of the fundamentals of it and that I am set up correctly to progress. No amount of YouTube tutorials and tips from friends give you anywhere near to the experience of having a virtuoso angler demonstrate and then correct errors in your technique.

I can’t overstate the benefit of having a team of tutors of the calibre of Dan, Gary and Marius at your side.

“Guide” is a word that I’ve specifically tried not to use to describe the XFA team. A guide, you see, is there to put you onto fish. It is how he is judged and is his calling card. His role is entirely different from an instructor or a tutor. An instructor is there to improve individual technical aspects of your game that come together to meet the combined objective; in this instance to catch fish under a variety of conditions by utilising a variety of techniques. It helps, I suppose, to think of this like spending time with a golf pro on a driving range (a terrible mental image, but you get my point). As a side-note while I’m on the subject, Marius, our nymphing instructor, is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. An angel, really - were I guiding me I would’ve held my head under water for a few minutes to end the obvious misery that I was inflicting on myself. Still, I got a few, and I’d like to think that not all of them were what Marius calls “the village idiot”, but I’m not totally convinced of that.

So, I bet you’re wanting me to tell you exactly what we learned, and I don’t mind sharing it with you. It’s just not that simple.

Superficially, I could give you diagrams of leader configurations and note the knots used. I could describe the casts and try to explain what constitutes a properlycontrolled drift. I could give you a shopping list of leader materials and floatant dips and all manner of strange and foreign things. We learned about all of this, but that’s not what I took away from the weekend. In fact, I’m not sure that they are even the most important part of it.

The role of competition angling in the advancement of the sport is something that is worthy of a book of its own and it doesn’t get the recognition that it deserves. What strikes you most when you spend time with top-flight competitive anglers is how differently they think about what they’re doing. There is nothing that they don’t question, deconstruct, analyse and reconstruct in a way that makes perfect sense.

Rob Pretorius under Daniel Factor's careful instruction

It’s not very complicated, to be honest, but you need to make a break with conventional flyfishing logic.

The absolute minor technical nuances are probably unnecessary outside of a competitive environment, and I have no inclination to ever compete. The thing is though that on the whole what they are doing enhances rather than detracts form the art. It’s not a fundamentally mechanical process for them, as you may expect; they genuinely love fishing, being in the outdoors and, it goes without saying, catching fish. Very often what their reconstruction leaves them with is a concentrated form of fishing where anything that is not required is simply discarded. Perhaps, ultimately, this makes modern, comp-style anglers the real purists of the sport.

There you go, I used the P-word.

Late afternoon dry fly action

What you take out of a weekend with XFA is really up to you. I took away an appreciation for the fact that I can, and should, challenge my thinking around how I fish. Warren and I drove home Sunday afternoon with a revitalised perspective on the sport and our forest of unused fly rods in the boot. My wife tells me that I’m resistant to change, and she’s normally right, but right now I’m finalising the specifications of a ten foot, two weight. Even more out of character is that I will be selling a bunch of my current rods to fund it.

For enquiries contact dfflyfishing@gmail.com

Jayson van Schalkwyk putting his training into action