15 minute read
Lifer
LIFER THE ALL ROUNDER
FROM REPRESENTING, CAPTAINING AND COACHING SOUTH AFRICAN FLY FISHING 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 CAN MATCH MC COETZER FOR ALL-ROUND SKILLS. MASSIVE STREAMERS, MICRO-NYMPHS, SALT, FRESH, BIG OR SMALL, MC WILL OUT-FISH US ALL.
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 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.
Smokin’ MC Coetzer busting out casts on a remote estuary in Gabon.
Cape Town, where I live, offers a pretty diverse range
of fishing options. You can be fishing a dry fly for trout in a wild freestone river; casting at yellowfin tuna; walking a sand flat for grunter or catching Cob in the surf all within two hours from home. My first choice would, however, always be to wade a white sand flat at Infanta for cruising grunter.
The best advice I have ever been given was, “You only live once, make the most of it.”
When it comes to the most satisfying fish I have ever
caught, many fish come to mind but one that stands out is a parrot fish I caught at Bassas da India (a French atoll in the southern Mozambique Channel). We were getting loads of hook ups on these parrot fish that weighed probably seven to ten kilos, but we were hooking them on the edge of a sharp coral drop off where almost every fish would pop the forty pound fluoro. After three days I finally managed to land my first fish and even that one would have reefed me if my friend, Jannie Visser, hadn’t run out ahead of the fish to block its route to the edge of the coral. Proper happiness!
One place I have to return to on the saltwater side is
definitely Bassas da India. From a fishing perspective Bassas is like a snap shot of what all our waters must have been like a thousand years ago. I had dreamt of fishing Bassas since learning of it back in the 1990s but it was only in 2011 that we managed to get a group together to actually go there. The trip was littered with incidents where things could have gone horribly wrong but, despite our skipper, our group of friends made it through with some serious memories and fish. Unfortunately, it’s virtually impossible to get to Bassas anymore but if the French government should fall or go broke to the extent that they
cannot afford to patrol the waters around it, I’ll be on the first yacht out there. On the freshwater side it will have to be the Ribnik River in Bosnia. I have not seen a better and more technical sight fishery for large grayling and brown trout anywhere else. This is unquestionably a river that everybody should get to fish at least once in their lives. I don’t regret going fishing anywhere in the world but I’d be very hard pressed to fish a commercial trout fishery. As long as the company is good you can put me on any piece of water.
I’ve been involved in competitive fly fishing since 2001 and in that time I’ve avoided the debate between
guys who are in favour of or against comp fishing. It’s definitely the safer space to be in and I do not believe that it’s possible to change the views expressed by the small group of very vocal fly fishers on either side of the debate. I can understand that a lot of guys believe that our sport is not one that should be competitive as it goes against tradition or the ethos of the sport. It makes absolute sense and to an extent I agree with this attitude. Comp fishing is however much more than simply seeing who can catch the most fish to get bragging rights. If that is your goal, then you are definitely in the wrong place. Only a very small portion of fly fishers in South Africa take part in competitive fly fishing and I believe that the guys who do not take part are missing out on the best learning experience available. In other parts of the world comp fishermen are seen as the driving force behind the development of new tackle and they’re certainly at the forefront of developing new techniques. The relationship between European freshwater comp fishermen and the development of tackle and techniques is very similar to the relationship between saltwater guides and the development of saltwater tackle and techniques. If you are opposed to the idea of competition in flyfishing, then don’t compete but, do yourself a favour and spend a day with somebody like Daniel Factor or Maddy Rich. You will learn more in a day’s fishing with them, than you will learn in many years of fly fishing on your own or from speaking to somebody in a tackle shop. Their knowledge and enthusiasm will definitely have a positive impact on your fishing. The vast majority of comp fishers take part in the sport not to win a competition, but simply to get better at what they enjoy because of the knowledge that is shared freely between even opposing teams. Non-competitive fly fishers seem to believe that the competition guys only use Czech Nymphing techniques and that this is not “real” fly fishing. To do well at competitive fly fishing you have to learn how to fish all the techniques out there and these include fishing tiny dry flies, swinging wet flies, dry-anddropper techniques and every other available technique. Technically the fishing is now extremely refined and there is a lot to learn from the competitive guys. If you don’t like one or the other technique, then don’t use it, but go and experience what they have to offer before you knock it.
