The Mission Fly Fishing Magazine Issue #31

ISSUE 31 JAN/FEB 2022

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THE SECRET LIVES OF GIANT TREVALLY, THE FEATHERS AWARD, YELLOW MAMBA, GOING DUTCH, BOOZE, BEATS & MORE

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W W W . T H E M I S S I O N F LY M A G . C O M ISSUE 31 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022

CONTENTS Cover: Hanging out in the ‘GT Jacuzzi,’ this Giant Trevally is one of an estimated 5000 fish that aggregate to spawn off the Mozambican coast. Photo JD Filmalter

14. THE FEATHERS AWARD From the deltas of Gabon to remote South African rivers, we asked for the best African catches of 2021 and we were not disappointed.

20. UNDERCURRENTS: THE EDGE OF DARKNESS Caught up in the gloom, LeRoy Botha looks to fly fishing for a breath in the space between life and death.

32. GOING DUTCH Relocating with his family from the UK to Holland, Gerald Penkler discovers a surprising smorgasbord of species in the Low Countries.

42. YELLOW MAMBA Navigating natural world threats and an incredibly challenging target species, Leonard Flemming and friends ventured deep into the valleys of KwaZulu-Natal in search of scalies.

50. THE SECRET LIVES OF GTs We chat to three leading fisheries biologists about their work on the world’s biggest GT aggregation off Mozambique, why South Africa’s coastal GT fishing has deteriorated so much and just what the hell GTs do at Mtentu.

80. THE ULTIMATE SMALL STREAM ROD? From ultralight wands to blanks with a little more heft, carbon fiber, glass and bamboo - for decades Ed Herbst has been on a quest for the ultimate small stream rod. In a one-piece glass rod built on a CTS blank by Derek Smith, he may have found it.

REGULAR FEATURES 08 Ed’s Letter 12 Chum 16 Troubled Waters 18 Booze & Beats 26 High Fives

68 Salad Bar 74 Pay Day 78 Crash Test Dummies 88 Lifer 94 Pop Quiz

A scaly in the hand is worth twenty of your flies in the bush.

Photo Leonard Flemming

Tudor Caradoc-Davies

“V” IS FOR VENDETTA

A

few years back, I was at the Hotel Tropicana in Libreville with Conrad Botes. We’d caught an early flight in from Port Gentil and had an entire day to burn until our evening flight back home to South Africa from Gabon. Eventually, after breakfast, lunch and beers had been had, all available Wi-fi absorbed and all the moments of the trip relived again and again, we grew bored.

Then the lizards came out to play.

This was not a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas lizard encounter, but rather the super inquisitive agama-type lizards you find all over the show. They’d run up towards us and like frat boys with not much to offer the world other than gym-boet physiques, they’d do a few push-ups and then run off again. Flick a piece of bread into the arena however and all that flexing became functional as they would wrestle for the spoils. Cue hours of fun with us ‘casting’ imaginary rods, with flies made of bread, and ‘hooking’ lizards.

You must understand… beers had been consumed and it had been a tough trip.

I’ve been thinking about those lizards quite a lot since then.

And fish, as per usual. Mainly, it’s been about what constitutes a viable fly fishing quarry? Who decides that? And why do some fish not even get a look-in?

Historically, it’s been trout and we, as fly anglers, have been happy (delighted in fact) to catch them in any size, shape or form. But, especially over the last century, fly fishing has become a lot more omnivorous, with anglers targeting everything in the fresh and the salt from marlin and tarpon (why we were in Gabon) to Cape kurper and goldfish. You get the occasional oddball who finds something unusual to nerd out over, like Jimmy Eagleton with geelbek, Leonard Flemming with a redfin minnow slam and UK carp fly nut, Jamie Sandford, who often picks up a midget heathen stick to throw miniature plastics at pinky-sized fish.

There is however one fish that seems to have had an invisibility cloak draped over it for centuries because, as far as I know, no one aside from the subsistence fisherman of the Indian city of Bhavnagar on the Gulf of Khambat, seems to target them.

I’m talking about the mudskippers.

Hang on, don’t roll your eyes just yet, because this might just be the ultimate fly fishing challenge in the flyweight division.

Photo Lip Kee/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

What about the size? Well, it depends which mudskipper you’re targeting, but they can get up to 30cm in length. I’ve seen people platz over brook trout a third of that size.

Variety? Like triggerfish or the trevally family, there’s a bunch of different types (32 at last count). Take your pick from the giant, Atlantic, common, blue-spotted, barred and many others.

Now for the challenges (of which there are many).

For a start, consider where they live … in mangrove swamps. To catch one of these little blighters you will have to drag yourself (à la Passchendaele) across a mudflat but, in doing so, you run the risk of being seen. In fact, to not be seen by a mudskipper you will have to become the stealthiest ninja to ever bomb or perhaps a Golem made of mud, because not only do their eyes move independently of one another, but they have an almost 360 degrees field of vision so they’ll see you coming. Their vision is also better out of water than underwater because these weirdos are amphibious, spending about 90% of their time out of water, sunning their guns.

They can also climb trees, so if your back cast is super shit and you get stuck in a mangrove at least you might be able to catch a dopey one.

First things first, let’s deal with the basics. Is it a fish? Yes. Does it eat things? Yes. Could those things - worms, crickets, flies, meal worms, beetles, small fish and small crustaceans – be represented by flies? Yes, we already do that for many other species.

While we don’t live anywhere near a mangrove swamp, we think it’s high time the greater fly fishing community put a bounty on the mudskippers’ head. Instead of running a marathon, catching a big trout (yawn) or doing what everyone else is doing, we’d like to challenge you to tick one of these little bastards off.

So far so good. Mudskippers are already better qualified than some existing fly targets based purely on the diversity of their diets.

A case of beer to the first person to do it on fly in 2022 (photo evidence and your story required)!

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W W W. T H E M I S S I O N F LY M A G . C O M

Salty. And Sweet.

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Up close and personal with an 18.8lb Clanwilliam yellowfish. More on page 14. Photo Leonard Flemming

EDITOR Tudor Caradoc-Davies ART DIRECTOR Brendan Body CONTACT THE MISSION The Mission Fly Fishing Mag (PTY) Ltd 25 Firth Road, Rondebosch, 7700, Cape Town, South Africa info@themissionflymag.com www.themissionflymag.com

EDITOR AT LARGE Conrad Botes COPY EDITOR Gillian Caradoc-Davies ADVERTISING SALES tudor@themissionflymag.com

CONTRIBUTORS #31 Ryan Daly, Tess Hempson, JD Filmalter, Leonard Flemming, LeRoy Botha, Gerald Penkler, Chris Schoultz, Bryan Little, LeRoy Botha, Luke Pannell, Ed Herbst, Greer Leo-Smith PHOTOGRAPHERS #31 Ryan Daly, Tess Hempson, JD Filmalter, Mark Ziembicki, Leonard Flemming, LeRoy Botha, Gerald Penkler, Jeff Tyser, Ben Pellegrini, Jono Shales, Bryan Little, LeRoy Botha, Luke Pannell, Jana Syman/Cars.co.za, Arno Laubscher, Greer Leo-Smith, Matt Gorlei, Photo Lip Kee/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0), Undercurrents artwork by Conrad Botes

THE MISSION IS PUBLISHED 6 TIMES A YEAR. THE MISSION WILL WELCOME CONTENT AND PHOTOS. WE WILL REVIEW THE CONTRIBUTION AND ASSESS WHETHER OR NOT IT CAN BE USED AS PRINT OR ONLINE CONTENT. THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS MAGAZINE ARE NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF THE MAGAZINE OR ITS OWNERS. THE MISSION IS THE COPYRIGHT OF SOUTIE PRESS (PTY) LTD. ANY DUPLICATION OF THIS MAGAZINE, FOR MEDIA OR SALE ACTIVITY, WILL RESULT IN LEGAL ACTION… AND AN INVITATION TO A BROADCAST SPAWNING EVENT INVOLVING NO FISH IN AMSTERDAM’S RED LIGHT DISTRICT.

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( C O U G H ) T H E O S C A R S O F H AT AWA R D S , I N M E M O R I A M & T H AT S TA N K Y B A R B E L .

CHECK OUT… … FLY FISHING NATION’S TOP HATS FOR 2022.

Forgive us if we sound like breathless fashion bloggers for a moment, but we’re happy to be on the other side of the media picture for once and we want to own this #humblebrag. In film and social media behemoth Fly Fishing Nation’s recent round-up of the Top Hats for 2022 - along with the iconic Boina/Berets of South American gauchos, Western Gaucho hats, fedora/cowboy style hats, tweed caps from former speycasting world champion Eoin Fairgrieve’s brand Salar and Patagonia’s truckers – you will find our legendary Tailgunner Grunter and Yella Fella Truckers.

You’ll also find them at themissionflymag.com

BRING BACK… …THE SIMMS SURF TOP. With three-layered construction, fully taped seams, an adjustable neoprene waist and double sleeve cuffs (100% neoprene inner cuff) with hook-and-loop straps, a large handwarmer and a flap-covered gear pocket with drainage grommet plus a security pocket with waterproof zipper, this jacket was perfect for fishing the surf for kob, striped bass or whatever it is that frequents your coastline. But for some reason it disappeared from the Simms catalogue years ago, never to be replaced or updated. Sniff.

THE BABER SCOPE YOUR FISHING FUTURE ACCORDING TO YOUR STAR SIGN AS READ

BY BABERMAN, THE LEGENDARY GRUMPY CATFISH. Capricorn (December 22 – January 19) Wotcher oh randy Sea-Goat, do we have news for you! You know how people are always admiring how conscientious and hard-working you are?

And you know how you never give yourself enough time to do the things you want to do like get a back-sack-and-crack or go on that fly fishing trip of a life time? Well, your pubes are your own, life is short and people die all the time. So do you want to be the hard-working grunt forever or do you want to enjoy the time you have left on this planet (could maybe 5 minutes, could be 80 years, are you feeling lucky)? We suggest selling everything and embarking on a round-the-world fly fishing trip with no definite end point. The Mission gave you permission to do so. What’s the worst that can happen?* Aquarius (January 20 – February 18) You cheerful bastards have that eternal optimism thing down to a fine art.

No matter that we are on the last fishing day of a dismal trip - you pipe up about being certain that our luck will change as hail obliterates our camp and our cars get stuck in a flash flood. “I’m sure we will catch tomorrow!” And weirdly enough, we often do. Your purity of thought means you should become a Kindergarten teacher, or write Tenkara manuals. I swear, by the third barbel on the right side of my face, that this year your collective positivity will change the world for the good. Or you’ll all do a Jonestown-Kool-Aid-Fest. It’s unclear. * Quite a lot it seems. This is probably terrible advice.

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Distributed by Xplorer fly fishing www.xplorerflyfishing.co.za contact 031-5647368

THE FEATHERS AWARD I N O N LY T H E S EC O N D I T E R AT I O N O F T H I S C O M P E T I T I O N , W E W E R E S E R V E D U P O U R F I R S T D R AW. B U T W E H AV E I T O N G O O D AU T H O R I T Y T H AT T H AT ’ S L I K E K I S S I N G YO U R S I S T E R , S O W E FO U N D A WAY T O F I N D A W I N N E R .

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e love the Feathers Award because of all the amazing fish we get to drool over, but in other ways we hate it because it means making hard, incredibly subjective calls about which fish and angler trumps another. This year was no different with some amazing fish submitted and some VERY difficult decisions.

Very honorable mentions go to the following: – Richard Langford for his incredible 82cm FL largemouth yellowfish from the Orange river, which was the cherry on top of a phenomenal week where he and his friends caught more fish than they could keep track of, with several 20lb + fish.

– Ryan Wienand who caught an immense tarpon estimated at 250lb in Gabon on a trip with our favourite psychopomp guide Arno Matthee whose clients make a habit of catching mega-poons.

– David Reverdito’s two largies caught on a tenkara rod. They weren’t the biggest fish, but the way he caught them was not at all easy so he got extra points for melding ancient Japan and Usain Bolt vibes.

Ultimately, it came down to two fish, both submitted by two members of Feathers & Fluoro (a reminder about the rules – if a member of Feathers & Fluoro enters the Feathers Award, they are immediately removed from the judging process). Peter Coetzee entered his epic GT caught from shore (somewhere between Tanzania and Durban) and Leonard Flemming entered his amazing Clanwilliam yellowfish from deep in the Cape Fold mountains.

In their own way, both of these fish are absolute unicorns, which is why they stood out from the others. Pete’s because a GT of that size along the southern African coast is so rare these days and so difficult to pull off. The man lives and breathes DIY fly fishing and this fish is a testament to that ethos.

About this fish Pete says, “Nothing will remind you of fly fishing ineffectiveness like big surf. I’d resorted to looking for structure and a neon blue shape I’d convinced myself couldn’t be a GT turned out to be one, on a sand bank inshore of a rocky bay. I messed up the shot and figured that would be it for this trip, again. There was hope of a repeat of this behaviour under the same tide but nothing materialized, and so it was back to grudge blind casting (I hate it), until I caught some nervous water out the corner of my eye and what I swore was some colour even on a dull day. I got closer and it was clearly a GT. A weirdly blue one.

I waited for the suds of a wave and dropped a cast well ahead in the white water. The fish missed on the first attempt but not on the second. Unfortunately for him it was all sand for a good distance.

Fishing solo meant my trusty paracord could keep the fish wet as I set up the interval timer for the shot, which so often comes out badly. But more luck was on my side this day.”

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“IT’S BEEN TWENTY YEARS OF GRAFT PUT INTO CLANWILLIAM YELLOWFISH”

Leonard’s fish was equally rare, large and difficult to pull off.

He says, “Most people thought there weren’t any fish left in the section of the Doring/Olifants system where I got this fish. I spoke to a few guys with experience in that area like Mike Dolhof who was a conservationist in the ‘90s and who once caught a 19lb Clannie in Clanwilliam dam. From the Koue Bokkeveld to the Groot Winterhoek mountains, he operated in that area a lot and he ran a yellowfish hatchery below Clanwilliam Dam back in the day.

He thought based on the data he had at that time that Clanwilliam Yellowfish would definitely die out in those areas before the year 2000. I contacted him to chat about fishing those areas and he thought it wasn’t a good idea to spend a lot of time around there, because a large part of those areas had subsequently been declared devoid of indigenous fish by research studies and netting surveys. That was the first hurdle, believing there could be something down there. The next one was that I blanked a lot. I’d spend long weekends in the mountains, see no fish in the pools and come back home having caught no Clanwilliam yellowfish, versus the experiences I’d had upstream with Ewan Naude in the higher catchments where you typically catch lots of them, sometimes 2050 fish in a weekend. But the higher up you go, the smaller they get. You also catch far fewer fish the lower you go. You have to be prepared to catch nothing.

“On the day this fish was caught, I had not seen any fish cruising but I believed they were there because the area had all the right features. The pools were what we call resilient pools in that they hold water throughout summer. It was another hot day and I had blanked the whole morning. I went to sit on a rock to have a sandwich and then I saw a fish come along. I wasn’t ready for it so I put the sandwich down, got ready and sure enough a fish came along again. I don’t know if it was the same one, could have been, though it looked slightly bigger than the first one. I was fishing 4x

fluoro, indicator nymphing, so I just flicked the nymph out about three metres ahead of the fish. The fish disappeared under the rock I was sitting on. I gave the nymph a twitch, saw the head come out, watched it eat, struck and was happy that I had hooked it properly. Then it just started running, unbelievably hard up the pool. I realized I was in trouble. I could not go anywhere, I was stuck on a rock against a fairly steep cliff face, so I just stood there, as it peeled off line and ran me very deep into my backing. Luckily the fish did not find any structure to cut the tippet off on, so I managed to get it back at my feet, then we slogged it out until eventually I got it in the net. I was stoked! After that I packed up and left, my weekend was made.

