5 minute read
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.
Photos. Leonard Flemming, Jeff Tyser, Ben Pellegrini
Zulu 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.
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.
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.
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…