Comp fishing has allowed me to fish for trout and grayling on some of the best rivers and still waters
in the world. Not only do you get to fish these waters, you do so with the most knowledgeable local fly fishers and, after the actual competition, you get to fish with and discuss the fisheries with the best international competition guys. Besides being exposed to different waters and techniques that I would never have learnt, it’s taught me to pay attention to those aspects that you have control over. Always do proper research (even for a social trip), get your rigging and fly-tying spot on and work hard when you’re fishing. You cannot control the bad weather or the cold water but if you prepare well and work hard, you can make the most of the shitty hand that you’re dealt or you can really knock it out the park on those days when the stars align. I’ve been coaching the junior Protea fly fishing teams since 2008 and through the years I’ve met and fished with some incredibly talented youngsters. Guys like Daniel Factor, Matt Gorlei, Christiaan Pretorius and Nick van Rensburg come to mind but there are many more. It’s been such a privilege to fish with all of them and it’s great to be able to watch them grow older and wiser as they go about their lives.
Modern nymph fishing techniques (as a group of different styles) are commonly referred to as Euro
Nymph fishing. When somebody explains the basic ideas to you it seems fairly simple but believe me, it’s not that easy at all and I work at it at whenever I get to fish for trout or yellowfish. For the past number of years I’ve enjoyed fishing a single micro nymph most of all. The challenge is to control the sink rate and remain in contact with small #18 or #20 nymphs at long range. This is an ongoing process that I may never get quite right but I catch enough fish while trying. The best way to face one’s fears is with an attorney and a doctor.
I am very happy with life in general. If I can spend more time with my family and go on a few more incredible fishing trips with close friends I’ll die a happy man.
I have no doubt that spotted grunter on sand with clean
water is the greatest challenge on a fly. Up until about five years ago it was a rarity to see anybody fish for grunter on fly and we pretty much had the mud flats to ourselves. Sight fishing JAMs to tailing fish was challenging but we got enough fish to keep us interested. This all changed when Floating Turd flies started popping up and all of a sudden every Tom, Dick and Harry was catching grunter by the dozen. The mud flats were crowded with fly fishers and everybody was catching fish. Make no mistake, I also fish Turds a lot, but it’s a pretty brainless pursuit. I always think of it as being the same as fishing a small lake stocked with a single hatchery-bred trout. You keep on casting and eventually he’s going to find the fly and when he does he’s going to smash it like there’s no tomorrow. Sometimes fish are just dumb like that. On sand, grunter are a completely different kettle of fish. Most people consider permit to be the ultimate challenge on a fly. I’m no expert at catching permit and, in fact, I’ve only ever caught one, so take my opinion on this with a big pot of salt. As I see it, the “problem” with permit isn’t so much to get them to eat as it is in actually getting enough shots at them. With grunter you can sometimes get hundreds of shots at cruising fish per session but these fish on sand are generally not there to feed. They are simply waiting on the tide or moving along the edges of slight depressions to get to deeper channels. Convincing one to eat a fly that they’re not expecting to find on sand is a proper challenge. Jannie and I spend a lot of time chasing Grunter on sand and we are relatively successful. We firmly believe that the only reason why we catch more fish than our friends is that we have absolute confidence in the flies we fish. The flies are no better than anybody else’s flies, it’s just that we believe that we will find the “right” fish and that he will eat the fly when we cross paths.
In the early days fishing was, for me, only about
catching fish… as many big fish as I could lay my hands on and the flavour didn’t matter one bit. Over the last number of years the whole experience has however become more important. Fishing with good friends is now the most important aspect for me and I’ll happily watch my mates fish without the need to rush onto the water to get my fair share of pulls. Rough trips down the Orange River in the Richtersveld or to a jungle fishery in Gabon with close friends is as good as life can get. The last fish I caught was a yellowfin tuna off Cape Point.
