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The Dirt Road Wild Trout Association Fly Fishing Festival 2019 by Miles Divett
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For the past decade or more, the annual Wild Trout Association fly fishing festival held in Rhodes was officially named The Epson Wild Trout Association Festival in recognition of the lead sponsor of the event, Epson Printers South Africa. After it’s decade or so of loyalty to the festival, Epson last year announced that the 2018 festival would be its last, and it was with sadness but huge gratitude that the organizers and participants in the festival said goodbye to Epson at the end of that event. the overheated and low rivers prior to the onset of the rains in January 2018. And once it then started raining, it didn’t stop leading to the unfortunate loss of fishing days during the festival and a scramble for the high altitude streams offering the prospect of clear water, albeit in very high and fast conditions. The weather of the previous year pretty much repeated itself for the 2019 event, with the rains again starting only in January and, having started, they then came with a vengeance!
2019 accordingly saw the advent of a new sponsor and new name for the festival and the event this year became The Dirt Road Wild Trout Association Festival. While “dirt road” is an entirely appropriate name for the event, given the absolute non-existence of anything but dirt roads in the entire area of the festival, this name in fact honours the new sponsors of the event, Dirt Road Traders, a Pietermaritzburg company manufacturing and selling, inter alia, high quality adventure and outdoor wear. Organizers and participants alike gratefully welcome Dirt Road Traders as the new sponsor of the festival and we hope that the 2019 festival marked the start of a long and mutually happy relationship.
The 2019 festival ran from Saturday, 16 March until Wednesday, 20 March. As always, the number of participants was limited to 40. Sadly, a number of last-minute cancellations predicated by the need to keep the economy going in spite of Eskom’s woes meant that there were ... actual participants, to which must be added the complement of 10 guides, giving a “doctor to patient ratio” bettered to my knowledge only by the American Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia !
Leading up to the festival, the same weather worries existed as for the 2017 event, that being the drought year from hell when the number of fish caught during the festival plummeted from over 1726 in 2013 to just 93 in 2016; and the 2018 event when it only started raining in January meaning the loss of thousands of winter spawned fish in This rendered the whole of the Sterkspruit and Kraai rivers unfishable for the duration of the festival, along with the Bell river below its confluence with the Klopperskoekspruit and the lower sections of the Riflespruit and Bokspruit While unfortunate, given the potential of these rivers, there was nonetheless plentiful clear water for participants to enjoy and, thanks to the mercy shown this year by the Weather Gods, no fishing days or even hours were lost. And the fishable waters were not exactly short of fish. Anglers caught 1243 fish in total with those anglers accustomed to fishing fast water doing beter than average.
As has been the norm for the past few years, and after wining and dining the night before at Walkerbouts Inn, the festival action kicked off with a tackle fair held on the green lawns of the riverside park. Here, one could try out various new rods , encompassing each of the graphite, fibre glass and split cane varietals.
I for one always appreciate this opportunity to try out the new rods as well as the chance to berate the members of the Bewildered Bamboo Band, a latterday version of the Klu Klux Klan and just as dangerous, for their cliquist and backward looking tendencies!); or one could watch such fly tying masters as Peter Brigg and Jan Korrubel in action at their vices, and talk fly tying with them; or spend time with casting maestro Mark Yelland to hone casting skills, or very occasionally to try and find some casting skills, before hitting the rivers at about mid-morning.
Test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test
The tackle fair having run its course, the assorted anglers headed off to their allocated beats for the balance of the morning and afternoon sessions on river. A word of thanks and appreciation here to Tony Kietzman for seeing to the beat allocations each night with far greater efficiency than existed in the years when he and I did them together!
And so to the fishing.....
The upper and middle Bokspruit fished well throughout the festival. The undisputed stars of the Bokspruit beats were Upper Gateshead, for those with the stamina and drive to hike up over the saddle to fish its amazingly beautiful and productive waters; and Bothwell, which provided fabulous fishing every day, and which revealed numerous fish of 16” up to 20” some of which were actually caught! However, beats such as Birnham and Knockwarren also produced well. Surprisingly, given conditions and the action enjoyed elsewhere on the Bokspruit, lower Gateshead fished somewhat slow. The fish taken from this section were all fine fish in peak condition, but by and large they seemed to have developed a bottomhugging demeanor accompanied by a notquite-total onset of lockjaw! Nor were they much impressed by the countless dry flies thrown at them, deigning largely to eat only deep sunken nymphs. The riddles and inconsistencies raised by fly fishing are neverending.
