23 minute read
STERKIES FOR NOOBS
STERK FONTEIN FOR NOOBS
Old Sterkies hand? Then there’s a good chance this article will make you yawn and mutter something along the lines of, “No shit Sherlock”. But that’s alright because, as one of the uninitiated, Tudor Caradoc-Davies put this together with fellow Sterkies neophytes in mind. It’s for Noobs, like him, who have just never made a plan to get to the Free State’s fabled smallmouth yellowfish fishery, either on a DIY mission or guided, as he was, by pros like FlyCastaway.
Photos. Leonard Flemming, Tim Babich, Justin Rollinson
I woke up at 5.30am and my back was killing me.
In part that was because I had spent so much time casting at cruising fish over the previous two days.
It was inevitable something would ache, but it was also because I was sleeping on the couch in the living room of Wildebeest 3. That’s the chalet we – Warwick Leslie, David Reverdito, Peter Whittaker and myself - were staying in at Qwantani Resort at Sterkfontein Dam. It was an appropriate name for our digs given the nocturnal, wild, semi-bovine sounds echoing out of the middle room.
MORDOR
STERKIESGONDORSA according to Capetonians
THE SHIRE
Until this trip I had considered myself, somewhat apologetically when in my wife’s radius, as a champion snorer. From school, to varsity and on many fishing trips, I’ve been labelled that guy. However, after trying to share a room with Warwick Leslie - aka Warrels, aka ‘Snorrels’ – I now realise I am, at best, a Tier 2 player. My fatigue and sheer panic that the Balrog from Lord of the Rings would leap fully formed from his gullet signalled to me that Snorrels had won the snore-fest. I conceded defeat and retired to the couch. What sleep I managed to salvage was intermittent, with scattered birdshot dreams of countless missed fish and a perpetual loop of a phrase veteran FlyCastaway guide Paulie Boyers had shared the night before. It was an anecdote about a French client who not only liked to shoot cormorants, but he also loved eating them.
In fact, the Frenchman thought cormorants so delicious that he described them (no doubt with the requisite chef’s kiss of the fingers) as, “the trout of th e sky.” For some reason, that phrase buried itself in my subconscious.
As I lay there I made notes for this story, trying to figure out a way to tell the tale in a fresh way, because Sterkies has been covered so many times before by other South African fly fishing media. And yet, there are still many fly anglers in South Africa, like me, who have never made a plan to get there.
Call it a rite of passage, a pilgrimage or whatever you like, but don’t neglect it like I did. Here’s why.
CLOSE ENOUGH
One of the outcomes of the last couple of years is how fisheries, like the Orange River and Sterkfontein Dam, that have looooong been known and loved by slackjawed yokels and dedicated yellowfish fans, are getting a bit more love than usual. With international travel curtailed and outdoor activities in general booming after enforced lockdowns, South African fly anglers have been looking harder at their local options than ever before. There are, obviously, downsides to this (see issue 32 of The Mission with Ewan Naude’s piece on over-crowding on the Orange) but, in other ways it is good for the industry, sustaining guides, lodges and tackle shops. The fact is that more people fishing means more people caring enough to protect these places.
Why I had never made it to Sterkies before can probably be ascribed to the deep laziness often associated with people who come from Cape Town, my home town. We are stuck in our ways, and see anything beyond the Cape fold mountains as a hobbit hike to Mordor and back. Getting to Sterkies is much easier for those in Gauteng or Durban (roughly equidistant from both centres). Getting there from the Cape takes a little more effort - a two hour flight, a 3,5 hour drive including a rapid supermarket dash in Harrismith and a 20 minute wait in the Post Office to replace the fishing licence I’d forgotten at home. Still, I now know, it’s really not that big of an ask.
David Reverdito would like you to look at his smallmouth yellowfish
DECEPTIVELY “WORLD CLASS”
“World class” is how Sterkies is described again and again yet, if you’re doom-scrolling through social media it’s not immediately obvious just why people say that.
A large reason is the visual aspect. What you see of Sterkies in other people’s trip reports is like that sunset photo from your family holiday – they don’t do it justice. Photos on social media of a bunch of guys (either bent over cradling a bank side yellow or sitting on the deck of the boat doing the same) seldom manage to show off the magnificence of the fish or the surroundings. When I asked him why this is, professional photographer Ryan Janssens said, “I think mainly because it’s so open and flat, usually with these big open skies. Other than the angler, there’s not much point of interest in the shot.” It’s definitely one of those places that is incredible to see in person, but weirdly average in a regular Joe’s mobile phone snaps.