“I started fishing for these fish when I was 20-21 years old so it’s been twenty years of graft put into Clanwilliam yellowfish. I was fishing that area hoping for a 14-15lb fish. That was the dream for me, because we live in an era now when you doubt any 20lb Clanwilliam yellows exist. Then this thing came along and it was 18.8lbs. It really blows everything out of the water, because it makes you believe there is actually a possibility of a 20lber, that you can sight fish on fly. It really is incredible. We’ll keep trying and keep going to these very remote areas where very few fish still occur and fish it hard to see what comes out of there. It certainly isn’t easy going, walking long distances in very hot, dry terrain, but you’ve got to prepare yourself for that one fish that you will eventually catch after so many trips and it will be a good one, maybe even better than you expected. That’s exactly what happened to me.”

Ultimately, both Pete’s GT and Leonard’s Clannie got the same amount of first place votes from the judges. Like Highlander however, there can be only one Feathers Award winner, so we had to go to the tally of second place votes where the Clannie won by one vote, making Leonard Flemming the 2021/2022 Feathers Award winner!

T R O U B L E D WAT E R S

THE WEST COAST T H E O L I P H A N T S R I V E R E S T U A R Y A N D O T H E R PA R T S O F T H E W E S T C O A S T O F S O U T H A F R I C A A R E U N D E R T H R E AT, B O T H B Y I L L T H O U G H T- O U T M I N I N G V E N T U R E S A N D G O V E R N M E N T C O L L U S I O N A N D C O M P L I C I T Y. Photos. Bryan Little

THE WATERS Most people are aware of what is going on along South Africa’s Wild Coast where seismic blasting conducted on behalf of Shell (who have an atrocious environmental and human rights record in Africa) is being backed by our deeply corrupt government. Shell Downstream South Africa (Pty) Ltd is 28% owned by Thebe Investments which is, in turn, heavily linked to the ruling ANC. Something that is not getting as much attention is the threat to our beautiful West Coast.

Renowned for its stark beauty, incredible surfing and some great fishing for kob, geelbek, steenbras, elf and leervis, the West Coast is in serious trouble if rampant mining projects are allowed to proceed unchecked.

A new documentary Ours, Not Mine directed by Bryan Little and produced by Ana-Filipa Domingues both gives West Coast communities a voice and exposes how government and mining companies are working together to greenlight mining on the West Coast. This is despite serious concerns over the environmental impact such activities will have on local communities.

Little says, “The West Coast is a sanctuary for us, a place where we can wash the dirt of the world off. When we started seeing the threat that mining poses on this rare piece of wilderness, we knew we had to try and use our storytelling skills to help shine a light on the situation. Ours, not mine is essentially a film that gives local West Coast communities the platform to let the world know how they feel their land and waters must be treated. One woman at the public meeting declared, ‘No money will buy our ecosystem!’ It’s a powerful testimonial that has forever changed us as filmmakers and as people who love surfing and camping up ‘the Weskus’.”

THE WANKERS There’s a lot going on behind the feeding frenzy of West Coast prospecting so it’s difficult to list all the wankers involved, but we have a few leading contenders. The Weskus invaders are looking for the usual buffet of shiny stuff and fossil fuels diamonds, gold, heavy metals, gas and oil. Offshore gas and oil exploration is a major part of the government’s ‘Operation Phakisa’ which they say is aimed ‘at unlocking the potential of South Africa’s oceans’. While energy is a massive problem in South Africa, thanks to the wholesale rot at Eskom during the Zuma/Gupta years, there is a lot wrong about Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe’s consistent dismissal of renewables in favour of fossil fuels.

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This is at a time when the world HAS to move to greener energy sources to avoid the impending full-scale climate disaster brought about by global heating. Throw in the ANC’s incredible track record of institutional corruption, the stench of the proposed R228 billion, 20-year Turkish Karpowership deal (which West Coast gas and oil would link to) and Eskom/ South Africa’s shameful record as top global polluters, and the whole thing stinks worse than a bag of bokkoms left in a cadre’s BMW for a month.

Then there is the private side of the equation. There’s not enough space to list all the mining operations involved on the West Coast, but unsavoury firms like Australia’s Mineral Resources Commodities (MRC) who gained notoriety amid the blood shed over the Xolobeni mining project on the Wild Coast are involved both with their established Tormin operations near Lotzville and their new focus on the north side of the Olifants River mouth, one of South Africa’s most important estuaries. Despite 44 environmental appeals (dismissed by Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Barbara Creecy who clearly gives zero fucks about the ‘Environment’ part of her portfolio), Mantashe’s Department of Mineral Resources and Energy has granted MRC the right to prospect for heavy minerals on the north bank.

THE WAY FORWARD For starters you can watch Ours, Not Mine for free by visiting protectthewestcoast.org. Then, dive deeper into their site for further reading on mining threats and environmental appeals (make a point of reading Kevin Bloom’s Daily Maverick articles under the ‘news’ section). If you love the West Coast and you have the means, please donate to support the work Protect the West Coast does.

Little says, “Protect the West Coast is a newly formed but already super effective NGO seeking to raise awareness about this ‘out of sight - out of mind’ situation. Along with the Centre for Environmental Rights they are actively taking it to the courts and that’s where they need support, with funding for the legal battles. Protect the West Coast doesn’t believe that mining itself is inherently bad, it’s just the manner and scale with which it is being done that seems to have little regard for ecological or cultural impact. The rampant prospecting, with the aim of active mining all the way down to Elands Bay and into the Cederberg simply has to be stopped until a strategic environmental assessment has been done.”

W W W. T H E M I S S I O N F LY M A G . C O M

“THE WEST COAST IS IN SERIOUS TROUBLE IF RAMPANT MINING PROJECTS ARE ALLOWED TO PROCEED UNCHECKED.”

FODDER

BOOZE & BEATS THE BEER – BEZWILL Hermanus-based Bezwil is the frothy love-child of two chinas Willem Bruyn and Andre Bezuidenhout. The two got tired of not being able to find beers they actually wanted to drink, so they started brewing their own beer for family and friends out of a garage, just like a young Bill Gates did with his first Microsoft Malt back in ‘75. Today, they brew three cracking beers that are available at select outlets in Gauteng and across the Overberg. Or you can just order from their website. bezwill.beer Overberg Weiss Made in the style of a traditional German Hefe Weizen, this refreshing, highly carbonated beer has a creamy mouth feel and a taste that brings together maltiness with banana, bubble gum and spicy clove elements. Best enjoyed in the Overberg along the banks of the Breede.

5% ABV Pale Wolf An American Pale Ale, Pale Wolf is a medium bodied beer with a light caramel and toasted malt taste.

The use of citrus peels enhances the fruity, citrus aromas and flavours derived from the three varieties of American hops used. A clean fermenting ale yeast creates great balance between the malt and hops. Unmistakably drinkable, this is one of our favourite beers. 5% ABV Lucky Ale A medium bodied Irish Red Ale in the style of a Kilkenny, Lucky Ale sports an initial soft toffee and caramel sweetness, followed by floral English hops and a dry finish.

Silky smooth and extremely drinkable. 4% ABV

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THE BRANDY - JA NEE FOK Inspired by the shitshow of 2020 (and 2021 for that matter), this 5-year, oak-matured potstill brandy from Kindred Spirits is named after a unique Afrikaans expression that speaks to the fatalist ‘deal with it’ attitudes of South Africans of all cultures (the direct translation is ‘Yes No Fuck’). Seriously smooth and tasty, with notes of pear, raisin and hazelnut, Ja Nee Fok is as good on its own as it is with a mixer. Best enjoyed around a braai. kindredspirits.co.za

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Photo. Josh Collins

THE BEATS – 2022 VAAAAAAAB For this issue’s playlist, we tapped the inner core of contributors to The Mission and Feathers & Fluoro, for two songs they have been loving that bring a vibe (any vibe) as we head into what we hope will be a better year than the last two. The resultant playlist is as diverse as this motley crew and their piscatorial tastes.

Peter Coetzee – founder of Feathers & Fluoro & The Mission contributor Supersonic – Skrillex, Noisia, josh pan, Dylan Brady Caroline – Colter Wall, Belle Paine Jazz Kuschke – Feathers & Fluoro & The Mission contributor Follow The Sun – Xavier Rudd Welcome Home – Radical Face Gillian Caradoc-Davies - The Mission Censor-in-chief Song of the Shrimp – Frank Black A Boy Named Sue – Johnny Cash JD Filmalter – Feathers & Fluoro & The Mission contributor Postcards from Hell – The Wood Brothers Butterfly - Mason Jennings Brendan Body – The Mission Art Director The City In The Sea - Crystal Stilts The Lonely Rancher - Yawning Man Conrad Botes – The Mission Editor-at-large, Feathers & Fluoro contributor Fallen Leaves – Billy Talent Lift Your Head Up High (And Blow Your Brains Out)

Ingrid Sinclair – The Mission Ass-kicker-in-chief Wild Blue – John Mayer A Punch Up at a Wedding - Radiohead LeRoy Botha – Feathers & Fluoro & The Mission contributor The End- The Kings of Leon Can’t Change Me – Chris Cornell Andre van Wyk – Feathers & Fluoro & The Mission contributor Insect Nightmares – The Lillingtons She’s Kerosene – The Interrupters Ewan Naude – Feathers & Fluoro & The Mission contributor Seve – Tez Cadey Earth Groove – Vijay & Sofia Zlatko, Notte Platon Trakoshis – Feathers & Fluoro & The Mission contributor Oh Yeah ‘Oh Six – Yello, Ralphi Rosario Uncertain Smile – The The Fred Davis – founder of Feathers & Fluoro & The Mission contributor Hold On – Tim Armstrong Music – The Beautiful Girls Tudor Caradoc-Davies – The Mission Editor & Feathers & Fluoro contributor That’s It! – Preservation Hall Jazz Band Happy Sad – Christopher Denny TO LISTEN PRESS PLAY

UNDERCURRENTS

THE EDGE OF DARKNESS L E R O Y B O T H A L O O K S T O F LY F I S H I N G F O R A B R E AT H I N T H E S PA C E B E T W E E N L I F E A N D D E AT H Artwork Conrad Botes. Photos LeRoy Botha

“No tree can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” – Carl Jung My internal monologue is splitting into a conversation between the opposing poles of my psyche: “I’m not dead yet,” “Yeah? Give it a minute.”

I look back at a dense timeline of dark chapters, laden like a minefield with plot twists, loose ends and cliff-hangers.

As long as I see no fat lady and hear no singing, I remind myself how many times I’d seen this show … and then I go fishing. It works at least half of the time, and that used to be good enough. But I’m not gonna lie. This isn’t a joke anymore.

It’s a fucking nightmare.

A bipolar musician with a fly fishing problem walks into a bar.

Next thing you know, no more fishing.

Sure. It is more complicated than that; it’s not as bad and yet even worse than it sounds but, really, that’s it in a nutshell. I crack myself up.

Ten seasons into a slow-burn drama, I find myself at the beginning of 2021 both physically and philosophically incapable of going fishing. By the time my arm (among other things) is sufficiently healed to really use a fly rod, I’d fallen so deep into a hole that I couldn’t bring myself to do so. Even if I could, I can’t afford to because, between the injuries and depression, my productivity grinds to a screeching halt. Thus, halfway through Season 11, I am also financially incapable of going fishing. It’s dark. By the time I realise that, for better or worse, fly fishing had been a lifeline, I reach the end of it.

“I’ve got this.”

“I know you want to think you do, but we both know you don’t.”

Over many years, I developed some sentimentality about certain fishing spots and bits of well-used fly fishing gear.

My favourite hat, backpack and boots have a lot of river miles on them, (to put it politely), but they are super fishy and I have no desire to “upgrade” them. Some pieces of gear are bones of mercy chucked at this dog by friends who wouldn’t see me go without. I treasure those. But exotic destinations and forests of top-end fly rods are not a big deal to me, for more reasons than these things simply

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being out of reach. Hype gets a lot of good people to a lot of good water, but these days, mostly, it dilutes my desire to fall in line. I learned that good fishing could not only be found on the other side of the planet which, I admit appears to be teeming with massive, willing fish or something.

To me, good fishing became a shitty cast in good company, or that sweet focus that only happens when I fish alone. Getting to drink from an ice cold trickle feeding a mountain trout stream, as though suckling from the very boob of Mother Nature. Or standing motionless like a majestic heron, in the middle of a vast mud flat - often on one leg to stretch the glutes and alleviate lower back pain that results from standing still for so long - in the vague hope that a spotted grunter will swim within casting range and that you’d notice it before it notices you. And then switching legs and standing there some more. It was all Zen and shit. I found it wherever I needed it to be. The decider was simple: where your head is determines the level of appreciation for the opportunities you get.

“TO ME, GOOD FISHING BECAME A SHITTY CAST IN GOOD COMPANY, OR THAT SWEET FOCUS THAT ONLY HAPPENS WHEN I FISH ALONE.” I’m not saying I don’t have a bucket list, or that I never swoon over a quality bit of kit. But what’s the rush? In some ways, the radius of experience seems to grow against the odds in any case.

Getting out is enough. Good fishing is where you’re at.

Consider, then, how earlier this year I used my bad arm to lob flies at big catfish living in a polluted river five minutes from home. Desperate for a fish, I saw an opportunity and I seized it. It was dirty and it stank, and it was fucking great. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your view point, I also caught a piece of shit which cured me of catfish fever before I caught anything more serious.

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When the things I cherish fade away, I swear, it feels just like a pneumothorax: the air can get in, but it can’t get out.

By now, I know that death, divorce and losing your religion are just different manifestations of the same thing. I’m not empty, as people often say when they experience loss. I feel like I’m going to burst, while my heart tries to beat from the wrong side of my chest.

I’d give anything to breathe it all out. At once innately sentimental and dangerously curious, I realise that I must once again revisit my roots to resuscitate the explorer languishing in my shadow.

Barman, plot twist me. This catching a poo on the fly is the latest in a series of events that frustrates my ability to get out. Years of climatic degradation slowly dried up or even destroyed multiple nearby rivers that held smallmouth bass, yellowfish and trout. It also resulted in silted-up estuary mouths, which retarded tidal flows required for targeting grunter and kob. One after another, it felt like my home waters were dying.

Combine this with the cacophonic background noise of a decade laced with loss, limitations and lacerations, culminating in the crushing crescendo of the last bullshit two years. Eventually I find myself as inspired to go fishing as I am to drink my own piss. It’s getting loud up in here, man. Where I’m at, you don’t find good fishing. I dangle about at the end of that line for far too long before, finally: “So I just found out …”

“What, loser? That everything you touch turns to …” “… that I’m sick of you and your doomsday bullshit. Shut the fucking door on your way out.”

Desperate and out of options, I speak up and see my doctor for the first time in more than a decade. It helps, more than I thought it would, but my friends and family encourage me to go finish this chapter on the water. To say that I’d be a long-dead man without them would be a sacrilegious understatement of the gift they are.

On the surface it might look like I achieve that, but it is, of course, never quite so simple. Something always seems to blur the line between a fever dream and things inescapably as they seem. Nevertheless, a soul-searching fly fishing road trip finally feels like a good idea.

I leave later than planned on a Friday morning.

Subconsciously, I’m still very aware of the passing of more friends and acquaintances than I thought statistically possible in one year. Some fell to the virus, some to cancer, some to themselves. Some were lost in car accidents. Once I’m on the open road, my train of thought veers towards a dark but comfortable paranoia. Perhaps it would be fitting if the road took me as well. I love being on the road. I only stop for a pee and a coffee more than three hours into the drive and an hour out from my destination because, in spite of and because of these thoughts, I’m eager to reach the Berg River valley.