The upper Riflespruit at Francis Dale and Mount Mourne, while clear, was too high to fish for most of the festival, with the numerous river crossings required to fish these beats being positively dangerous. However, on the penultimate day of the festival an intrepid group went up to Francis Dale and caught some good fish including a smallmouth yellow fish. In 2018, we saw that the baby yellows had reestablished themselves massively on Francis Dale for the first time since the times long ago when Ron Moore’s grandparents lived up there, amazingly because Francis Dale is high up in the mountains. In the decade or so that I owned this property, there was not a sign of yellow fish. And on the last day of the festival Paul Carreira and his group had fabulous fishing up there, catching fish hand over fist with nothing less than 10” coming to hand.
The upper Bell fished really well throughout the festival. The fishing on the Bell was limited to the escarpment sections, at Ben Lawers and Tenahead with the former being split into two beats, but outstanding dry fly fishing was enjoyed by those who fished there.
And it was amusing to see the reaction of some who fished the slip of the river that is the Bell above Tenahead Lodge, with their faces and body language initially doubting that there was much point in fishing in something quite that small and then registering amazement that they were catching better and chunkier fish there than on much of the lower and bigger water they had previously fished ! It is indeed a beautiful piece of headwater stream to fish.
And then we were all almost done, with just the Last Supper and Auction to come, along with the merriment accompanying the levying of fines and penance for onstream and offstream behavior unbecoming.
The reasons for penalizing participants cooked up by Messrs Mike McCoon and Debbie Harry (who is indeed a Mr not a Ms), with help from their fellow guides, were as contrived as ever and created some merriment and much sampling from the Jagermeister bottles. A word regarding the Editor of this online publication ... he was penalized and rightly so for bringing rock and surf tackle to The Dirt Road Wild Trout Association fly fishing festival, for which he was universally condemned and shunned. The fact that he did so in the form of cutdown rock and surf rods to make very effective wading staffs, while undoubtedly innovative and smart, could not excuse his lamentable lack of decorum at the Centre of the Universe where the only acceptable rod, in no matter what form or degree of beneficiation, is a fly rod.
The Auction was once again conducted by the same Messrs Mike McCoon and Debbie Harry. (Why they are still willing to do it given the wholesale abuse rained down on them every year by one Mr David Walker remains a complete mystery). Numerous items of fly fishing paraphernalia, books written by persons both present and absent, art work and other diverse goods were up for auction. For those not aware of the fact, the proceeds of the Auction supplement the coffers of the Wild Trout Association in order to enable it to fund worthy or necessary steps in the furtherance of the great fly fishing resource it administers and indeed fly fishing for trout in this country as a whole, as well as muchneeded projects in the local community.
The WTA has contributed significantly to funding the costs incurred in defending our country’s trout resource against Governmentled attack, a battle which is ongoing, costly and sapping. The Auction in total raised the amount of R29 281,50 and sincere thanks go to all those individuals and businesses who contributed items for auction. Their support for the work of the WTA is magnificent.
Auction items
The 2019 Dirt Road Wild Trout Association Guidebook is now on sale @ R315 per copy including postage in SA. It is almost 200 pages of information and fly fishing related articles on the Eastern Cape Highlands in full colour.
Contact the secretary, Margie Murray at info@wildtrout.co.za to order a copy.
In conclusion, the Dirt Road Wild Trout Association Festival was yet again a great success, both in fishing terms and in the annual gathering of fishing friends from around the country that it facilitates and the often hilarious social interactions which flow from that. When you participate in this festival, you become part of a family, one which almost to a person regroups annually at Walkerbouts Inn for food, booze, stories both short and tall and Mr Walker’s abuse; and then on the rivers for fishing in the most splendid of environments. It is always a terrific experience.
For those who believe in statistics, a total of 1243 fish of all sizes were caught during the festival, based on catch returns lodged. Just two years ago that number was down to 93 in the terrible 2017 drought and last year the number rose to 244. This is a testament to the remarkable resilience of the trout of the North Eastern Cape Highlands, which often have to contend with extremes of heat and low water conditions which no selfrespecting remnant of the Ice Age should ever have to endure.
And as the final word here, the Joyce Carreira Floating Nymph, sculptured by Joyce and given by her to the festival last year to be awarded each year to the most merit worthy person involved in that year’s event, was unanimously awarded to the one and only, the unique (in the true sense of the word), Dave Walker - a mountain of a man without whom neither this festival nor the WTA would exist. It should be said that Dave was angry with us for awarding the trophy to him, but we were ad idem that there was no one more deserving or even remotely close.
And so this year’s event closed as it opened, in much the same way as always, with an angry Dave Walker !