Similarly, and I feel like a traitor for saying this, smallmouth yellowfish need an agent. To people who have never caught them before, they just look like fit carp. With their mild onderbek (under-mouth) they simply don’t come across as menacingly predatory as do most of the planet’s more famous freshwater game fish. Instead of the Ramboesque jawline of dorado or Nile perch, the pronounced kype of trout or salmon and the cartoon villain teeth of tigerfish or payara, smallies sport
sets of lips that vary from snub-nosed to pulchritudinous. Their eyes hint more at fear and self-preservatory caution than the ability to cause chaos and carnage of their own.
And yet, when you talk to any of the legion of yellowfish fans in this country, you will soon realise from the rapturous response that there must be reasons why smallies are so highly rated. All it takes is one visit to Sterkies or the Orange River (or even a great day out on the Vaal River) to remove the blinkers from your eyes.
That smallies fight harder than any trout is a given, but they have much more stamina than most other lauded African freshwater gamefish species like tigerfish. Many would argue that they fight harder, pound for pound, than their more beefy brethren, the largemouth yellowfish. Throw all those qualities together and serve them up in an incredible setting like the Eastern Free State and it starts to make perfect sense why Sterkies deserves its place among the world’s special still waters, alongside Jurassic Lake in Argentina, Pyramid Lake in Nevada and Lake Thingvallavatn in Iceland. And that’s even before you’ve got to “the how” of fishing at Sterkies.
FAT LIZZY & FRIENDS
We know, we know… ultimately, we could be fishing in the sewers of Johannesburg and if the fishing was good enough it would cancel out the pong, but at Sterkfontein the fishing and the scenery are not mutually exclusive. As the guides took us from spot to spot - Elizabeth, Barbel Bay, Driehoek, Wild Horses - the scenery changed from relatively gentle slopes, to steeper cliffs and, in the case of the magnificent Elizabeth area, an array of imposing busty buttresses frequented by vultures and eagles. You’re in the middle of an 18 000Ha nature reserve and can spot game (eland, wildebeest, oribi, mountain reedbuck, grey rhebuck etc). The wildebeest are a theme it seems. On the way to Elizabeth each day, we’d pass an island populated by a lone bull who allegedly shares his principality with a lot of snakes. Apparently he prefers puffies to the company of the herd.
BANK VS BOAT
I had the privilege of one day’s bank fishing and two days on one of FlyCastaway’s Fusion 17 boats guided by Justin Rollinson (aka the Bush Pig) with head guide Tim Babich assisting. Milan Germishuizen was the guide on the other boat. Over the three days I briefly experienced the difference between the bank vs boat approaches. I also canvassed a few opinions from guides and regular punters who have fished Sterkies for years.
Tim says, “I used to guide the dam from the bank and it is hard. The fish see you more easily and it’s super-technical, even on a good day. You can sit on a bank, see fish off the cliff but, if the client
can’t get a back cast right, he’s in the bush more than he’s in the water. Then the wind changes, it’s fine tippet, 5x, 6x, and he hooks a tree. Change again. Tie knots. Change, change, change, because he’s still hooking bushes. A fish comes and he’s hooked another bush. Finally, he gets it out, but the tippet is floating. He misses the strike or strikes too hard and you’re back at square one. It’s hard to fish from the bank. You need to be a really competent angler.”
I have no doubt that if I’d grown up in Joburg or KwaZulu-Natal and visited Sterkies over the years, I would have now a deep, masochistic affinity for fishing off the bank. In fact, until this trip,
elizabeth
I had assumed I would almost always prefer being on foot to being on a boat. Over the few hours I experienced on the bank, I got to see the yellows up close and personal on their spawning beds. I got to grapple with the constant changing wind direction, to take shots at the odd splashing cruiser and I got broken off while distracted. I also had the pleasure of watching a lone bull wildebeest crest the saddle of two hills and moan amorously at David Reverdito’s casting for three hours. I would have missed that if I’d been on a boat.
“What most guys end up doing,” Tim continued, “Is they’ll find a windward bank that the wind is blowing off and they will cast out.