Over four days, I spend three sessions chasing smallmouth on the Berg. It takes only a few casts late on the Friday afternoon for the first bass to oblige me. By some bittersweet twist of fate, it’s the same big female I caught in the same spot two years ago. I start there again the next morning, honestly not expecting to catch her yet again before widening my search. But I do, so I proceed to hop from spot to spot searching for things to cast at.

Before long, I’m in the flow. I may have left a quarter century ago, but this is home water, and always will be. By the last session, I’m chasing smallmouth only half as much as I’m chasing memories. Those, mostly, are mine to keep, but I think it’s worth noting that it’s all fun and games until some 13-year-old stands ball-deep in a river, in the pouring rain with a fly rod in hand, and somehow hatches a plan to become a rock star. But I digress.

In between fishing sessions, I visit my brother and a handful of friends and we share a few long overdue beers. On Sunday, my brother’s waterblommetjiebredie (a stew made with lamb and the flowers of the indigenous Cape pond weed, slowly cooked over a most welcoming open fire) proves effective (among other things) against any obsessive need to go fishing. I don’t know that I saw it coming, or that I’d believe it when it did but, so far so good.

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. “BY THE LAST SESSION, I’M CHASING SMALLMOUTH ONLY HALF AS MUCH AS I’M CHASING MEMORIES.

And then the final day of the road trip dawns. I’d be lying if I said I’m not anxious. I’d wanted to catch one, hell, just lay eyes on one, for as long as I can remember. But this is the end of a crumb trail I started following two years ago.

Back then, perfectly juxtaposed against the tale of my first encounter with the Berg River 20 incher, my eyes watered as I read the story of a species driven to the brink by the self-same bass I’d loved so much. It sowed a seed that grew to all but completely overshadow any other fly fishing ambitions, and a lifelong want became a bona fide need. It’s time to find The Sentinel. For perspective.

Luckily, with more than a little help from my friends, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.

Now, that doesn’t mean I’m very ready at all, but I have the flies and the gear, and I know where to go. As I commence the walk up the valley, a Booted Eagle brakes its glide mere feet overhead, apparently with the sole purpose of looking me straight in the eye. It’s a good sign.

Suddenly, I all but feel my pupils contract as they lock onto a shadow under the light show, sliding in my direction. A drop of sweat runs down the side of my face as my right hand gives the ground a small hiding, in an attempt to find the grip of my fly rod. I get up, unhook my dry fly, pull some line from the reel, and breathe out. Right in front of me, a witvis is rising. The Sentinel.

“SATISFIED AND MYSTIFIED, I KNOW HOW LITTLE ANY OF THIS WOULD HAVE MEANT IF LIFE WERE FREE OF HARDSHIP.”

I have, at best, three hours to find a fish before I must make my way back home. For the first of these hours they elude me, but then I am distracted. Mountains fold around me like the hands of God. The scent of fynbos, the songs of birds and the gentle breeze compete for the attention of my senses. I revel, resplendent in a fucked-up pair of boots on their last fishing adventure, in searching for a creature I’d never seen, in a beautiful place I’d never been before. At last, my mind grows quiet; here is all that exists right now. I’ve known that cool, clear water feeds this space between the manic and the low, and now I know this: This is where it’s at.

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I sit down for a smoke in the shade of a tree. Resting my back against it, I close my eyes for a few minutes. When I open them, my brows furrow as I attempt to peer through the slivers of white light bouncing off the ripples on the water’s surface. A malachite damselfly flickers in the spaces where the sun pierces through the filter of overhanging branches, leading my eye across the water.

A little more than two hours later I am back on the road. Satisfied and mystified, I know how little any of this would have meant if life were free of hardship. Halfway along the R62 home, I stop for a beer in the colourful little town of Barrydale.

I sit for an hour, reliving the past few days, smiling at where I am and where I’ve been. As my thoughts flow from then through now and onto what’s next, the internal conversation begins: “Been a hot second,” “Imagine a whole minute.”

“Indeed. How’s that beer?”

“Well, you know. It’s not half bad.”

“I see what you did there. Good one.”

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HIGH FIVES

LUKE PANNELL DR SEUSS MAY AS WELL HAVE BEEN REFERRING TO LUKE PANNELL IN OH, THE PLACES YOU’LL GO, BECAUSE, FROM WORKING IN GUANAJA, HONDURAS, WITH FISH 4 CHANGE, TO HEADING OPERATIONS FOR X-FACTOR ON THE AFRICAN CONTINENT (SUDAN, ORANGE RIVER AND BEYOND), THE MAN IS RACKING UP EXPERIENCES AND MEMORIES AT A RATE OF KNOTS. Photos. Luke Pannell, X-Factor

5 fishing-connected items you don’t leave home without before making a mission?

1. Leatherman Wave +. It gets more use than any of my fishing tackle, as a guide.

2. A camera, either my mirrorless or film body. I like to document my time fishing with friends.

3. A Garmin Inreach Explorer +. Peace of mind for those solo missions or multi-day trips without signal.

4. Polarized Sunglasses. I am obsessed with my Bajios - insanely light, industry leading blue light reduction and making waves with their low-environmental impact business model. They are the future.

5. A lucky hat! Hats have mojo and good mojo results in better fishing, it’s science.

5 artists to listen to while on a road trip?

1. Skepta.

2. Dave.

3. Mac Miller.

4. Slowthai.

5. Jungle.

5 things you are loving right now?

1. Spotify. Their algorithms are no joke.

2. Patagonia Black Hole packing cells.

3. Nikon F-100 film camera. it uses the same lens mount as modern Nikon DSLR cameras with autofocus. I’ve really been enjoying playing with film.

4. The Romoss Zeus power bank. it could jump start your car.

5. Narcos Mexico on Netflix.

5 favourite fly-fishing destinations across South Africa/ Africa?

1. The Cape streams. Effort is usually rewarded here and some amazing dry fly fishing can be had throughout the Cape mountains.

2. Lower Orange River. Hands down the best fishery I’ve seen in South Africa. The stretch we guide on currently has areas that will make you eat your heart out.

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3. The Bushman’s River in KZN blew my mind the first time I fished it. Having fished mainly on the Cape rivers, to see that many brown trout was insane.

4. Knysna and surrounds for grunter. They are the devil reincarnated.

5. The Red Sea, off the coast of Sudan.

5 indispensable flies for saltwater?

1. Tan Alphlexo crab 2. EP Spawning Shrimp 3. Crazy Charlie - the saltwater PTN 4. NYAP 5. Brush fly 5 indispensable flies for freshwater?

1. A copper beaded PTN. 2. Olive Minky 3. Wooly Bugger 4. CDC and Elk 5. A game changer 5 favourite fly-fishing destinations globally?

1. Guanaja, Honduras. Schools of sometimes up to 40 permit cruising in deeper water close to turtle grass flats…

2. Southern Red Sea, Sudan. Countless shots at tailing triggerfish and my first encounters with big GT on flats.

3. Lower Orange River, South Africa. It is simply a world class fishery that, at times, can feel like you are fishing in an aquarium.

4. The San Juan River in New Mexico. There was something really satisfying about throwing bobber rigs into deep slow runs and hooking into monster wild brown trout. Americans seem completely spoiled when it comes to trout fishing.

5. Farquhar in the Seychelles. A destination I never thought I would see, let alone fish!

5 of the most difficult guiding/teaching experiences so far?

1. An electrical fire on an inflatable raft that burned through a pontoon in seven different places while in the middle of

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5. The people I have worked with and guided over the years that have become friends. Being around like-minded people is one of the biggest highlights of the job.

5 of the worst things you have picked up from guiding?

1. Rather than picking it up, I am never able to keep up with football when I guide. I used to watch a ton and really loved it.

2. Bad language. I’m not sure what it is but boarding school followed by varsity and guiding has diluted the effect of swear words.

3. Being distant from a lot of my friends and loved ones.

This is one of the downsides to guiding that is most difficult to balance. You miss birthdays, anniversaries and it takes a lot of effort to maintain relationships.

4. Although not something I am paying for just yet, but skin damage is right up there. No amount of sunblock seems to work with my Irish complexion.

5. A perpetually leaking fly box. I literally have no flies, ever.

a 7km pool. We learned a lot about wire capacity that day.

2. Medical evacs are never fun. Picture gaping wounds and amoebic dysentery…

3. Racist/bigot clients. I find it difficult keeping my own personal views to myself, especially while working in the service industry.

4. Coming down with Covid-19 while in Southern Sudan.

Taking a power-nap on top of volcanic rock instead of hunting GT’s and triggerfish still haunts me.

5. Did I mention I had a boat on fire?

5 of the best things you have picked up from guiding?

1. Confidence. I was never shy but guiding has made me more assured of who I am and what I believe.

2. Patience. Guiding can be frustrating - a service industry with a lot of uncontrollable variables and most of the time you are running on fumes. It has definitely taught me how to control my emotions.

3. Guiding continuously tests your problem-solving capabilities.

4. A thick skin. You need to have a sense of humour and not take yourself too seriously.

5 people you would like to guide or fish with?

1. Heather Harkavy of Fish for Change. We bounce off each other really well and we have a ton of fishing trips in the pipeline but are yet to wet a line together.

2. Greg Glazer. One of my closest friends and always down for a mission, no matter how unlikely a fish actually is.

3. My father, who taught me how to fly fish at a very young age and who has supported me at every turn.

4. Marcus Rashford, a young king!

5. All of the guys that I have worked with while guiding. It would be the easiest day of guiding, hands down.

5 fish on your species hit list?

1. A big GT has to be near the top. After having a really big fish pop my 150lb leader in Southern Sudan I’m even more sold on the idea.

2. An Indo-Pacific permit. They are just stunning. The fact that they are difficult and unpredictable adds to it.

3. A 10kg largie is something that is a new addition to the list. One was landed this last season on the X-Factor drift that blew all of our minds and has changed how I view them.

4. An Atlantic triggerfish has had my attention since the first time I had a shot at one in Honduras with Fish for Change. They look even more alien than the other triggers (that’s saying something).

5. Barracuda. A 5-6ft fish on fly is right near the top of my bucket list.

“COMING DOWN WITH COVID-19 WHILE IN SOUTHERN SUDAN WAS DIFFICULT. TAKING A POWER-NAP ON TOP OF VOLCANIC ROCK INSTEAD OF HUNTING GT’S AND TRIGGERFISH STILL HAUNTS ME.” 28

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5 of the most underrated species in your book?

1. Yellow Lipped Emperor. Every bit as strong as similar sized bonefish.

2. Yellowfish (both largemouth and smallmouth).

Appreciated locally but not yet by the international angler.

3. Trout. Bread and butter but often looked down on. In South Africa it is what you want it to be. There are some gems out there.

4. Boxfish. Not as easy to hook as you’d think and strong for their size. Plus, they are fun to hold. (It’s like balancing a Rubik’s Cube on your palm) 5. Mudfish. We don’t like to admit it but they are the undisputed pound-for-pound champ of the Orange River.

5 things (outside of the fishing) that make where you fish so special?

1. The clean air.

2. Birdlife. Johann du Preez got me into my birding over the last year and it has added something else to the whole experience of where we work.

3. The food! We are treated to some pretty gourmet meals throughout our season.

4. I’m not sure what it is, but there is something about being barefoot that is food for the soul.

5. It is an obvious one but the scenery is breathtaking and no matter how often you wake up to a good sunrise it just never gets old.

5 destinations on your bucket list?

1. Cameroon. Intimidating but with an incredible draw to

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it. It sounds a lot like going to war.

2. Colombia. Peacock bass and trophy payara inland with billfish, tuna and dorado off-shore.

3. The Faraway Keys, off the Nicaraguan coast. Tarpon, permit anb Bonefish all on flats and it is only fished by a handful of people each year. The rest of the time it serves as a base for lobster fishermen and cartel smugglers.

4. New Zealand. The trout bum in me has to see it once.

5. Mongolia for taimen. Everything about the destination, from the landscapes to the fish and the culture, interests me.

5 things you would take up if you weren’t always fly fishing?

1. Five-a-side soccer.

2. Street photography.

3. I would definitely buy a dog.

4. Backpacking another third world country.

5. I would probably cook a lot more than I do. My boss teases me about basically living on pasta.

5 essential ingredients for an incredible mission?

1. Music 2. Mates 3. Loose fishing 4. Nature, the further away the better.

5. Some form of adversity or a fuck up. This is where an amazing trip becomes one you’ll never forget.

Your last five casts were to…. Wave Garrick and Kingfish off the beach in Mozambique.

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“A THICK SKIN. YOU NEED TO HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOUR AND NOT TAKE YOURSELF TOO SERIOUSLY.”

HOLLAND

GOING DUTCH R E L O C AT I N G T O A N E W C O U N T R Y I S N E V E R E A S Y, B U T WHEN GERALD PENKLER AND H I S FA M I LY M O V E D T O T H E NETHERL ANDS HE FOUND MYRIAD N E W S P E C I E S T O TA R G E T A N D F R I E N D LY A N G L E R S W I L L I N G TO SHARE INFO (IF YOU ABIDE

BY THE UNIVERSAL RULES OF S E C R E T S P O T O M E R TA ) .

Photos. Gerald Penkler

D

ark eyes, cavernous jaws and razor-sharp teeth are what excited me about our move to the Netherlands. Dutch pike make short work of foot long flies and even bigger prey.

We were madly packing, or rather stuffing the house into boxes. It all started with a COVID travel window and a note from work to the effect of “move to our Dutch site now as who knows how long it will stay open for.” The chapter of my family’s move from South Africa to the UK ended as we boarded the ferry. The first blank page was penned immediately when UK border control found a wallet in my car engine compartment. Long story short, it was mine.

Don’t ask. Border control did.

Relocation always brings an opportunity to make new friends, loads of learning and a richness of experiences.

Fishing is no different and I quickly recognised the wealth of species finning about my new home. It was the predator closed season when we arrived in April and so the pike, zander and perch would have to wait. This gave me a chance to explore for something new and the Netherlands has lots to explore. With 17 million inhabitants, it is the second most densely populated country in the EU. Despite its small size, it is also the second largest exporter of food and agricultural products in the world. Every inch of land and water has a designated purpose.

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“DUTCH PIKE MAKE SHORT WORK OF FOOT LONG FLIES AND EVEN BIGGER PREY.”

Fortunately for the fish, water covers a fifth of the country.

This includes deltas of two major European rivers, the Rhine and the Meuse. Beyond the popular pike, perch and zander, the list of species found here is massive. Carp, ide, asp, seabass and barbel were at the top of my list, but there was always the chance of finding tench, rudd, roach, dace bream, seatrout, wels catfish, flounder or chub too.

Even the odd salmon and sturgeon move in these waters.

Another interesting target is shad. Millions of allis shad and twaite shad used to migrate up the rivers from the ocean, work their way across Europe and spawn. A large relation to the herring, the allis shad grows up to 75cm in size and goes into aerial mode when hooked. Like salmon, the massive shoals no longer exist, but attempts are being made to grow the stocks once again.

Common bream

I would need at least a few chapters to do justice to the fishing adventures I have had over the last six months.

So instead, this is a series of anecdotes about some of the species I have been lucky enough to find so far in the Dutch aquarium.

