GUIDES EDITION Introduction by Savs

You need to have a lot of special qualities to be a guide.

A good guide is a friend, an instructor, someone to high-five and a shoulder to cry on. They have the patience of saints. In a few short hours they are expected to teach you from scratch - or at least help you to undo years of bad habits. They have to find you fish and put you onto them with the right approach, pattern, technique and mindset.

The best guides are those that have a fly box that never seems to empty, despite your best efforts. They make a killer sandwich, see to it that the beers are cold no matter how hot the day, tie knots that never pull, untangle your most atrociously bunched tippets and can pull flies from the highest trees. They're happier when you succeed than you are.

They can spot a fish from a hundred metres in choppy water, overhaul an outboard motor with only a pocket knife, know all the best spots in high water and can see effortlessly both in the dark and through your tall stories. They will hardly ever curse you out loud but will rather ooh and ah over your shoulder as they curse bad luck for the sitter that you just duffed. A good guide is a philosopher and a life coach. Most hold their own at bar at the end of the day.

They probably work harder and for less money than anyone you know.

Their reward for all of this? To carry the burden of responsibility for your bad days while you take the glory for the good ones.

SA Flyfishing Magazine is proud to feature some of the finest guides at work in Southern Africa today in this, our first, Guides Edition.

It’s been a hard time for many people across our country and has been especially hard on the guiding community. We trust that anglers from across the country, and indeed the world, will support our guides as we are able to venture back out onto the water. Guides perform a valuable service and will enrich your experience of the sport.

Some information has been included about the species that each guide targets, from where they operate, a brief list of additional services that they offer and something about themselves. We assure you that your guide will go out of their way to make your experience as remarkable as they can, so if there's something that we haven't listed just call them up and discuss it.

We thank all of the guides for their participation in this project. We also thank Tim Rolston for his excellent introduction to the edition.

The Editors