Then they sit and wait until somebody comes and visits. They’re not seeing the fish because it’s a flat piece of ground with nothing to look up at in the back. It’s either that or they are going to go sit on a spawning bed, because at least there they can see the fish are moving.”
The fish though, can also see you more easily. Tim is convinced the banks have been fished for so long that, genetically, the fish have adapted to fear anything that comes from that direction.
He says, “They don’t know what you are when you are fishing from the boat, so they are less likely to pick up on what you’re doing. They are scared of anything from the bank in the same way that they would be scared of a diving bird or shadow. Now it’s genetically bred into them.”
The real eye-opener for me was how much of a difference a boat made when the wind became unplayable in one spot. Rather than just martyr myself against the windy whims of the weather, having the ability to move and find a new bay with a forgiving lee was such a win. Compared to fishing off the bank, what I got from the boat was way more actual fishing time. It felt like we had the cheat codes to the game. Tim says, “Fishing off a boat is just different. The ordinary guy that wouldn’t catch fish off the bank can now catch fish. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy. You just have a different, higher level set of problems and you’re more productive.”
As another FlyCastaway guide Nic Isabelle put it to me, “It’s not like one way is right and the other is wrong. Some people get their kicks fishing for tarpon on foot in Gabon while others like to fish off boats. It’s the same here. Some people want to DIY everything and bleed, others don’t have that much time in their lives or want more chances to catch fish. For those guys they want to maximise what time they do have and when it comes to Sterkies that means getting on a boat so you can drift and get a lot more shots.”
BEETLEMANIA
Omnivorous as yellows are, caught on streamers, nymphs and dries in the Orange and Vaal River systems, you don’t come to Sterkies to throw meat or stuff around with nymphs unless A) your name is Leonard Flemming (the man loves a micro-nymph) or B) something is really off with the conditions. No, if you get a thrill from the visual aspect of fly fishing, Sterkfontein is the destination for you because you can fish dry flies pretty much all day every day. Which is exactly what we did for three days straight. At the beginning, we played with hoppers, a few large caddis patterns and other dries. There were also moments when the guides Justin, Tim Babich and Milan Germishuizen sniffed the air like weasels, tracked the swooping flight paths of swallows and started tying on ant patterns in anticipation of a hatch (a common occurrence that we did not experience). But, for us, beetles were by far the most effective flies. Encyclopaedias have been written about Sterkies pioneer Dr Hans van Zyl and his incredibly effective pattern, “The Good Doctor’s Beetle.” Arno Laubscher of Scientific Flies sent me an infestation of the lifelike ones his Mbombela-based brand ties on Grip hooks in both copper and a dark purple colour. These I duly handed out like M&Ms to Leonard, Warwick and whoever else wanted some. The purple, in particular, accounted for 70% of our fish and as Justin steered us through weed beds it was easy to see why. We frequently spotted scarab beetles struggling in the surface film. Bombing casts towards sunken trees along the shore, it was ridiculously entertaining to watch the Pavlovian dinner- bell response these fish have to the plop of a beetle in their feeding lanes. The slight adjustment in direction to home in on the snack; the ‘will it, won’t it?’ moment as their fins fan out and almost hover suspended and then, the slight breach when the dorsal fin breaks the surface as the fish slurps down the beetle. Mayhem.
HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND
Because the weather changes so frequently and so fast at Sterkies, so too does the light. You can be sighting the fish clear as day and then out come the clouds and you’re almost fishing blind. If it didn’t look like a temporary sun shut-out, the guides would almost immediately move the boat closer to dark tree-lined banks. Tim says, “If you don’t have good light, you have to move to dark banks, to create contrast on the water so you can see them.” Perhaps, what surprised us most about the efficacy of beetles, was that they have been fished for these yellows for so long at Sterkies, that you’d imagine the fish would learn to avoid them. Because if a yellow checking out a beetle is the equivalent of the dopamine hit of a Facebook ‘like’, then the beetles are cat videos racking up millions of views. As Leonard put it, “I was amazed at their willingness to smash beetles, which indicates either there are a shit ton of fish, or they are not picky, or that there are tons of beetles.”
