Lifer

LIFER THE CORNISHMAN

AN ELITE FLY-CASTING INSTRUCTOR, VETERAN GUIDE, AUTHOR, ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST AND A MAN WHO HAS GIVEN A VAST AMOUNT TO SOUTH AFRICAN FLY FISHING, TIM ROLSTON IS AN INSTITUTION, ESPECIALLY IN THE WESTERN CAPE. IF YOU SPEND TIME ON THE CAPE STREAMS OR AT THE CAPE PISCATORIAL SOCIETY, KEEP AN EAR OPEN FOR THAT UNIQUE CORNISH ACCENT AND IF YOU MEET HIM, “GIVE THAT MAN A BELLS.”*

Photos. Tim Rolston

I am pretty sure the first fish I ever caught was an eel. As kids growing up in the UK, we caught a lot of eels back then because they are easy to catch and we weren’t very good anglers.

Oddly, I have lived in three or four streets named after

Queen Victoria. The woman certainly got her name about. I grew up in Bude in North Cornwall; moved to Exeter to study medical technology and worked in the hospital there. Then I moved to Johannesburg and lived in the Mimosa Hotel in Hillbrow and worked at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. Interestingly, Baragwanath is named after a Cornishman, John Albert Baragwanath. A year later I moved to Port Elizabeth/Gqeberha (one of the Queen Victoria Streets), and worked in the hospital there. When I wasn’t working, I was playing rugby for Crusaders or surfing J-Bay. Sadly, I never found out about the great estuary fishing there until after I’d left and moved to Cape Town, where I have lived since 1987.

The jobs I have had make up a long and rather diverse

list: medical technologist, photocopier sales rep, sales trainer, insurance consultant, office secretary, newspaper columnist, independent publisher, fly fishing guide and handyman. Right now, my typical day looks like chaos. I am moving, having just sold my house and still running my businesses, so there are boxes and stuff everywhere: clients pushing for things to be done, appointments with plumbers, electricians, beetle inspectors, gas fitters and more.

Presently, and for the past thirty odd years I suppose, my “home waters” are the rivers of the Limietberg in

the Western Cape. They offer exceptionally good fishing for someone like me who really likes dry fly fishing above all other forms of the sport. That said my real “home” waters, closest to me in the Cape, used to be a filthy ditch running between the municipal dump and a sewage farm just down the road. My friends and I honed our skills at what would now be called “Euronymphing,” catching massive carp averaging about 17lbs. Sadly the fishing there is no longer good nor safe.

In terms of fishing, I would say that the best advice I

have ever been given is, “Fish the water as it needs to be fished.” In life terms, perhaps the best advice has been, “Never go back”. Don’t go back to places, relationships, jobs etc. It rarely works out.

Things I am very proud of include having represented

South Africa at several World Fly Fishing Championships and being the only certified FFI (Fly Fishers International) Master Casting Instructor on the African continent. I am also pretty proud of the books I have written or even the storage bed I have just made for a customer.

The best party trick I have ever seen was back in my

home town in Cornwall, during an annual bicycle pub crawl. The idea is that one has to drink a pint in each pub and make your way to the next pub on your bike. There was a total of ten pubs on the route. One of the participants, who had previously been a part of the White Helmets military motorcycle display team, rode the three miles between pubs four and five, sitting on the handlebars facing and peddling backwards. This was all done in a state of at least semi-inebriation, without falling off!

I am not sure that anything truly comes easily in life.

Certainly, very little of true value does. I think that working at things that you like doing is easier than struggling with things that you don’t. So, at one level, for me fishing has been “easy,” but then I have also put in a lot of work at it. Perhaps the hardest thing for me, is to simply accept that one has to follow your own path, not necessarily what family, society or whatever deem “normal.”

The most satisfying fish I ever caught would have to be a large female smallmouth yellowfish on the

Bokong River in Lesotho. It was sight fished and taken on 8X tippet and a diminutive floating ant pattern. It’s not simply because of the fish, but the scenery is out of this world. It is isolated, quiet, beautiful and you have to put in some hard yards to get there. Currently my go to drink is Milk Stout or Whisky, perhaps rather too often, both. One place, never again…I would never go back into insurance sales. I absolutely hated it, and walked out in a near suicidal state with no job to go to, simply because I couldn’t stand it any longer. It was probably the lowest point of my life. One place I have to return to, if ever possible, is Lesotho, a truly amazing place, with great fishing, super people, spectacular scenery and more.

The handiest survival skill I have is that I am pretty good at simply fixing

things, which is also part of what I do for a living. I can usually make a plan to get something functioning. In my past I have rebuilt a car from scratch and, on a daily basis, I make and mend all manner of things. It is something that I enjoy very much.

In the past the most useful skill I mastered was to learn to touch type.

I am severely myopic and have a blind spot in my left eye. At the time I was worried I would go blind and decided to learn to touch type in case that ever happened. That has been one of the most amazing skills to have and each day I still get great pleasure out of being able to do it. For my money, it should be compulsory in schools for kids to learn to type.

The biggest adventure I’ve ever been on was a surf

trip we did years ago in my grandad’s minivan, from Cornwall in the deep south of the UK to Thurso, on the northernmost tip of Scotland. For one thing, the surf there is exceptional and, for another, the trip is about as far as you can drive in the UK in one direction. Plus, I had to replace the brushes of the alternator on the car on the side of the motorway on the way home… all quite memorable.

If I could change one thing in fly fishing, I would to

get rid of unconditional fly rod guarantees. They have forced the situation of new models every year, always claiming to be better, which they often aren’t. They have deprived fly shops of business in that where previously they would have sold another rod, they now just have to deal with the admin of a replacement. This has meant that you can’t buy the rod that you liked because it is not in production by the time you can afford it. It was an idea for a short-term market advantage which has now led to a major shift in the way rods are manufactured, marketed and sold. To my mind that hasn’t really been a good shift.

I think that it is pretty much common knowledge that

the only way forward is to do what you are afraid of. I have, in my past, done some pretty serious rock climbing, surfed some quite large waves and moved to countries I had never visited before. All of those things are scary when you start out.

Something I really would like to do before I die

is to build my own house. I am not sure that is even reasonable but second best would be to renovate one entirely. I find something very satisfying about building things, particularly if you are going to use them yourself.

I think that I get as much pleasure out of fly fishing as

I ever did, quite possibly more, but things are less rushed now. I don’t fuss about numbers. I am more focused on how I catch fish, rather than how many I catch. I take a bit more time to look at the scenery, watch the world and simply ponder the flow of the stream. I take more notice of the insects and the flowers and I quit when I have had enough, rather than pressing on into the dark.

Looking back on my life, I think that the time I spent trying to be a corporate guy was quite possibly

wasted. I didn’t like it, it isn’t me and I am much happier doing my own thing and running my own business. But, of course, you can never be sure that there aren’t things one learns even if you are unaware of them. I find that most things turn out to be of benefit in the end and that few experiences, even ones that appear bad at the time, are not entirely without some positive spin off. Something I have changed my mind about is war. I think that as kids we all tend to imagine that war is glorious, brave, noble and we watch movies which promote that idea. At this point in my life, I see war as entirely pointless, wasteful, damaging and horrendous. Essentially, it’s entirely without benefit and hurts those who have no say in them the most.

The last fish I caught was a rainbow trout at the confluence of the Kraalstroom and Elandspad Rivers on a dry fly in the midst of a very large termite hatch. * In the now iconic Bells Whisky “Give that man a Bells” advert ,where villagers locked out of their local pub before the big game enlist the help of a fly fisherman to hook the keys, the guy doing the actual fly casting is Tim Rolston.