6 minute read
THE FEATHERS AWARD
IN ONLY THE SECOND ITERATION OF THIS COMPETITION, WE WERE SERVED UP OUR FIRST DRAW. BUT WE HAVE IT ON GOOD AUTHORITY THAT THAT’S LIKE KISSING YOUR SISTER, SO WE FOUND A WAY TO FIND A WINNER.
We 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.”
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!