RIGGING
Flies aside, FlyCastaway have a very specific approach to rigging bulky flies like beetles that was developed by Tim who grew up fishing this dam. To the end of a 10-foot 3x tapered leader, they slide on a 1.5mm tungsten bead, then tie on a tippet ring. They then add a 2-foot section of 5x tippet and finally the beetle, hopper or other dry fly. The idea is that the bead and the tippet ring help sink the leader. They also sink the beetle just enough so that it lies ever-soslightly sub-surface, which makes it easier for the slight onderbek nature of a smallie’s mouth to properly envelop the fly. Tim says, “With the thin tippet we use at Sterkies, you lose a lot of fish, so you want to stack the odds as much as you can on your side. We used to use tungsten putty, but that was a pain in the arse. We also tried an extra nymph, which works but, ultimately, this set up just clicked as the perfect rig. Tippet ring, tungsten bead, badda-bing, badda-boom. If that tippet is floating those fish aren’t going to hit the fly, or it will happen very seldom if they come from the back. But with this set up it’s going to sink every time, guaranteed.”
Being a lazy chancer, I re-rigged once and thought I’d get away with not doing the bead and tippet ring thing. I then watched as several fish came up on the fly and either rejected it entirely or couldn’t hit it properly. Don’t be like me.
2 THINGS NOT TO ASK THE GUIDE
(according to Justin Rollinson)
1 “How deep is it here?” “How the hell do I know? And, who cares?
2 “After a few years of this, what are you going to do next?” “This is my job. What are you going to do after dentistry?
Tim says, “Some guys don’t like using a bead or tippet ring. Others choose to de-grease their leader in order to sink it, but then when a fish breaks them off, they have to re-tie everything. With the tippet ring, if am broken off, I just re-tie a section and I am back in the game. We developed this approach because when you are fishing off the boats you’re actively fishing more and getting way more shots at fish. This was the most user-friendly thing we could do for both the client - to maximise their shots at fish - and for ourselves, because we don’t have to tie one million knots a day and go through spools of tippet section. If you’re not doing it, you’re just going to pull your hair out.”
THE DRIFTERS
There’s using a boat to get places at Sterkies so you can fish off the bank again, and then there’s fishing off a boat at Sterkies. FlyCastaway guides have perfected the latter approach based off Tim’s years spent fishing the dam as a kid with his brothers.
“We’ve been coming to Sterkfontein every December holiday since I can remember. My dad actually held the light tackle record for trout out of this dam. He was also the old toppie (geezer) who hated jet-skis and guys that jetskied, because his view was that they were idiots for riding around wasting fuel. He liked to play games to teach me and my brothers life lessons. At Sterkies, there’s always been this mentality that, ‘the fish are on the other side of the dam.’ No one ever fishes right by the slipway, they insist on going over theeere. So, between his aversion for wasting fuel and the fact that there were fish right near the jetty, my dad taught me a lesson about looking at what’s right in front of you by only giving me one tank of fuel to last for the duration of our two-week family holiday.”
Tim learnt to drift a boat both to make the fuel last, but also because with the cliffs at Sterkies accessibility from the bank can be very tricky. Pretty much everyone who has fished the dam a bunch has either broken something or fallen in at some stage.
He says, “I would go to these spots, see the fish and begin to weigh up my options. Sure, I could get on the bank and catch fish – it was not impossible – but was I going to kill it like that? I realised the other option was to wait for the right wind and then drift the boat down the bank.”
After a lot of trial and error – trying out anchors (the dam is too deep); trying out paddles; learning how to use the wind to your advantage instead of getting blown away from the bank or out into the open and eventually progressing to electric trolling motors – they now have the system waxed.
Beginning upwind about 10-15m from the banks, Justin would switch the engine off, drop the trolling motor and control it via a hand-held remote while he stood on the console and helped Leonard and me to spot fish. While our fish-spotting improved and you have to give credit to his sharpened spotting skills, Justin’s a short shit and the extra height he (or any guide for that matter) gets from standing on the console makes a massive difference to his ability to spot smallies at least several metres before they came into view for us.
OPEN WATER CRUISERS
On the subject of spotting fish, to my surprise the guides seemed to get more excited about fish spotted out in open water than they did the schools cruising the banks. My brain tends to calculate that fish + structure = good, while fish + open expanse of nothingness = meh. Not here. Usually, whoever was fishing in front was blinded by the reflection off the water so, by listening to Justin’s instructions, the visual game switched to a surprisingly satisfying aural game of, “pin the fly on the smallie.” Just why the guides love open water cruisers quickly became apparent because these fish were almost always keen to eat.