CARP - Cyprinus carpio Grass tips twitched and shivered as carp nosed their way across the flooded plains. It was here that I first noticed that the oil tanker carp, one in the 30lb class, would never tail or root in the mud. Instead, they zoomed up and down the margins sending small fry scattering. That evening I tied a few small suspending fry patterns to test a piscivorous theory. On tip toes to keep the important parts dry, I tried my best to impersonate a heron. Only my eyes moved as I followed a large carp finning into range. Plop. She twitched her whiskers, smacked her lips and slurped in the fly. I held tight, to breaking point as she muscled towards the overgrowth and freedom. I could not resist a small fist pump as she heaved into the net. It is moments like these that make all the legwork of finding visible carp worth it.

A neutral buoyancy baitfish pattern and the result below.

PRUSSIAN CARP - Carassius gibelio Tails and fins broke the surface in a grassy corner. ‘Carp or bream?’ I wondered. Slithering through the mud into range, sitting motionless in the grass, a small carp caught my eye. Without hesitation it nibbled a small red tag woolly worm. I missed this one, but sure enough another small carp came swimming towards me. This time it charged and gobbled the fly. After some flapping, it flopped into the net. Peering into the net I frowned. Someone had taken a carp, decorated it with a frilly tail, armed it with a beak and sprinkled it with cuteness. What was this? A friend Whatsapped me the answer - the Prussian carp. (Right) COMMON BREAM - Abramis brama Slimy, stinky and as powerful as a wet bag. The first bream I hooked reminded me of a myotonic goat. It got a fright, froze, floated to the surface and slimed my net. Their lack of fight is a pity, since they are everywhere in good numbers.

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asp, another early riser and relation of the ide. As soon as it became fully light the activity stopped and I headed upstream. I spotted an ide cruising along the bank towards me. Crouching, I switched the streamer for a squirmy and made a short cast. It left a shimmer of scales behind in its haste to eat it. Ide remind me a lot of chub in that they are very skittish, but if you catch them unawares they are happy to attack a fly with gusto. They grow to around 50cm in size, but they often hybridise with asp resulting in much larger specimens.

Zander

I have had one exception while plumbing a deep run, in search of barbel, Barbus barbus. The line paused in the drift and I lifted into something heavy. It swirled off, stayed deep, and chugged downstream. Yes! A barbel. The dream burst as it rose up the water column and flopped on the surface. A beautiful bream, deep bronze and in perfect health. This fighting version is not so bad, but I would still have preferred a barbel. At least pike love them.

RUDD - Scardinius erythrophthalmus I could no longer resist. I had not seen a carp all morning and these schools of rising fish between the weed beds were too tempting. Off came the carpbol fly and on went a small dry. The ripples from the Parachute Adams disappeared in a spray of silver and red. I continued picking them off for at least an hour, vowing to bring my 2-weight next time. With upturned mouths, rudd specialise in surface feeding. They are a great target for sight fishing as they skitter about near the surface. I only saw specimens up to about 15cm, but they do grow to triple this size.

IDE - Leuciscus idus Purple, orange and yellow reflected off the surface in the breaking dawn. In the dark oily swirls, fin after fin broke the surface. Ide. I was casting streamers hoping to find

ZANDER - Sander lucioperca Friday night. 10 pm. We had launched the float tubes a few hours earlier and it was finally getting darker. One of my new Dutch fishing friends, Raymond van Ewijk, had a theory that Zander would be waiting on this drop off, ready to move into the shallows under the cover of darkness. I was very confident as Raymond spends hundreds of hours on the water and has the fishing knack. Sure enough, my line ripped tight and a strip set met a solid shake. This one felt bigger as my 9-weight arched flat, line pulled through my fingers and my float tube spun around following it. This is abnormal for a zander and we expected a good pike. Big steely eyes, spiky fins and sharp teeth broke the surface.

Straight out of Jurassic Park, the zander is not going to win any beauty contests. However, this small 60cm specimen demonstrated why they have such a following.

ASP - Leuciscus aspius Chasing asp and long summer days cannot come back soon enough. Raymond and Tim van Putten, another multi-species fly angler with the knack and some big asp to his name, showed me the ropes. Always on the move, picky, and with a penchant for ultra-fast retrieves, the asp is a tricky species on fly. With ferocious leader-popping takes that appear out of nowhere, the effort is worth it.

We froze as our eyes locked. The asp sank away from the edge into the depths. I was on a shallow bank covered with bait fish. The asp were aware and patrolling the drop off. I made a cup of tea, ate a sandwich and hoped that the asp would return. Recharged, I cast a small white zonker along the drop off. Within milliseconds, two asp had left bow waves in disgust. Another cast got the same treatment.

Time for another cup of tea and a switch to a small game changer. Plop. Strip. Boom! I picked up several asp with this tactic. Some took the fly as it landed, others wanted a double handed super-fast strip and others took a more erratic strip. But, every one of them smashed the fly as hard and as fast as they could. Next season cannot come soon enough.

“ALWAYS ON THE MOVE, PICKY, AND WITH A PENCHANT FOR ULTRA-FAST RETRIEVES, THE ASP IS A TRICKY SPECIES ON FLY.” 38

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An asp-ide hybrid

SEABASS - Dicentrarchus labrax Aggressive, strong and dirty fighters, seabass are another species with a cult following. Unfortunately, they are also a popular and expensive table fish. The populations have crashed and even the once-famed fishing in the Europoort is a shadow of what it used to be. I will never forget my first seabass take. The 9-weight ripped flat and I strip set hard. Big fish. Surely?

I was wrong. After a brief tussle a small ‘schoolie’ came to hand. We caught many schoolies that day. Each take was spectacular and for the first second you wait, hoping it turns into the big powerful run of a big fish.

TROUT - Oncorhynchus mykiss and Salmo trutta The Netherlands is not trout country, but there are some stocked lakes. A famous water is Oostvoornse meer, an oasis in the industrial Europoort. It is unique as it is brackish and harbours saltwater species such as flounder and herring as well as rainbow and brown trout. There are massive brown trout with stunning markings that resemble leopard print. Having caught enough seabass schoolies we paid it a short visit. A calm evening and stunning views felt at odds with the heavy industry surrounding the area. The small rainbow was not needed for me to know that I have to return on the float tube in search of those big piscivorous brown trout.

Secrecy is important in The Netherlands and deeply embedded in the angling community.

With good reason. The country is well populated and most water is near to roads. Anything recognisable in an Instagram post, be it a tree, a building or bridge means that you have five anglers there the next day. Despite this, Dutch anglers are generally very friendly and happy to show you the ropes. Give away a secret spot though and you might find yourself fattening up the next generation of Wels catfish.

The first season has been an amazing experience so far.

For now, my focus has shifted to winter perch and pike.

Once the waters warm up again, I hope to have more stories to add about Dutch barbel, wels catfish and shad.

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W W W. T H E M I S S I O N F LY M A G . C O M

“AGGRESSIVE, STRONG AND DIRTY FIGHTERS, SEABASS ARE ANOTHER SPECIES WITH A CULT FOLLOWING.”

YELLOW MAMBA N AV I GAT I N G N AT U R A L WO R L D T H R E ATS A N D A N I N C R E D I B LY C H A L L E N G I N G TA R G E T S P EC I ES , L EO N A R D F L E M M I N G A N D F R I E N D S V E N T U R E D D E E P I N TO T H E VA L L E YS O F K WA Z U LU - N ATA L I N S E A R C H O F S CA L I ES .

Photos. Leonard Flemming, Jeff Tyser, Ben Pellegrini

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ulu lady: “Haikona wena babba. There was a BIG snake here yesterday. You must watch out!”

Me: “Huh!? Where and what kind of snake; a mamba?”

Zulu lady: “Yes, a green mamba, a very big one, here right next to your camp” I stared at the leaf litter between the thorn trees and realised that even a big snake could be difficult to spot in the bed of bushveld ‘compost’. ‘Better tread lightly pal’, I thought to myself as I left camp, pussyfooting through thick grass towards the river.

I had never seen a live mamba before, but I had heard horrifying stories from mates narrowly escaping the attack of an aggressive, territorial black mamba. Although the scary thought of encountering one of these ‘supernatural’ KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) bushveld creatures kept me alert as I bundu bashed my way to a fresh pool, my mind was fixated on the fish.

Apart from the possibility of crossing paths with green or black mambas on the ground, Jeff Tyser, Ben Pellegrini and I were tormented by the ‘yellow mambas’ in the river…big, territorial scalies patrolling drop-offs or deep river channels. Our fragile nerves, had us frequently duff casts, miss the subtle takes or resulted in longer pauses and more hesitations before committing to a cast. Bad experiences with big fish that had us swim after a fly line knitted through a maze of sticks and boulders in their long, unstoppable runs meant we were afraid to present a fly. If you think you’ve experienced dirty yellows, then this was the 51st shade of it.

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Around the dinner table we discussed our approach to the scalies of KZN. They haunted our dreams and silenced us between sips of breakfast coffee. However, as on most fishing trips, among all the frustrating but memorable losses, there were also many good fish landed. We were in our element.

During the day we’d spread out and disappear from each other’s view, picking and choosing between kilometres of winding glides and long, complex pools with tricky inlets, steep mid sections and flat, free-stone tail outs. In other words, the features typical of KZN rivers flowing through unworked, protected bushveld.

One could spend hours staring at the mysterious deepbelly areas of pools, where the odd crocodile head dipped under the surface and sharptooth catfish gulps were the only familiar sounds breaking the silence in the stinky, midday heat. We even caught a few of the bank-hugging catfish whenever scaly sightings became few and far between.

It was in these same deep-belly areas where we’d spot some of the biggest scalies we had ever seen; 7-lb-plus fish lazily cruising near the surface with seemingly no deliberate direction. While leopard crawling with nervous stomachs after fish, we figured out that they were hard to predict and intercept.

“THEY HAUNTED OUR DREAMS AND SILENCED US BETWEEN SIPS OF BREAKFAST COFFEE.”

There were times that I was glad Jeff and Ben were not present to witness my embarrassing attempts that mostly ended in face plants and a fly line getting tangled in Phragmites as a shot at a big ‘yellow mamba’ was inevitably missed. The mutter of swear words that followed such incidents could fill a page.

Sometimes it went better, the slack somehow cleared the snags and the fly landed close enough to a hefty ‘yellow mamba’ for it to take notice. Time stood still as the fish approached the fly, checking it out before deciding what to do with it but, mostly, our flies seemed too salty for their ‘taste’. When these fish ate properly, however, and the timing of the strike was good, we had to hold on for dear life.

The first run was always the scariest and the last thing we needed was to lose a party member to the maws of a crocodile or to drowning. Often the line had to be kept clear from bankside brush by holding the rod high while scrambling in the same direction as the fish. If one stayed put, the odds were against you and there was a high risk that the tippet would snap due to the friction on the fly line dragging over weeds and rocks. We learnt the hard way that ‘yellow mambas’, and especially the big ones, were tough contenders.

“WE LEARNT THE HARD WAY THAT ‘YELLOW MAMBAS’, AND ESPECIALLY THE BIG ONES, WERE TOUGH CONTENDERS.”

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“OUR FOCUS ON PAINFULLY ACCURATE PRESENTATIONS AND FLY MANIPULATION CHANGED TO SIMPLY ENJOYING THE EXPERIENCE.”

There were also times that, for reasons that only ichthyologists are likely to explain, we also experienced the opposite. It was mostly during the hottest part of the day (when a cold beer and cover from the sun was also most tempting) that the scalies were on the loose and one couldn’t go wrong with presentations and hookups.

Heck, Ben and Jeff even caught a few trophy scalies on dry fly at such times. In a few hours of incredible fishing, it seemed as though schools of hungry scalies moved into shallow ‘feeding areas’ and our focus on painfully accurate presentations and fly manipulation changed to simply enjoying the experience.

It was a most bizarre thing to see how fish that were so sensitive and played hard to get the one hour, become so loose in the next. In a matter of seconds, as if a switch had been flicked on, they literally left their comfort zone and started swimming around highly visibly and then decided that our flies were suddenly the soup of the day.

At the end of a long weekend in the KZN bushveld we had bonded with the Natal scaly and experienced their mood swings. I always pictured Natal scalies as smaller and ‘weaker’ relatives of the other, larger small-scaled yellowfishes in our country, i.e., smallmouth yellowfish, largemouth yellowfish, the bushveld smallscale yellowfish and Clanwilliam yellowfish. I was so wrong.

After our trip, and still hooked by the ‘yellow mambas’ of Natal, I did a bit more reading and found out that the largest recorded scalies weighed more than that magical 10-lb-mark. Besides the scalies, many KZN rivers are also home to the intriguing chiselmouths and various Labeo species, such as the leaden labeo and Tugela labeo. I have a feeling that a KZN bushveld mission may now become a regular thing…

THE SECRET LIVES OF GTS ARGUABLY FLY FISHING’S MOST LOVED SALTWATER BULLIES, THERE’S A LOT MORE TO GIANT TREVALLY (CARANX IGNOBILIS) THAN MEETS THE FLATS ANGLER’S EYE. TO UNDERSTAND THESE INCREDIBLE FISH A LITTLE BETTER, WE CHAT TO THREE LEADING FISHERIES BIOLOGISTS ABOUT THEIR WORK ON THE WORLD’S BIGGEST GIANT TREVALLY AGGREGATION OFF MOZAMBIQUE, WHY SOUTH AFRICA’S COASTAL GT FISHING HAS DETERIORATED SO MUCH AND JUST WHAT THE HELL GTS DO AT MTENTU.

Photos. Ryan Daly, JD Filmalter, Tessa Hempson, Mark Ziembicki

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hink of “Giant Trevally” and what comes to mind is probably a massive, kingfish-destroying bonefish on a Seychelles flat, or maybe the plus-size specimens caught in the seas off Oman. Narrow down your brain’s search engine to “Giant Trevally from Sub-Saharan Africa” and your results thin out a bit. There are the small GTs caught occasionally in estuaries and off the rocks along the Wild Coast, but for adult GTs you would have to concentrate your attention on northern KwaZulu-Natal where fabled destinations like Kosi Bay mouth and Rocktail Bay were put on the map by this species. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the GT fishing was incredible in these places but, despite the odd large fish being caught every now and then, additions to “The 100 Club” (fly anglers who have caught a 100cm+ GT on foot on the South African coast) are increasingly rare.

Someone who saw this area in its heyday is Andy Coetzee, one of the pioneers of GT fishing along the Northern KwaZulu-Natal/ Maputaland coast that borders onto southern Mozambique. Andy still works in the area, running diving and fat bike tours, but his interest in fly fishing for GTs has waned as the fishing has deteriorated.

Andy says, “I started fishing Maputaland from about 1984 through to the early ‘90s with a fly rod and a heathen stick with poppers and live bait. I would go down to Kosi mouth and throw poppers and I would be guaranteed to hook at least two or three fish - anything from the range of 15-30kg.

There were lots of Bigspot kingies and the Ignobilis, the GTs. The numbers that used to be there were absolutely phenomenal. I can remember going to Rocktail Bay on a spring high tide in the afternoon… eight casts, eight bustups, packed up and went home. That’s it.”

“However, since then I’ve seen the decline. In 2014 and 2015 I went to Bhanga Nek with my brother and we fished the prime times, 3:30 am to 5:30am, prime light both in the morning and afternoon. We used a fly stick as well as a big stick, throwing poppers, surface lures and stick-baits.

Nothing! It’s very disheartening because, in the 80s and early 90s, you’d catch big fish there. The kingies would smoke you, charge in right between your legs. I remember

seeing shoals of big kingies chasing mullet and the mullet were jumping out of the water. You could pick them up, pin a 9/0 through a mullet’s arse and in three seconds you’d be tight. Those days are gone. You don’t even see mullet coming into Kosi mouth. I seldom pick up a fly rod anymore, because the effort to go and have one pull is hardly worth it.”

