LIFER
THE ALL ROUNDER FROM REPRESENTING, C A P TA I N I N G A N D C O A C H I N G S O U T H A F R I C A N F LY F I S H I N G TEAMS ALL OVER THE WORLD, TO WHISPERING TO SPOTTED GRUNTER ON THE SANDBANKS OF THE BREEDE RIVER, FIGHTING GEETS IN THE INDIAN OCEAN OR SNAPPER IN GABON, WE KNOW VERY FEW ANGLERS WHO C A N M AT C H M C C O E T Z E R F O R ALL-ROUND SKILLS. MASSIVE STREAMERS, MICRO-NYMPHS, S A LT, F R E S H , B I G O R S M A L L , M C W I L L O U T- F I S H U S A L L . Photos. Conrad Botes, Jannie Visser and Matt Gorlei
Nobody else in my family has any interest in fishing so, as a kid, getting to water was always a challenge. I can remember my Dad buying my first solid glass fibre bait fishing rod with a grinder when I was probably about six years old. I used this rod to catch canary kurper on worms in the Hartebeespoort Dam. When you grow up in a nonfishing family your fishing only really starts when you get your driving licence and I was no exception. All of a sudden, I could go and fish as often as I’d like. I grew up in Pretoria and lived there until I finished varsity in 1995. Varsity wasn’t so much about studying law as it was about catching as many barbel on fly as possible. I used to take a drive out to Hartebeespoort Dam to catch barbel almost every single day of the season and most weekends were spent chasing trout in Mpumalanga or yellows on the Vaal River. The day that I wrote my last exam paper I jumped on a plane to Mozambique and lived there for about two years before moving down to Cape Town in 1997. While studying I worked as a waiter and, to fund my fishing tackle, I also tied flies commercially for Solly’s Anglers’ Corner. Owner Ebrahim Mia kept a book where he recorded all the flies I delivered to him and the cost of my fly fishing tackle was simply deducted from the
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value of flies I had supplied. I tied only four patterns. For barbel it was the good old Half Chicken and for saltwater it was Surf Candies, Deceivers and Clousers. After varsity I spent two years guiding on Bazaruto Island, Mozambique. I was supposed to go there to start a fly-tying factory for Flyfishers Unlimited but guiding offered me more time to fly fish, so the factory idea quickly fell way. I moved to Cape Town where I ran a fly fishing store for Flyfishers Unlimited for a couple of years before getting married and, due to severe spousal pressure, started a real nine-to-five job as an attorney. In terms of routine, I get up before five every morning and every day starts with a cup of coffee at the fly-tying desk before heading to the office. When I was a kid I told my folks that I would never do the whole nine-tofive work thing the way they did. They remind me of this as often as possible.
W W W. T H E M I S S I O N F LY M A G . C O M