Tim explains, “I’ve fished world championships in Scotland, Poland etc and when you do that you start diving deep into how the top guys do it, reading about still water tactics, midge fishing, boat fishing, wind lanes and currents. When we got on the boats at Sterkies and started moving around, we realised there are currents in this dam and wind lanes and... hang on, there are fish feeding in the middle of the dam. These fish have never seen anybody before, because they never even frequent the bank. They are dumb as hell. Finding feeding cruising fish opened up a whole new spectrum for us.”
PREMATURE GESTICULATION
Inside I’m feeling dirty Inside I’m feeling dirty Inside I’m feeling dirty It’s only cos I’m hurting
That’s the chorus from the Young Fathers track I Heard, which I have no doubt was about something completely unrelated to fly fishing but, for most of my last day at Sterkies, it was the ear-worm stuck in my head. You see, I’d fished well enough in the morning, notching up five fish before lunch and I felt confident (bordering on arrogant, no doubt) that the afternoon would be even better. Boy, was I humbled. My strikes that had been perfectly languid earlier that day, became too short and too sharp, resulting in either numerous misses or break-offs and a few McEnroe-level tantrums within my pip.
Whether you are on the banks or on a boat, the fishing at Sterkies is deeply technical. The wind or winds can easily come from several different directions at the same time. A storm can build quickly above you yet, just a five-minute run in the boat away, the skies are sunny. You might whizz across the dam to escape the prevailing wind on one side, only to find that around each new
corner there’s a wind coming from another direction. It’s incredibly frustrating but in a deeply appealing way, if that makes any sense. When you do manage to navigate everything Sterkies can throw at you and still hook and land a few fish, it tickles the pleasure centre in your brain reserved for trick shots, second- guess Wordle skills, scoring a SARS rebate and solving a Rubik’s Cube. Blindfolded.
The best trips are the ones that leave you thinking about them months later and my three days with FlyCastaway at Sterkies had that effect. Back in the suburbs, low-key sights and sounds take me back there in an instant. When I see the yellow of the DHL on the Stormers rugby jersey, I think of the 7th scale towards the mouth from the anal fin on the underbelly of a Sterkies yellow.
When my dogs snore, I think of Warrels and his Wildebeest impressions.
When I see a cormorant, I immediately mouth the words, “Trout of the sky.”
When I fish dead Christmas beetles out of the swimming pool, I wonder if the smallies are thinking of me too.
And sometimes, in a flowing gap in the traffic, I stick my head out the window as I drive and imagine I’m back there, sitting on the coolbox in the front of the Fusion, zipping across the waves, out-running a storm, out-foxing the wind, the Bush Pig at the helm as we bee-line for the next honey hole.
shop the mission sterkies
COSTA SUNGLASSES – SANTIAGO SUNRISE SILVER MIRROR
Sterkies has incredibly changeable weather. One minute it’s blue skies and baking hot, then it’s partially cloudy, then you’re in a storm. The Silver Mirror lenses are brilliant for low-light conditions and, considering you’re looking for fish in that dark contrast in amongst the trees, they worked a treat the whole time. costadelmar.com
SCIENTIFIC ANGLERS AMPLITUDE SMOOTH INFINITY 6-WEIGHT LINE
When the goal is to make long accurate casts, wind be damned, you need a line that can both bomb out casts and lay down dries like gossamer. This is the line for that. scientificanglers.com
SCIENTIFIC ANGLERS TIPPET & TIPPET RINGS
You can waste time trying to second guess what the FlyCastaway crew have spent years perfecting, or you can choose the path of least resistance and use this rig.
scientificanglers.com
SCIENTIFIC FLIES TAPERED LEADER AND BEETLES.
New, strong, South African-made leader material from Arno Laubscher and his team. Plus the beetles. Never forget the beetles. scientificfly.com
THE BEATS – STERKIES SMASH HITS
Like the weather at Sterkies, this playlist is all over the place. From the fast and the furious (Black Francis, Sharhabil Ahmed, Wells Fargo and Freddie King), to funk (Money Mark, Shintaro Shakamoto), soul (The Chakachacas, Curtis Mayfield, Donny Hathaway) and a whole lot more, it’s got a bit of everything.
TO LISTEN PRESS