While die-hards will continue to fish these areas and occasionally get a positive result, it’s easy to understand why Andy is so despondent. His experience is anecdotal, but it’s still an important baseline to remember because as humans we’re adaptable (just compare the idea of a national curfew today to the same idea two years ago). A good day out fly fishing for GTs in northern KwaZulu-Natal today looks a lot different to a good day out for Andy and his fellow pioneers back then.

Fortunately, it’s not quite time to slit your wrists when it comes to the future of GTs along our coastline. That frisson of optimism is thanks to a very special annual event that South African fisheries scientists have been studying for the last six years. Each year at a very specific time on a very specific moon in a very specific place off the Mozambican coastline, three scientists, Dr Ryan Daly, Dr Tess Hempson and Dr JD Filmalter come together for an orgy of Giant Trevally. ”Aggregation” is the scientific word for it, but to a layman that sounds a little too much like an Excel shortcut.

Regardless, what makes this aggregation so special is that it’s the biggest aggregation of GTs on the planet. Where most GT aggregations from Hawaii to the Philippines and the Seychelles number in the hundreds, the southern Mozambican aggregation has been estimated at 5000 adult fish. That equates to 30 tons of adult Giant Trevally with some individuals estimated at 56kg.

The data gleaned from their tagging efforts, is giving us more insight into the secret lives of Giant Trevally than ever before. We sat down with these scientists to discuss what they have since learnt about GTs ; why the once-famed GT fishing in South Africa is now so poor and just what the hell is going on at the fabled estuary of Mtentu on South Africa’s Wild Coast.

“I CAN REMEMBER GOING TO ROCKTAIL BAY ON A SPRING HIGH TIDE IN THE AFTERNOON… EIGHT CASTS, EIGHT BUST-UPS, PACKED UP AND WENT HOME.” THAT’S IT.” W W W. T H E M I S S I O N F LY M A G . C O M

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THE SCIENTISTS

JD Filmalter, Tess Hempson and Ryan Daly at work tagging adult GTs. Opposite Page: Tess Hempson and a colleague check an acoustic receiver on the drop-off at Vamizi island.

Somewhat like chess boxers, fisheries scientists are hardcore in that they are just as at home slugging it out with massive GTs and gargantuan Zambezi sharks (for research purposes of course), as they are sitting behind a computer analysing the data. As far as dream teams go, it does not get much better than these three. Outside of their PhDs and job descriptions, they have worked all over the world studying myriad species from coral reefs to bigeye tuna, Napoleon wrasse, grouper, Zambezi (bull) sharks and hammerheads.

Dr Tessa Hempson Tess is the Programme Manager & Principal Scientist for Oceans Without Borders, which is a collaboration between conservation-focused luxury travel company &Beyond, and Africa Foundation – a non-profit organisation dedicated to community-led development and conservation of Africa’s natural environments. She spends a lot of time on location at &Beyond’s marine locations - from Mnemba island off Zanzibar in Tanzania, to Bazaruto in Mozambique and iSimangaliso in South Africa. But perhaps the best part of her job is her work on Vamizi, an island in the northern Quirimbas archipelago

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on the Mozambican channel, where the flats drop off into abyssal waters and amazing reefs. It was here that she found another aggregation of GTs, albeit much smaller than the southern Mozambican one.

Dr Ryan Daly Ryan works for the Oceanographic Research Institute (ORI) where his focus is on Linefish & Marine Protected Areas.

When he’s not on the road or on the open ocean tagging fish and sharks, Ryan is usually behind his computer in Durban. His bread and butter work is acoustic telemetry, tagging fish and sharks and then tracking their movements along our coastline. When it comes to GTs and sharks, few people can compare with Ryan’s deep knowledge.

Dr JD Filmalter JD is a fisheries biologist and behavioural ecologist focused on shark and fish movements in Southern Africa. He lives in Cape Town, but still spends a lot of time on the Breede River where he set up the Acoustic Tracking Array Platform (ATAP), a tracking project for kob and he continues to do work there for SAIAB (South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity). He claims he taught Ryan how to catch fish.

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WHY THERE? A spawning aggregation is defined as an event that happens at the same time at the same place, year after year. That sounds simple enough but, finding an aggregation like the mammoth Mozambican one takes a lot of time, effort, data, local knowledge and a touch of luck. By going back to the area year after year, catching and tagging fish, noticing patterns linked to the time of year, the moon phases, water temperature, currents and so on, these scientists have gradually developed a very accurate idea of where and when these fish will be in big numbers.

Tess says, “There’s a lot we don’t know about aggregations, because they are so temporary. Unless you are there at the right time on the spot, or if you happen to have receivers in the area and see a whole bunch of tagged fish going to a specific area, you won’t know. You have to kind of tease out the data and start joining the dots.”

To understand why the GTs are there, it helps to understand how they behave as adults. Unlike a similarly large species like the Humphead (Napoleon) wrasse that Ryan studied when he was based in the Seychelles, on reaching maturity GTs begin to behave very differently.

Ryan says, “Adult male Humphead Wrasses need caves of a particular size to hide in and sleep in at night. They also need to be close to a feeding site. The males defend their territory, which is a prime sleeping site next to a feeding site, which the females come to, and then they have their harem. The bigger they get, the less they move because they’re territorial. In contrast, the bigger GTs get, the more they move. As juveniles, nursery habitats are really important for them but, as soon as they hit maturity, they need to feed themselves and they need a broader range of habitats. As they get bigger, it costs them less energy to move. So they go further and further and further. We tagged GTs and Humpheads at the exact same site and they did completely opposite things because the drivers were completely different. For Humpheads it was mating.

For GTs it was foraging.”

Seychelles guides will tell you how intelligent GTs are based off observations of how they reject flies that they have seen too often (RIP Flashy Profile). When it comes to an aggregation like this, that attracts GTs from vast distances, just how these fish know where and when to go there is something that’s not 100% clear yet. There has to be some level of species intelligence and evolutionary sociability. Take the example Ryan gives of a GT that was caught as a juvenile in Durban harbour, grew up in an aquarium and was then released.

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“We tracked this fish and in the first year it swam around, kind of not knowing what it was doing but then, by the second year of liberty, it was at this aggregation site with all the other GTs, showing that it picked up what to do from other GTs out there. That was really, really interesting: how this captive fish, got talking to his mates and then knew how to become a wild fish and go to the spawning event.

There’s also evidence from other spawning aggregations that if a spawning aggregation is decimated by fishing, the fish then won’t come back to the same place to spawn because they pick up social cues from other fish. So they’re essentially socialised, they share information and they

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know what to do because they learn from each other.”

Evolutionarily speaking, the question arises why these fish would come together in such a massive yet vulnerable aggregation as opposed to the smaller aggregations seen at Vamizi, or in the Seychelles, Hawaii and elsewhere.

While GTs did not evolve to deal with the threat of a trawler’s nets, there are undoubtedly evolutionary reasons that draw them to mass spawning events.

Tess says, “Spawning sites are very often used by several species. During the annual spawning event in Mozambique

we see mixed schools of kingies - GTs, big eyes and fulvies (yellow spotted trevally). The thing with mass spawning is that if you all breed at once, you pump it all into the ocean at once, the predators can’t eat all of your babies, so some of your offspring will survive. With GTs from all over, all spawning at the same time, you’re getting this mass mixing of genes, which means your genetic diversity is properly underwritten. At these sites there’s good water flow, so the larvae of the fish that spawn there will travel far. Evolution has dictated that the ones that breed there are the ones that generally survive and keep coming back to those spots.”

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WHERE ARE THESE FISH FROM? Thanks to the ATAP programme and the network of automated datalogging acoustic receivers that are moored to the ocean’s floor around the South African coastline, Ryan, Tess and JD are able to track the tagged fish from the southern Mozambique aggregation. Every time a tagged fish swims past a receiver, it’s logged. Perhaps the most fascinating take away so far from this aggregation is the fact that every GT that was caught, tagged and released by the team has been tracked going south from the aggregation site. None of them has moved north, not even to pop in at Tess’s smaller aggregation at Vamizi up in northern Mozambique. That means, you get to thump your chest with patriotic pride because these are Rainbow Nation GTs, as South African as biltong, Desmond Tutu and Rassie Erasmus’s dance moves.

Ryan says, “All of the GTs we’ve tagged in southern Mozambique have come south and none has gone north.

So there’s a divide between our subtropical GTs on the coast, and the tropical GTs. They’re doing different things.

The subtropical GTs can’t spawn in subtropical waters, because it’s too cold. Their larvae needs to develop in warmer water so they all have to travel very far north to get to warmer water to spawn, which is why this aggregation in Southern Mozambique is the biggest in the world because it draws all of the subtropical GTs up to spawn.”

With an aggregation this big, I had assumed that the GTs attending it would be coming from all over the place like a UN summit - Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar, hell maybe even some visitors from the Nubian Flats and Oman. A part of me likes the idea that a big oceangoing GT could frequent any island, atoll, estuary, flat or aggregation it likes. While in theory this sort of genetic mixing could happen and probably has over the centuries, it’s uncommon.

Regarding the possibility of GTs from Southern Africa intermingling with those from Seychelles, the Red Sea or even Oman, Ryan says, “I think there’s some connectedness in terms of the genetic flow over time. But even in the Seychelles, we tagged GTs on the Amirantes bank, which is separated from Desroches by a channel. Those GTs would go throughout the Amirantes bank, which is roughly 220 kilometres north to south, but they would not cross the channel to Desroches which was only 40 kilometres away. So, much like Hawaii, island-based GTs stick to their patch of island and they don’t go oceanic. In a way, island populations are more isolated populations of GTs.”

JD says, “It would be incredible to see some mixing, but I suspect it’s probably not likely to happen. We don’t have this data yet, but my assumption is that the further you move into the tropics, the more stable the environments become, the less they’re going to travel. That said, it just takes a few individuals to move from one population group to another and spawn successfully with the other group for their genes to quickly spread through the population. Even over timespans of fifty to a hundred years, if you have one fish that decides to swim to Madagascar, it can impact the connectivity. Each species needs those outliers -that’s their survival strategy. You need the ones that are going to go out and explore.”

A recent example of a GT that went off piste is that of a 14.7kg specimen caught in the Breede River in April 2021.

That catch was particularly bizarre for two reasons. Firstly because, in reference to the impacts of climate change, in issue 26 of The Mission (March/April 2021) we jokingly predicted we’d be “fishing for GTs in the Breede River in about ten years’ time”. Two weeks after that issue came out, that fish was caught, leading us to head to Grand West Casino for a flutter that did not end well. The second, more-pertinent reason that fish was so special, is because it’s basically unheard of for GTs to be caught in the Breede River as it’s way south of their usual range. Tess says what happened with that Breede GT could be down to a couple of things.

“It could be that with global warming you’re getting warmer temperatures further south. For example, in Sydney on the east coast of Australia, they’re getting butterfly fish in the Harbour. Butterfly fish are a coral reef species and Sydney’s eco-system is similar to Cape Town. Or, it could be that there was an eddy off the Agulhas current. The current comes down the east coast and then it hits the ITCZ (Intertropical Convergence Zone), which is the next layer of weather systems and ocean. It then retroflects back on itself around Agulhas Banks where that coastal flat gets really wide. As that bend retroflects back on itself it can move in and out from the coast. It can vary from day to day. That’s why some days the water temperature will feel like you’re on the West Coast, and the next day you’ve got warm Durban water. That’s the bend in the Agulhas current moving in and out from the shore. But then the other cool thing that can happen is that the bend that comes down the coast can create an eddy of warm water that pinches off like a blob from a lava lamp and then spirals down the coast. So potentially, a GT in an exploratory mood might have been swimming in one of those warm eddies and got stuck way further south than usual, ending up in the Breede River.”

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As the number of receivers stretching from Mozambique up the east coast of Africa increases and more data comes in, scientists will get an even better understanding of how these fish behave, where they go and who they mingle with. Advances in genetic sequencing are also moving at lightning speed to the point where tagging won’t be necessary any more as they will be able to monitor a fish population just by taking genetic samples.

For now, the long and the short of it is that not all GTs are the same. They are very adaptable when they need to be. As the tropical GTs of the Seychelles or Vamizi have shown, they can stay super local if everything they need from food to spawning is close by. Or, in the case of subtropical South African GTs, they can travel incredibly long distances following warm water currents in search of food, spawning and perhaps just a little bit of adventure.

WHAT DOES THE SPAWNING LOOK LIKE? What I wanted to know, was what GT sex looks like. Is it like a feeding frenzy similar to those videos of the “pets” at Farquhar, a gang of human-habituated GTs that hang around like street dogs looking for scraps? Or, is it more a case of The Best of Sade and a bottle of Chardonnay?

Ryan explained that GTs are gonochoristic broadcast spawners, the ’gonochoristic’ bit meaning they are either male or female as opposed to some fish species which are hermaphrodites. The ’broadcast spawning’ bit means the females release their eggs and the males release their sperm into the ocean at the same time. Some of the eggs will be fertilised by the sperm and will float and drift on the current, the larvae developing and eventually hatching into mini GTs, which will hopefully find a healthy estuary like Mtentu to grow up in. What that means is that the adult GTs have to all come together in the same place at the same time for a mass release of spawn and eggs. The location is probably dictated by habit/previous success and passed on from adults to juveniles (and even, after a rigorous vetting process, to that Durban fish released from an aquarium).

The timing of the event, which is dictated by the season and the moon is a formula. Once the team worked out the formula, the aggregation has occurred like clockwork. It is that predictable.

Ryan says, “To see so many GTs is unbelievable. The scale of it is constantly phenomenal. You just want to be in the water as much as possible as they give you a short window into their lives. This year, we were particularly fortunate

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because the conditions were so good that we got to spend a lot of time in the water with them, observing the Zambezi sharks swimming through them, and observing how they socialised which involves colour dimorphism. The males and females will start to change colours, going dark and light, dark and light as they start to signal to each other that they are ready for spawning. It’s the same for many king fish species. Bludgers, fulvies, black tips, and bigeyes all do this. Interestingly, bigeye kingfish will pair off much more, so there’ll be one dark and one light, but the giant trevally

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seem to be more mixed. The grand finale of them actually releasing spawn still eludes us. I think it’s because it happens when we are never around, very late in the afternoon on a very specific day when the weather has to be correct. So I don’t exactly know what the final event looks like.”

Though they may feel like disappointed GT pornographers, we predict with the many hours the team spends fishing, tagging and diving at the GT mega-aggregation, it’s just a matter of time until they witness the money shot.

“A RECENT EXAMPLE OF A GT THAT WENT OFF PISTE IS THAT OF A 14.7KG SPECIMEN CAUGHT IN THE BREEDE RIVER IN APRIL 2021”

THE MTENTU MYSTERY It’s important to understand that there are spawning aggregations of GTs and then there are non-spawning aggregations that no one really understands just yet.

The southern Mozambican GT aggregation is the only local spawning aggregation they have found (the jury is out on what the 1000-fish strong aggregation at Vamizi was about). While those two are relatively new, perhaps the most well-known aggregation is the one that occurs at Mtentu estuary on the Wild Coast of South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. Part of the Pondoland MPA (Marine Protected Area), Mtentu is a vital stronghold for South Africa’s GT population.

For sub-tropical GTs, estuaries are nurseries, the equivalent of an atoll for tropical GTs. For juveniles, they are safe spaces where youngsters can grow and feed before reaching sexual maturity. The GTs of Mtentu are not spawning so what they are doing there is still up for debate. The answer is probably multi-factorial, but for Ryan the main reason is that Mtentu is, to put it simply, their home.

Ryan says, “Mtentu is one of South Africa’s best estuaries.