POP QUIZ
DO YOU HAVE A BEAUTIFUL MIND OR DO YOU NEED TO REWIND? TAKE OUR QUIZ TO SEE WHAT YOU MANAGED TO PICK UP FROM THE PAGES OF THIS ISSUE.
1. Which of the following was not something Leigh Perkins was known for (page 22)
A. Wearing a freshly butchered deer skin to dinner. B. Eating the contents of the crop of the first bird dropped on a shoot. C. Bringing his first turkey of the season into the bed he shared with his wife. D. Letting his dogs through the lounge window so they could climb on the couches. E. His chicken soup recipe.
2. The tributary of the Bokspruit fished by Pierre Joubert and his mates was (page 34)
A. The Bokdrol B. The Snotkop C. The Bothwell D. The Skepskop E. The Rifle F. The Bomb
3. The pinky finger on Jasper Pääkkönen’s left hand, which he almost lost to a GT incident in the Seychelles, is famous for (page 48)
A. Fokkol. B. In Vikings, during the second Battle of Kattegat, just as his brother Harald impaled him on a spear, Jasper as Halfdan held up his pinky to mock his brother’s manhood one last time before heading to the all you can eat buffet in Valhalla. C. As KKK zealot Felix Kendrickson in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, while his right hand pointed a gun, the left pinky operated the polygraph test that Kendrickson forced Adam Driver’s character, Flip Zimmerman, to take because Kendrickson suspected Flip of being Jewish. D. In Da 5 Bloods Jasper played Seppo Havelin (a name derived from Jasper’s father’s first name and his mother’s maiden name), a member of landmine removal experts LAMB. His left pinky stirs a drink in a Ho Chi Minh City bar, before later getting blown up with the rest of him when he ran over a landmine.
4. Which of the following is not a viable target on fly in Chinko (page 68)
A. Carassius auratus B. Hydrocynus vittatus C. Lates niloticus D. Chrysichthys cranchi E. Heterobranchus longifilis F. Labeo lineatus
5. Which animals were Milan Germishuizen and Justin Rollinson not worried about while fishing the river at Tintsawalo Lapalala in the Waterberg (page 82)
A. Snappy flat-dogs B. Spotted death-cats C. Vindictive danger-cows D. Eagles of Death Metal E. Slither-Me-Timbers F. Ill-tempered aqua-pigs
6. If the French government were to fall or go broke tomorrow, MC Coetzer would (page 102)
A. Hold them to account in court and recommend the guillotine. B. Light a smoke, pour a glass of red and ask Brigitte Macron for a date. C. Storm the Bastille, fly rod in hand. D. Be on the first yacht to Bassas da India. E. Challenge the intellectual copyright around French nymphing.
Answers: 1. A & E, 2. E, 3. A, 4. A (goldfish), 5. D, 6. B (probably) and D
KOBTOBER!
EVERY YEAR ON THE BREEDE RIVER, FROM SEPTEMBER INTO OCTOBER (AKA KOBTOBER) AND NOVEMBER, THE KOB FISHING MOVES INTO ANOTHER GEAR, WHILE THE SPOTTED GRUNTER ALSO COME OUT TO PLAY.
HAVING CONSULTED THE LOCALS, EVALUATED THE TIDES AND SACRIFICED TO THE GODS, LUCKY BASTARDS HAS SECURED THE PRIME WEEKS AT KAROOLSKRAAL FLY FISHING CAMP OVER THIS PERIOD.
ACCOMMODATION IS IN COMFORTABLE SAFARI TENTS (YOU CAN STAND UP IN THEM) AND ALL MEALS ARE INCLUDED. ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS ROCK UP AND FISH TO YOUR HEART’S CONTENT.
BOOK NOW TO JOIN LUCKY BASTARDS FOR SOME OF THE BEST SALTWATER FLY FISHING IN SOUTH AFRICA.
EMAIL INFO@THEMLUCKYBASTARDS.COM TO SECURE YOUR SPOT.