Whereas most other estuaries are temporarily open, or are closed or aren’t as tidal, Mtentu is really unique because it’s tidal, there’s sea water for four and a half kilometres up river, and the mouth never closes. You can’t fish in there. There’s no pollution. It’s absolutely pristine.

It is just the most perfect place for GTs to live in and it remains one of the most pristine nursery habitats for them on our coast. I think that they’re doing this thing called natal philopatry where adults come back to the place that they were living in as a nursery. Animals seem to have this really strong draw to come back to the places of their birth or where they grew up.”

JD says, “Mtentu has got some really deep parts but its catchment is quite short, so it doesn’t often get super dirty, unless there’s massive rain. It has no agriculture upstream. Because it’s so short it’s pristine. I have no idea what it is about that estuary that makes it so different and so attractive for the GTs because there are GTs in almost all the Transkei estuaries, but they are not coming in in those big numbers you get at Mtentu. Maybe it’s because Mtentu’s mouth is big, deep, and permanently open whereas other estuaries along the Transkei coast are less predictable and open and close.”

Another theory Tess has is that the fish go to Mtentu to rid themselves of unwanted passengers.

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She says, “What the GTs are doing at Mtentu is the big question, isn’t it? One of the things I did in my PhD was collect chocolate grouper. I was catching them, bringing them up to the surface alive in cages, then putting them in aquariums for a while to get their diets kind of consistent before putting them on to these reefs that I built. I needed to make sure that they were all starting from an equal footing, which meant ensuring some fish weren’t carrying a heavy parasite load while others didn’t. The way you do that is you put them in fresh water. If you put a saltwater fish into fresh water, parasites come out of everywhere…literally through their skin, out of their gills, out of their mouths. It’s unreal.

You don’t do it for too long, generally less than a minute

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Daisy-chaining GTs mill around in the pristine Wild Coast estuary of Mtentu.

as that’s all it takes for the parasites to freak out. Then you stick the fish back in salt water. That opportunity to get rid of parasites is part of what I think draws the GTs to Mtentu.”

Whether it’s natal philopatry, parasite management or something else that draws GTs to Mtentu and other Wild Coast estuaries, these fish are clearly not deterred by how far they have to swim when it comes time to spawn.

GTs arriving in Southern Mozambique to spawn and when the moon changed those same GTs were back at Mtentu.

So the same individuals are traveling massive distances up and down, spawning in Southern Mozambique, but not spawning in Mtentu, which makes sense. It’s too cold to them to spawn in Mtentu, but there’s good feeding, good habitat and it’s the site of their birth.”

Ryan says, “What we see is that juvenile GTs are in Mtentu year round and over the summer period the adults come back into the estuary to hang out. But then those same adult fish go to southern Mozambique to spawn and then go back to Mtentu the same month. Last summer we had

If the spawning aggregation is Matric Rage / Spring Break for randy GTs, Mtentu is somewhere between your mum’s house for Sunday roast, a spa day and a sensory deprivation chamber free from boats, anglers and nets. That’s why it is so vital to keep it off-limits.

HOW DO WE PROTECT THEM? When you picture an aggregation of this size, the immediate thing that comes to mind is how vulnerable these fish are. It’s necessary to divide the threats to these GTs into immediate and long-term threats. Immediate threats would be something like one idiot of a trawler (or 30 small boats with the coordinates) coming along and wiping out the population in no time. Long-term threats are trickier to grapple with, ranging from overfishing, to climate change and the destruction of their nursery habitat via development and the impact of centuries-old agriculture.

In the immediate threat column, it helps that this aggregation falls into the greater Maputo National Park, which incorporates both a terrestrial park and a huge stretch of coastline. Not only would you really struggle to find it without the working knowledge of the GT-SexFormula™ that these scientists have developed, but as far as Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) go, this one is well policed and if you tried you would hopefully get shot out of the water for your efforts.

Regardless, Ryan, Tess and JD are intentionally vague about both where and when the aggregation takes place.

That’s not to say that you, dear reader, are an unscrupulous bastard with fishcakes on the brain, a cousin with a midsized trawler or a bar stool with your name on it at the ski boat club. But you could be…

Tess says, “The one super important thing with these aggregations, and the reason that it’s so important to learn about them and focus conservation efforts on them, is that if one fishing vessel with a big seine net comes through, it can smash a population in an instant. So figuring out where these spots are and then not letting on where they are, is the one major thing. But making sure that if they are known that they are properly protected is also super critical.”

Tess has firsthand experience of what happens if you properly protect a marine environment because a large part of her work with Oceans Without Borders involves working with the local community on Vamizi to ensure they have a sustainable fishery for years to come.

“Vamizi is an amazing success story. In Nampula province, the next province down in Mozambique, there’s been a huge amount of fishing pressure by commercial vessels offshore, but also subsistence fishing from growing coastal populations where people are very poor and directly reliant on the reefs. But on Vamizi Island, it’s different.

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In the fisheries laws of Mozambique, they have a thing called a CCP (Conselhos Comunitarios de Pesca or Community Fishers’ Councils), which is a volunteer fishers’ council. Through a CCP, fishermen that live in a particular community have the right to decide how they want to manage their local marine areas within three nautical miles of the shore. They can lock it down completely and say, ‘Sorry, sanctuary area, no one goes in here.’ Or they can say ’Only we fish here and we only use this gear,’ or ’We close for this time of year,’ or whatever it is they choose.

“On Vamizi, the various stakeholders that have been working in tourism there for a long time have worked with the local CCP to establish a marine sanctuary area off the eastern side of the island. That’s just about to be declared a nationally gazetted MPA which will be the first gazetted MPA that’s been community driven and not from national legislation. So it’s not top down, it’s bottom up.

The dividends of that sanctuary are already paying off because all the way down the coastline for hundreds of kilometres, everyone knows that Vamizi has fish because it’s got the sanctuary area. Through war and everything else that’s happened in Mozambique, that CCP has kept on policing that space. Over the 20 plus years that it’s been in existence, they’re now seeing the impact and the message is that if you conserve an area, this is how it pays off. Because of Vamizi’s reputation for having fish, the CCPs on other islands close by have realised Vamizi is onto something. They’re designing MPAs for their local fish stocks, dictating which gear, nets etc can be used and they are managing it themselves. So it can work.”

Turning our attention to the long-term threats, things get a little more complicated. If estuaries are the nurseries for coastal GTs, the future of these kids is not bright. To the north, with the exception of places like Vamizi, fish stocks in Mozambique have been hammered by rampant netting and the estuaries are particularly bad. In South Africa our estuaries are also in a horrendous state, but JD points out that trawlers and netting are not the problem.

JD says, “There is no massive targeted commercial fishery for GTs anywhere on our coastline. Even in southern Mozambique, there’s no dedicated commercial fishery for them. There are so many factors involved when looking at declining fish stocks, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find that habitat degradation plays a massive part in declining populations. It’s the juvenile, estuarine nursery habitats that are getting hurt on our coastline and that’s a key part. We don’t know exactly how critical that is for the entire population, but we do know that you find baby GTs in estuaries from the Wild Coast/Transkei all the way up the coast. We don’t have many sheltered bays on our coastline, it’s all very exposed so, for these species, it’s the estuaries that serve as nurseries.

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Tess Hempson working with the local CCP on Vamizi (left) and downloading tagging data (right).

“Our subtropical estuaries are broken, whereas our temperate estuaries further south in the Transkei and Eastern Cape are a bit better. In KwaZulu-Natal the estuaries don’t work; they’re pretty much all stuffed. My guess is that’s due to the plantations of sugar cane, pines and blue gums, which remove so much water out of the soil compared to natural vegetation, that the water table disappears. When it rains, the runoff hardly gets into the rivers and the rivers struggle to feed the estuary. The estuaries become too shallow for adult fish to come in and too silted and turbid for the plant life (like eel grasses) to grow that need to be there to make the nursery habitats.

The diversity just disappears as the estuary stops working.

“Take St. Lucia, which makes up something like 40% of South Africa’s estuarine surface area. It doesn’t function. It’s pretty much permanently closed and is now just a shallow silted-up bog. So that’s almost half their habitat gone straight away. I’ve seen photos from the ’50s, ’60s and ‘70s of people shoulder to shoulder, fighting and climbing over each other catching mountains of kob and shad and they just kept it all. There used to be the mullet run at St Lucia and that was when everything came, because the mullet would migrate to spawn and it was this big event.

None of that happens anymore. Nothing. So all the fish populations that used to rely on the mullet have gone or have had to move to less favorable environments and are less successful in their spawning which means there’s less recruitment the next year. The knock on impacts are massive.”

So where does all this leave us?

We know that our GTs probably travel further than most other GTs in order to keep their populations going.

We know that strong estuaries equal strong fisheries, not just for GTs but the many other species from kob, to

grunter and leervis that are as important to fly anglers (and our niche needs) as they are to the incredible biodiversity and food webs of our marine ecosystems.

We know that despite plenty of threats, GTs are relatively fast-growing and adaptable… to a point.

We know that the fabled fishing grounds of northern KwaZulu-Natal are not what they used to be and we need to remember that. Because, while it’s unlikely that we can reverse the damage done to our estuaries and bring those fisheries back to life, things can easily get worse if we do not protect the species and places that we have left.

Tess sums up the state of GTs when she says, “Compared to some other marine species, I think GTs are doing okay, but the pressure on marine ecosystems is insanely heavy and the problem of shifting baselines is severe. What we knew the oceans to be when we were children versus what our grandparents knew is vastly different. That’s why Andy’s experiences are so important. If, as a scientific exercise sampling the ecosystem, you could spend a day at sea fishing back then with what was probably very inferior kit and then look at what you bring home compared to today, the difference scientifically would be insane. We’ve got to remember those baselines, because we might think GTs are doing pretty well, but it’s relative because everything else is so trashed. How were GTs doing fifty years or a hundred years ago? There might still be a good few around today, but they’re in decline. We can’t be complacent. Properly working Marine Protected Areas are really critical. There’s a drive to declare thirty percent of the planet’s coastal waters protected by 2030. It’s something we definitely need to be striving for, but declaring is not enough. We need to be enforcing it, whether enforcing means ‘keep everybody out’, or establishing what the key species are and explaining that we don’t touch and this is why.”

B AC K I S S U E S ( CA P S A N D N E W T S ) MISSING A COPY? GET YOUR BACK ISSUES OF THE MISSION AND A R A N G E O F N E W L U C K Y C A P S AT T H E M I S S I O N F LY M A G . C O M

WE SHIP WORLDWIDE

Stephan Dombaj Jnr. of Fly Fishing Nation

L AT ES T R E L E A S ES

SALAD BAR XPLORER - T-50 TECH SERIES RODS Not only is the nomenclature of Xplorer’s new, redesigned T50 tech series of rods reminiscent of the deadly cyborgs of the Terminator franchise, but in the right hands these rods will prove just as deadly as a grumpy alpha-male Austrian called Ahnie. Designed with serious anglers and the comp crowd in mind, T50 tech rods are available in a 10’3-weight and a 10’5-weight, that extra length perfect for nymphing and useful for all-round use. Built off the same brilliant Japanese high modulus carbon blank as the rest of the range, these rods are extremely light and have a mediumfast action. The sensitive tip results in fast recovery speeds for accurate casting, easier bite detection and solid hook ups. Visually, the blank sports a classic matte brown finish with gold thread wraps with premium snub-nose, slimline, 3A grade cork grips with mini fighting butts. Inverted Alps Stripper guides and Alps light wire single foot guides (with an additional snake eye under the tip guide on the 3-weight model) complete the package. T50s come with a no-fuss lifetime guarantee. xplorerflyfishing.co.za

SCIENTIFIC ANGLERS - TAILOUT SCISSOR CLAMP & NIPPER You love lamp? We love clamp amigo, especially this versatile half smooth, half serrated item with built-in scissors. At 5.75” in length, with an ergonomic foam grip stainless steel construction and needle hook eye cleaner (cursed be the fly tyer who cleareth not the eyes of their flies), this clamp does everything you need. For ultraquick nips, turn to Scientific Anglers Tailout Nipper, which also features a needle for hook eyes, a wide coated grip for when it’s cold/slippery on the water and stainless steel cutting blades that get the job done one-time shoe-shine. scientificanglers.com, frontierflyfishing.com

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“DESIGNED WITH SERIOUS ANGLERS AND THE COMP CROWD IN MIND, AVAILABLE IN A 10’3-WEIGHT AND A 10’5-WEIGHT”

PATAGONIA - YULEX WADING SOCKS In South Africa, save for the depths of winter, for much of the year conditions are perfect for wet wading. Some people still like to wear layered hiking socks with their wading boots, which is perfectly fine, but if you like the idea of comfort, durability and just enough warmth to keep you going up rivers even when the water gets icy, Patagonia’s new Yulex™ Wading Socks with Gravel Guard deserve your attention. Made from the same stuff as Patagonia’s neoprene-free wetsuits with 85% natural rubber (harvested from hevea trees grown in Forest Stewardship Council® certified plantations) and 15% synthetic rubber by polymer content, they’re tough and super-comfy thanks to a dense footbed that minimizes compression. They feature fold-down gravel guards attach to wading boot laces with hooks. patagonia.com, xplorerflyfishing.co.za

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SCIENTIFIC FLIES - TIPPET AND LEADER MATERIAL Arno Laubscher, the brains behind Scientific Flies and Grip Hooks put in the R&D hours for his new range of SF Presentation leaders and SF UltraPolymer and Fluorocarbon tippet material, and it shows.

We’ve been testing them out mainly on our home trout streams of the Western Cape (with a side bae of smallmouth bass), where long leaders and delicate dry fly presentations are the name of the game. Thus far we have been suitably impressed. Available in 9 and 12-foot versions, the SF Presentation leaders in particular have been great for pinpoint accuracy of dry flies and nymphs and, when we went to the dark side and stripped a few wooly buggers through the bigger pools, they easily turned over heavier flies. When we needed to replace the tippet, modify our rig to a dry and dropper or extend the SF Presentation leader, we found the SF UltraPolymer and Fluorocarbon tippet material easily knottable, strong and effective.

Added bonus – they won’t break the bank. Available in 0x-7x at tackle shops nationwide. scientificfly.com

ORVIS BUG - OUT BACKPACK One bag to do it all? Orvis may just have pulled it off with the Bug-Out, a 25L flyfishing backpack made from recycled materials that also happens to be an extremely capable carry-on or overnight bag. One of its best features (and there are many) is the streamlined design which offers both top and side-entry access with internal zippered drop pocket and removable divider for gear storage options. It features a back panel with an integrated net holder for quick and easy storage of even larger guide nets.

Then there’s an external water bottle or rod tube holder with – get this - a deployable extension so you can lower the rod tube to shoulder height. Shoulder straps feature accessory docking stations and fly patch (so you still look like a fly fishing nerd on the plane), plus there are buckle receivers for Orvis’s compatible Chest Pack and Chest/ Hip Pack. Padded front pocket accommodates a hydration bladder or laptop and tuck-away hip straps distribute load. There’s even a nifty tricot-lined sunglass/phone pocket on the top flap. orvis.com, flyfishing.co.za

PELAGIC GEAR - 20OZ TUMBLER We’re temperature sensitive like fish, which means we like our morning drinks hot and our afternoon/evening drinks ice-cold.

Enter Pelagic Gear’s Tumbler range with their stainless steel, double-walled, vacuum-sealed body and copper-plated inner core which ensures that your ice will stay frozen and your drink will stay strong. pelagicgear.com, safarioutdoor.co.za

“YOUR ICE WILL STAY FROZEN AND YOUR DRINK WILL STAY STRONG.”

L AT ES T R E L E A S ES

SALAD BAR

SAGE – SENSE FLY ROD “I have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career like Czech nymphing, Polish nymphing, Spanish nymphing and French nymphing.

Skills that make me a nightmare for fish like you.“ We imagine if Liam Neeson was into Euro nymphing, he’d probably start each session riverside with some mild threats to scare the bejeesus out of the fish. He’d also probably be armed with Sage’s SENSE rod, which is specifically designed for the job of highly effective Euro nymphing. How so? Well, equipped with Sage’s Generation 5 Technology blank, the SENSE features a soft tip for increased effectiveness in working precise nymph rigs and protecting fine tippets. Not only does this mean

greater control than you might get from normal fast action multi-purpose rods, but once you hook up the tip absorbs shock and prevents “bounce” that might otherwise break off those fine tippets. The Yin to a soft tip Yang on the SENSE is the stout butt section which has more than enough backbone to give anglers the upper hand when fighting and controlling even the heftiest fish into the net.

The blanks feature a stealth grey color and black primary thread wraps. The lightweight Fuji stripper guide is optimally positioned for tight line nymphing while hard chromed snake guides, a snub-nosed half-wells cork handle and a matt black anodized aluminium down-locking reel seat complete the rig. Available in a 10’3-weight, a 10’6” 3-weight and a 10’4-weight. sageflyfish.com, frontierflyfishing.com

SIMMS – WADING STAFF & RETRACTOR The funny thing about wading is that you’re sure you are fine until – either through the difficulty of the conditions (snot-covered rocks, strong currents, deceptively deep pools) or advancing age – you’re not, which is why having a third leg in the shape of wading staff like this nifty number from Simms makes all the sense in the world. Made from lightweight yet highly durable 7075 aluminum tubing with a coated stainless steel cable and a ribbed closed-cell foam handle, it opens and closes in seconds like Daredevil’s blind man’s cane/nunchuks. The handle has multiple grab heights depending on what you are trying to achieve (e.g prodding the depths of a run vs short stabbing into a mountain side). Pair it with Simms’s wading staff retractor built with a 3-foot braided spectra cable and you will wade and fish with more confidence than ever. Bring on the rocks at Eendekuil. simmsfishing.com, frontierflyfishing.com

TRUE MERA - DRY BAG Named after Nepal’s highest trekking peak (as opposed to climbing peaks like Everest), True Mera make a range of outdoor clobber from clothing to packs like this affordable dry bag now available at Safari Outdoor. Made from 500D PVC material with abrasion resistance, it is waterproof and boasts a 35L capacity. Quick release buckles, roll-top closure, reflectors, a low-profile sternum strap, a waist belt for added support, an ergonomic back panel for comfort and reinforced, contoured shoulder straps for added comfort round out the features. truemerapeak.com, safarioutdoor.co.za

“MADE FROM 500D PVC MATERIAL WITH ABRASION RESISTANCE, IT IS WATERPROOF AND BOASTS A 35L CAPACITY”

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Remote Richtersveld Drift - Namibia

exclusive trout waters - DuLlSTROom

tigerfish experience - Pongola Mavungana Flyfishing Center

Main Road, Dullstroom, 013 254 0270

Mavungana Flyfishing JHB, Shop 3B

Illovo Square Shopping Center, 011 268 5850 travel@flyfishing.co.za

www.flyfishing.co.za

L AT ES T R E L E A S ES

SALAD BAR ORVIS - GUIDE HIP PACK Perhaps you’re the kind of angler who feels that wearing any sling or backpack is like having a small silent monkey hanging off your shoulders and back. If that’s the case maybe a hip pack (a small butt-hugging sloth) is more your style then. The Orvis Guide Hip Pack offers 9 liters of capacity and a highly innovative design to please any organizational perfectionist. Sporting the same recessed Tippet Whippet docking station the sling pack has, this sling also has a large main compartment (featuring a large fly patch toupée) with a zip pocket, drop-in pockets, and stretch mesh sorting pockets. Up front there’s a smaller compartment with mesh pockets. This sling’s substantial side panels both have zip pockets and hidden net

scabbards for easy instant access, while on the one side there’s a lo-pro zinger/nipper pass-through port and small zip pocket and a water bottle holder on the other. Included are two straps, one lightweight neck strap and one heavier shoulder strap with multiple docking stations, a zip pocket, and fly patch. orvis.com, flyfishing.co.za

ORVIS - GUIDE SLING PACK It used to be that choosing a sling pack always came with a compromise on space. Not so with Orvis’s Guide Sling Pack, which has shitloads of space for a full day out. Made from recycled materials, it boasts an 18L capacity divided between a large main body storage pocket with an internal stretch mesh stash spot and zippered pocket with key fob, a smaller main body zippered pocket with internal zip pocket and organizational drop pockets for smaller items. There’s also a front strap zippered pocket with hidebehind forceps stash, zinger docking station, fly patch, and rear D-ring. But it’s not just a cart-horse for your fly boxes, rain jacket, water, tools and accessories. A lot of R&D has gone into this range and it shows. From the ‘Tippet Whippet,’ a recessed docking station with tippet bar included for instant, fixed, and fumble-free access to up to six spools, to integrated net storage between the pack and the body for instant access, Orvis have thought of everything you might need and done away with anything you don’t. Other features include an adjustable sternum strap, zinger/nipper pass-through, easy-swing handle, water bottle pocket with elastic retainer, and ridged back panel for increased structural integrity and air flow. orvis.com, flyfishing.co.za

PATAGONIA - STEALTH WADER WORK STATION Designed to work with waders, but versatile enough to be attached to your hips via a wading belt or strapped to a backpack, Patagonia’s Stealth Wader Work Station hits that sweet spot between the minimalism and loadcapacity most of us crave. Low-bulk and water-resistant, it features a large zippered main pocket, two zippered accessory pockets, a rear security pocket, fly patch and tool docking stations. Integrated magnets on the pack front hold flies, nippers or hemos for quick, efficient fly changes. Made from 100% recycled nylon ripstop with a polyurethane coating on one side and a TPU coating on the reverse, it is Fair Trade Certified™ sewn. patagonia. com, xplorerflyfishing.co.za

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GLACIER – STRIPPER/FIGHTER GLOVES No, despite our art director’s incantations, Glacier Gloves’ stripper/fighter gloves were not designed for better grip in the Teasers All-In Mud Wrasslin’ Champs. Yes, they do provide vital protection in saving your hands from sun damage and your fingers from line cuts. The former is particularly important as anglers because while we cover up our limbs and wear hats to avoid the sun, we so often neglect to protect our hands. Or, if we do, we cover them in sun cream, which can then coat your flies. Island Styleflavoured streamers anyone? Glacier Gloves are available from Xplorer Fly Fishing in three ranges – the Fighting/ Stripping (fingerless, UPF 50,4 way stretch breathable nylon material, synthetic padded palms, quick dry), the Abaco and the Islamorada (both fingerless, UPF50, lightweight, breathable and quick dry). glacierglove.com, xplorerflyfishing.co.za

PELAGIC GEAR - PRO FISH SUNSHIELD If you’re the deep camo-type, a part-time stalker or perhaps just someone who likes proper sun protection, Pelagic’s Sunshield Pro 2.0 fishing face mask is made with you in mind John Rambo. Designed using a lightweight and breathable UPF 30+ fabric that can cover your head, neck and face. Features include an articulated nose and an enlarged mesh breathing zone along with strategically placed fine mesh panels so you can breathe easily without fogging up your sunnies. pelagicgear.com, safarioutdoor.co.za

SIMMS – CUTBANK SUN HAT It’s hot as Hades out there and it’s only going to get hotter with countries all over the world lodging record temperatures year on year. Nobody wants to spend hours at the dermatologist’s getting bits fried or cut off and one way to avoid that happening to your face is to wear a proper wide-brimmed hat. With an easy fit elastic sweatband for added comfort, a stampede strap for convenient around the neck wear and a crushable brim and crown for easy travel, this classic Western style from Simms made with 100% palm leaf looks as good on the water as it does at the beach. simmsfishing.com, frontierflyfishing.com

“NOBODY WANTS TO SPEND HOURS AT THE DERMATOLOGIST GETTING BITS FRIED OFF”

Photo Jana Snyman of cars.co.za

DEEP WANTS

PAY DAY THE OVERL ANDING CONVERSION OF YOUR BAKKIE’S DREAMS, THE CDC TOOL YOU NEVER KNEW YOU NEEDED AND A SILKY BOY FOR BUNDU BASHING

ALU-CAB – CANOPY CAMPER After a festive season break, no doubt you’ve got a stack of New Year’s resolutions and we wager somewhere near the top of the pile is a promise to spend more time in the Great Outdoors (fishing obviously). Then your enthusiasm wanes when you think about the ball-ache of finding all your camping gear each time you want to head out and the tedium of putting up and taking down a ground tent every time you want to explore a little further downstream. A brilliant way of getting around all that is by turning your bakkie/pick-up into your home away from home by converting it into a proper overlanding vehicle with overlanding gurus Alu-Cab’s revitalized Canopy Camper, the original iteration of which came out over ten years ago. The new one is ridiculously feature-rich with a dual-layer canvas rooftop tent, a flip-away bed (for ample headroom and standing space), side access canopy doors, a 270-degree shade awning and the ability to house a range of handy camping gear from a foldaway table and chairs, to a solar panel and charging system. We’ve seen this thing in action and we’ll be honest, the ease with which the owner set up everything in minutes, found everything he needed and packed up again when it was home time, made us green with envy. alu-cab.com

SWISS CDC – MULTI-LOOP TOOL Looking to up your CDC skills? Take a gander at Swiss CDC’s Multi-Loop tool. About the size of a bobbin in hand, this nifty stainless steel tool uses a completely different technique to the usual V-shaped loop tools, allowing you to easily make mixed material parachute hackles or strong and diverse dubbing strands incorporating different materials from dubbing, to flash, peacock herl and wire. swisscdc.com, streamandsea.com

SILKY – POCKET BOY Got some off-the grid bluelining planned for this year, with a generous side of bundu-bashing? Then for those moments deep in a remote valley where there’s no way through the thickets of alien vegetation but forward, you’re going to want a compact lightweight folding saw like the Silky Pocket Boy. Nicknamed ‘Little Giant’ due to its extraordinary cutting capacity, this sleek Japanese saw features a rust-resistant, hard chrome-plated, taper-ground 170mm blade with an impulse-hardened non-set tooth design for greater cutting efficiency. The blade locks securely into one of two open positions, in line with the handle and flush cutting. A non-slip rubberised handle provides a sure and comfortable grip. Perfect for clearing a path or getting firewood. justlikepapa.com

“NICKNAMED ‘LITTLE GIANT’ DUE TO ITS EXTRAORDINARY CUTTING CAPACITY”

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CRASH TEST DUMMIES

TYRE DEATH MATCH O U R I N - H O U S E A U T O M O T I V E E X P E R T S , WA R W I C K L E S L I E O F ALU-CAB AND NIC SCHWERDTFEGER OF REZLO RACING WEIGH IN O N A L L -T E R R A I N T Y R ES Photos Nic Schwerdtfeger, Flanker (CC. tyre code)

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UNCLE WARRELS Maxxis Razr AT

UNCLE NIC BF Goodrich AT

Uncle Warrels and Uncle Nic, I have just invested in my first proper 4x4 (a sweet Landcruiser 76) and I want some advice on which tyres to go for? It’s going to be used both in the city for regular weekday driving and off-road in the country on weekends and holidays. Is there a tyre that hits that sweetspot? Kevin the Adventurer from Kloof (KAK).

NIC: Hang on. What sidewall ply is this naaier tyre? Why would I buy this over a new 3-ply sidewall BFG?

WARRELS: Well KAK, until recently there were only two real options, BFGoodrich (aka BFGs) and Cooper. I have used both, but more of the Cooper. BFGs chip, and Coopers need a lot of TLC, balancing etc.

NIC: I’ll have to read a bit before I decapitate Warrels with my rebuttal.

NIC: I’ve also had both. I had Cooper STT Pro Discoverers. They were like any muds, but louder. My recommendation would be the BFG AT (All Terrain). Always. But hang on. Warrels, you said until recently there were only two options. What’s changed?

WARRELS: I recently had a set of the new Maxxis Razr AT fitted to my car. So far they have incredibly low road noise, great grip in the wet, and they look good. It is a good 50/50 option with the manners of a 100% on-road tyre. From my limited experience of the new Maxxis, it appears that they have moved the tech along and left the old stalwarts, BFG and Cooper, in their dust.

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WARRELS: Because it incorporates new technologies. At the risk of making you sound like an anti-vaxxer, “Do your research Nic,” because Maxxis certainly have.

THE SOUND OF A FISH EAGLE INTERSPERSED WITH DIALUP INTERWEBS NOISES AS NIC CONSULTS THE NORTH WIND, GOOGLE AND SOME TOW TRUCK DRIVERS NIC: Look, the 3-ply sidewall is essential to avoid punctures. In the advert I have seen for Maxxis it shows both a Mud Terrain and an All-Terrain and says the 3-ply sidewall is available in specific sizes. That could mean the Mud Terrain only or the All Terrain only. It will be interesting if they cleared up which one actually has the 3-ply sidewall. As far as I know, on BF 80s, KO 2s and KO 3s - they all come with a 3-ply sidewall, which is why they are better. Another thing to consider is that Maxxis is very new on the 4x4 scene. Yes, they made the Bighorn, but it’s going to take a lot of work to convince guys that are into proper overlanding who want an AT tyre to go away from a brand like

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Do you understand the language of rubber? Check out the tyre code above.

BFG that they know and trust. It’s like trying to convince me to drink something that tastes like Coke, but isn’t Coke. Just give me a Coke. Or here’s a reel that looks a lot like a Shilton, but is not a Shilton.

WARRELS: Like KAK, what I was looking for was for a comfortable tyre, that is pliable onroad and is quiet. I did a fair amount of research. I found that BFG have been left a little bit behind, they’re not really keeping up with the times. Cooper are a maintenance nightmare. As for the Maxxis Bighorns, they were shit, I never really liked them. I did my homework on the Maxxis Razr and so far the on-road manners have been amazing.

While Maxxis may be new to 4x4 tyres, they are not new at tyres. They’ve been making mountain bike and motorbike tyres for a hell of a long time and as far as I am concerned the tech in those things is probably more crucial than in a vehicle in terms of weight constraints etc. They definitely know how to put a tyre together. I am always willing to try something new and it’s not like Maxxis is a start-up company like Taylor was.

NIC: Still, brand loyalty is why most okes will go BFG. The BFG AT, that’s your Leatherman, your go-to that does everything pretty well. There might be a quieter tyre in terms of on-road noise, and a better one for off-road performance, and there’s

probably a more durable tyre out there too, but it’s going to take a lot to convince off-roaders that another tyre beats the BFG overall. I’m talking about the one-track ‘ek wil net fokken BFGs he’ public in South Africa. So, unless the Maxxis gives head or they’re half price, I’m not sold. Yet. I like that there’s a challenger and I’m all for the underdog, but they have to be worth their salt.

WARRELS: You’re right, they’re not entirely track proven yet, and they a fight on their hands convincing brand loyal South Africans to trust them, but some of the major guys in Ozzie are running them and the reports are good.

So far I am very impressed. It will be interesting to put a couple of thousand kilometers through them in Namibia and see how they hold up trip-wise, but so far so good. Time will tell.

WA N D S

RE-THINKING THE ULTIMATE SMALL STREAM FLY ROD FROM CARBON FIBRE TO B A M B O O A N D G L A S S , U LT R A LIGHTWEIGHT BLANKS TO THOSE W I T H A L I T T L E M O R E H E F T, R O D S D E S I G N E D F O R T R AV E L A N D O N E P I E C E R O D S T H AT A LW AY S S TAY RIGGED, ED HERBST HAS SPENT YEARS WORKING ON THE IDEA OF T H E U LT I M AT E S M A L L S T R E A M F LY R O D . I N A O N E - P I E C E C T S G L A S S R O D B U I LT B Y D E R E K S M I T H , H E M AY J U S T H AV E H A D H I S E U R E K A M O M E N T.

The south-easterly wind was called the ‘Cape Doctor’ in colonial times because the residents in South Africa’s founding city believed that it swept away the ubiquitous refuse and the maladies associated with this malodorous situation.

Fly anglers find Cape Town’s summer gales far from benign, particularly when they blow downstream and, when I moved to the city and joined the Cape Piscatorial Society 40 years ago, I really struggled.

In my beginner’s ignorance I assumed that line weight rather than line speed was the answer and I acquired a nine foot six weight carbon fibre Orvis rod.

At the time I had started fishing with Tony Biggs, originator of that legendary dry fly, the RAB. Tony fished a six and a half foot, split cane Lee Wulff Midge made by Farlowes, who rated it a five weight. Tony underlined it with a four weight line to speed it up.

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Ed Herbst tests out the CTS rod he had built for Western Cape small streams (left and centre) and rod-builder Derek Smith with the rod outside the Red Cross Children’s Hospital (right).

As it so happened, when we arrived at the stream on the first occasion that I used my new rod, there was brisk downstream breeze and I knew that I had called it right. I had brought a knife to a knife fight and Biggsy was going to struggle with his toothpick.

Big mistake.

When we broke for a midday sandwich and coffee I admitted defeat and asked Tony if I could try his rod.

I was astonished.

Short rods cast tight loops, the split cane rod loaded well under its own weight and Tony was better-equipped on the day.

I was reminded of this occasion recently when I bought Yuki Bando’s book Mostly Bamboo – Eighteen Bamboo, Fiberglass and Graphite Fly Rod Makers in Japan (Flybito Press 2020).

One of his interviewees is Satoshi Maruyama – nickname So - who makes a radical carbon fibre rod called the Solid Octagon: ‘So believes most of the major rod makers have been too enthusiastic about making fly rods lighter for years. If you use a light fly rod, it is difficult to turn over a fly with a 12foot leader of 6X in a short distance. It is just because the rod does not have enough weight to bring the fly, tippet, and leader forward.’

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My perception now is that the greater weight of a fiberglass rod would make it load more easily for shortrange casts than carbon fibre and that this, along with its lesser expense and acknowledged durability, explains the substantial growth in the number of rod makers who sell custom, light-line fly rods which are ideal for small streams.

My previous collaboration with fellow Capetonian Stephen Boshoff – renowned for his superb centre axis split cane rods – in the search for the ultimate small stream fly rod is detailed in two articles. The first, ‘The One-off One Weight’ (2002) can be found in the Tackle folder on the website of the Cape Piscatorial Society and the second, in 2010, ‘The Search for the Ultimate Small Stream Fly Rod’ can be found on Tom Sutcliffe’s web site.

Derek Smith has been building fly rods since 1987 and I asked him to incorporate all our previous ideas, the ‘Palm Grip’ and Lefty Kreh’s idea of offsetting the guides towards the line hand in a three weight rod built on a CTS blank as a charity rod to be auctioned for the benefit of the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town.

To enhance performance and feel and lower weight, I specified a single piece blank for those who park their vehicles within walking distance of the streams they fish.

The resulting rod surpassed my expectations when I cast it on the lawn of the retirement home where I live, justifying my belief that CTS is the world leader in fibreglass blank manufacture.

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“AN AFFORDABLE, RUGGED AND ATTRACTIVE ROD WHICH WILL ENHANCE THE EXPERIENCE OF THOSE WHO LOVE WHAT ERNEST SCHWEIBERT CALLED ‘THE SONG OF THE LITTLE STREAM’.”

They will design and manufacture a blank to your specifications in a huge range of colours.

Frontier Fly Fishing in Johannesburg has donated an iconic small stream reel, the Sage Click and a Sci-Anglers Mastery fly line to the project.

So far, the fly fishing community has raised R575 000 for the hospital and the money raised by the winning bid on this rod, reel and line will help equip the newly-built emergency centre.

To get photographs to illustrate this article, the editor fished it on a local trout stream.

He confirms my belief that Derek Smith’s execution of the brief’s design parameters, combined with the technological excellence of the CTS blank, has produced an affordable, rugged and attractive rod which will enhance the experience of those who love what Ernest Schweibert called ‘The Song of the Little Stream’.

Ed’s small stream glass rod, the Sage reel and Scientific Anglers fly line could be yours via silent auction. Simply email your bid to info@themissionflymag.com with your full name, telephone number and delivery address in case you turn out to be the lucky bidder. The winning bid will be announced at the end of March.

THE TAYLOR SWIFT TEST

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The Mission editor Tudor Caradoc-Davies tests the rod on the Smalblaar river Beat 1.

hen Ed told me about this one-piece CTS glass rod he had made by Derek Smith, it sounded like my kind of rod. On our skinny Cape streams down in the Western Cape of South Africa, I usually fish a 7’6” 4-weight Epic glass rod (coincidentally also built by Derek Smith) from The Swift Fly Fishing Company, another New Zealand rod brand. For these streams most people fish a 2 or 3-weight and I used to too until I won the Epic on auction and gave it a bash. For dry fly fishing (Cape Doctor or no Cape Doctor), it handles all conditions and kicks ass, plus even small fish put a satisfying bend in the rod while it can handle much bigger fish too. I call it my Taylor Swift outfit as it’s paired with a Taylor reel.

I tested the CTS for Ed and absolutely loved the rod, but probably for slightly different reasons to the ones that motivated Ed’s decades-long quest. Here’s what I found: IT’S NOT SUPER LIGHT I get the appeal of light rods, but I’ve never really understood the obsession with rods so light they feel like little more than a piece of grass in hand. It always felt like it was one of those pointless arms races humans engage in, like that period in the early 90s when tiny phones were all the rage, or the ongoing fixation with uber-expensive watches that can handle being 300m underwater (when most people never dive deeper than the deep end of a swimming pool). This rod has a comforting weight to it that gave me confidence from the get-go.

IT CAN HANDLE THE DOCTOR The day I tested this rod, the morning started off relatively still but by 11-12am the wind was gusting downstream

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and getting our dries down where wanted them to be became a lot harder. I adjusted my cast to make a faster, punchier forward cast and the CTS one-piece did the rest, laying down RABs and hoppers exactly where I wanted them in the bubble line.

IT’S A SHOCK-ABSORBER I have a tendency, especially in the early season when I’m a little too eager and rusty, to strike too hard. On carbon fiber rods I’ve found that can result in small fish flying through the air or the 6x tippet breaking. Glass small stream rods like the CTS and Taylor Swift are forgiving, protect the tippet by acting as a shock absorber between the lightning fast strike of our small stream rainbows and the over-enthusiastic/clumsy movements of the angler.

IT’S TOUGH Another reason I like glass rods, especially where the wading is challenging, is because they are incredibly hardy. Having had a few knee reconstructions over the years, I tend to wipe out a lot and as such Taylor Swift has come in for the kind of abuse the mere thought of which would have snapped a 000-weight carbon-fiber rod. The CTS is equally tough and will do duty for you for years to come.

IT’S PRACTICAL Even though I live 45 minutes away from the streams, I love the idea of a one-piece, a rod designed so specifically for regular fishing on hyper-local waters that you need never break it down. When not fishing, hang it from the wall so that it speaks to you every day, asking you to take it out for another session.

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LIFER

BORN TO WIN O N E O F S O U T H A FRI CA’ S M OST SUCCESSFUL TEN NIS PL AY ERS EV ER ( W I MB L E D O N A ND U S O P E N MIX ED DOUBLES CHAMPION AN D A CAREER H I G H S I N G LES RA NK O F NO. 7 I N THE WORLD), THESE DAYS YOU’RE LIK E LY TO F I N D GR EER L EO- SM I TH ( NEÉ STEVENS) PARTICIPATIN G IN SOUT H A F R I CA N CO M P E T I T I VE FLY FI SHING EV EN TS, FIGURIN G OUT Y ELLOWF ISH B OT H I N GA BO N A ND AT HOME, OR KICKIN G BACK IN THE BUSH. Photos. Greer Leo-Smith

The first fish I remember catching was a bass with my eldest son and father-in-law on our farm in Pietermaritzburg.

I grew up in Pietermaritzburg. I was based out of Boston in the USA during my tennis career. After I got married, we lived on our farm in the Umgeni Valley in KwaZulu-Natal. Then my husband Kevin started putting farms together to form Phinda Game Reserve so we moved there for a couple of years, then Kwando Safaris in Maun, Botswana, followed by Johannesburg and now the Rietspruit Game Reserve in Hoedspruit.

I’ve had many different jobs/roles. Professional tennis player. Mother. Owner of Eagle Air in Botswana. Head of performance tennis and coaching for South African Tennis. Fed Cup Captain. I now have Greer’s Sport and Cycling/Giant Hoedspruit.

On a typical day I am up early then I head into the shop. Every evening I go on a game drive with my husband Kevin on the Rietspruit Game Reserve. If the chance arises, I sneak off fishing either on the Blyde River or I travel to Nooitgedacht Trout Lodge or the Sabie River.

My home waters would be the Blyde River below the Blyde Dam in Mpumalanga. Hoedspruit Fly Fishing Club now has some water on the Blyde River and we are very grateful to the farmers who allow us to fish on their properties. It is tough fishing as the Lowveld yellows are very challenging and we are still trying to crack the code.

If this is not challenging enough, we have to be on the lookout for crocs and hippos.

The best advice I have ever been given is to believe in yourself. If you have the dream, you can make it happen.

What I am most proud of is probably not giving up

on a dream. After a major knee injury in 1978 everyone said I would never compete again. Eight months later I came back wearing a big brace. I beat Chris Evert (world Number One at the time) in the first round of the 1979 Virginia Slims of Hollywood event and then went on to win the tournament. I was never out of the top Ten ladies ranking for the rest of my career.

Something I have had to work at in life is to stay focused. If I am not interested in something, I kind of get easily distracted. What’s come naturally to me is sport. If I have a passion for something I can normally achieve some success.

The most satisfying fish I ever caught was a yellowfish on the Nyanga River in Gabon. It was an amazing experience as no one had fly fished the river before. Trying to find out what fly to use was challenging. In the end I went for a mop (I know the purist are shocked) as it resembled the palms that were fruiting at the time.

One place, never again, is Armenia. It was one of the dirtiest countries I have ever been to and, as a woman, I felt very uncomfortable. It was made harder trying to look after four very attractive young ladies that were part of the SA Fed Cup team.

One place I have to return to is New Zealand. I would like to go back to explore and fish their amazing rivers with the friends I made during the Commonwealth Fly fishing Competition in New Zealand. Our time there was rather stressful as it was the start of Covid and we were dealing with the uncertainty of flights home. Plus, two of my team members were not able to compete due to a sinus infection and the covid tests taking so long to process meant that they didn’t get to fish the competition. It was a nightmare. I also have family in New Zealand so the incentive is two-fold.

“THE MORE I FISH AND LEARN, THE MORE I ENJOY THE CHALLENGE. FLY FISHING FEEDS MY SOUL.” 88

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“I’D LIKE TO CATCH TARPON AND BONE FISH ON FLY BEFORE I DIE.” It’s never okay for an angler to lie, except when you are out-fishing your son.

The handiest survival skill I have is being able to make a plan. After living in the bush, I am pretty good at that.

I’d like to catch tarpon and bone fish on fly before I die.

What I get out of fly fishing has changed over the years. The more I fish and learn, the more I enjoy the challenge. Fly fishing feeds my soul.

The best way to face one’s fears is head on.

Looking back on my life, I would not change anything.

I have had an amazing life. The challenges and success have been many. Sport is a way of life for me and I am lucky to have been able to compete in a number of different sports after tennis. Having a husband who has exposed me and our boys to the wonders of Africa and who has encouraged me to live life to the full has been wonderful.

In my experience, the hardest species to target are the Lowveld yellows on our local waters.

The last fish I caught was a rainbow trout on the Blyde River at Pilgrims Rest.

In terms of a single experience, the biggest adventure I have ever been on was definitely walking the forest elephant trails and exploring the Nyanga and Douky Rivers on the Nyanga Ranch in Gabon. I also caught a tetra using a bow and arrow cast while sitting in the fork of a tree, which was a first for me.

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LEARN MORE

POP QUIZ S M A R T A L EC K O R S I M P L E S I M O N ? S E E I F YO U ’ V E B E E N PAY I N G AT T E N T I O N W H I L E R E A D I N G T H I S I S S U E ( H O P E F U L LY N O T J U S T L O O K I N G AT F I S H P I C S ) B Y TA K I N G O U R Q U I Z .

2. According to Gerald Penkler, what do the Dutch feed the Wels catfish (page 32)?

A. Stroopwaffels made with Shell’s financial statements pertaining to oil and gas rights in African countries.

B. Bitterbollen in the shape of Johan Cruyff’s gonads.

C. Anglers who break the code of Omerta.

D. Geert Wilders drenched in Hollandse Haring.

E. Short people.

3. What has guide Luke Pannell picked up from guiding (page 26) A. A really nasty rash.

B. Sun damage.

C. Dance moves.

D. Latin.

E. A deep working knowledge of profanity.

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4. The editor’s go-to small stream set-up is nicknamed (page 84) A. Baby Jake.

B. Lady Gaga.

C. Justin Trousersnake.

D. Gogga.

E. Taylor Swift.

5. If the Mozambican spawning aggregation is Matric Rage / Spring Break for randy GTs, Mtentu is (page 50) A. Your mum’s house for Sunday roast.

B. A spa session for getting rid of parasites.

C. A safe space from anglers, boats and nets.

D. All of the above.

6. Which of the following has Greer Leo-Smith not ticked (page 88)?

A. Beating Chris Evert at tennis.

B. Out-fishing her son.

C. Falling in love with Armenia.

D. Catching yellowfish in Gabon.

E. Figuring out Lowveld yellows.

Answers: 1. B & C, 2. C, 3. E, 4. E, 5. D, 6. C&E

1. When he’s not chasing smallmouth bass, witvis, yellowfish, trout, grunter and kob, what else does LeRoy Botha catch (page 20)?

A. The blues.

B. Catfish.

C. Turds.

D. Covid.

E. Bilharzia.

W W W. T H E M I S S I O N F LY M A G . C O M

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LIFE IS ABOUT CHOICES

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH THE TIME YOU CARVE OUT FOR YOURSELF THIS YEAR? HIT THE CAPE STREAMS FOR AMAZING WATER, PRETTY TROUT AND A SOUL REBOOT? SEE A NEW SIDE OF THE FARM ANIMALS OF YOUR YOUTH BY TARGETING BIG BERG RIVER CARP THAT WILL MAKE YOU RESPECT THEM? PLUG IN TO THE BEST WESTERN CAPE SALT AT KAROOLSKRAAL ON THE AMAZING BREEDE RIVER AND TRY FOR THE SLAM OF A GRUNTER, A KOB AND A LEERVIS IN ONE DAY? FROM HOSTED TRIPS TO ONE-ON-ONE OR COUPLES GUIDING, GET IN TOUCH WITH LUCKY BASTARDS TO MAKE THAT OFF TIME WORTH REMEMBERING. EMAIL INFO@THEMLUCKYBASTARDS.COM FOR MORE.

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