BLAEDE RUSSELL

WHETHER HE’S FISHING FOR TROUT IN ELEPHANT TERRITORY ON HIS HOME WATERS OR DOCUMENTING A SURVIVAL CHALLENGE BY LIVING ON A DESERT ISLAND FOR A WEEK WITH NO FOOD, WATER OR SHELTER, KENYAN BLAEDE RUSSELL SEEMED DESTINED TO BECOME A FLY-FISHING GUIDE. WE CAUGHT UP WITH HIM BETWEEN AFRICAN WATERS’ CAMEROON AND GABON SEASONS.

5 best things about where you guide?

1. Tanzania – the people. Aside from the insane fishery which needs no introduction nor further comment, it’s the people for me. We are so lucky to have a bulletproof team. These guys will literally give you the shirts off their backs and, if it wasn’t for them, the season simply would not be possible.

2. Campfire stories. It sounds clichéd, but the after-session conversations around the fire are what guiding is about. Talks of the big fish lost, big fish landed, dodgy hook sets, burnt fingers, and awards for the most logs caught are a common thread.

3. Gabon – it’s one of the last Edens. Ask yourself how many times, as an angler, you have thought or said, “I wonder what this was like a hundred years ago.” In Gabon you don’t, and that is special!

4. Cameroon – the night. You’re casting a whole chicken to a fish that could be 150lb in a river no wider than a full line away. There’s an audience of 50 or more hippos creating a cacophony of sounds in total darkness. It’s immersive!

5. Kenya – trout fishing among some of the Big Five. A lot of the trout fishing in Kenya is in national parks. This means you could literally be fishing dry flies in intricate little streams to hungry brown trout and be interrupted by a herd of elephants. Where else can you do that?

5 fishing-connected items you don’t leave home without before making a mission?

1. Loon UV Knot Sense. This stuff is liquid gold. From fixing eyes on rods to applying the finishing touches to nail knots and fixing glasses, it does it all.

2. Panasonic Lumix S5. I love videography and photography. This camera is a great hybrid and, at this price, in my opinion, unbeatable.

3. Braid Scissors. They last for years, can cut any braid, line or wire, and double up nicely for when the lid needs a trim during the season.

4. Short shorts. Comfortable, good for movement and great ventilation for the family jewels when you’re sitting down. You do have to settle for less real estate in the pocket, however.

5. Lucky hat. It’s a cliché in that it never gets washed (it could be used for biological warfare), but it catches fish and it tells a story.

5 essential survival items?

1. Leatherman. This is easily one of the most useful things to have ever been created, and my top pick.

2. Glass bottle. You can store liquid, start fires using the concave neck and the sun, desalinate water… the list goes on. If you’ve watched The Gods Must Be Crazy then you know how useful it can be.

3. A fly pack: rod, reel, flies and line. I travel everywhere anyway with fly-fishing gear even if it’s to the shops for milk.

4. Hammock. It’s easy to set up and extremely lightweight.

5. Chilli sauce. For most people this is not essential but it is for me. It covers up the taste of any stomach bugs you’re about to get and makes anything taste good. The downside is it adds ring sting to the stomach bug you’re about to get.

5 bands to listen to while on a road trip?

5 things you’re loving right now?

1. Currently writing to you from Cameroon (where it’s hot), I am loving and totally loyal to my fan, tsetse spray and long breaks between seeking refuge on the Faro River.

2. Short documentary series. I don’t get to watch much TV but, on the extremely rare occasion, I do like a Netflix short documentary series.

3. Timau Sports Club, Kenya. It’s the hub of all things social in an area of big ranches and wide open spaces. The “sports” part of the name is an excuse to drink on school nights when there is “touch rugby” on, while the “club” part holds true on the weekends. Often, despite the best intentions, a game of touch or tennis ends up in a cracker of a headache the next morning.

4. A reference to West Africa again, but I am obsessed with Orangina.

5. BIG FLIES.

5 indispensable flies for saltwater?

1. Flash Clouser

2. NYAP

3. Tan GT Brushy

4. Crazy Charlie

5. Alphlexo

5 indispensable flies for freshwater?

1. CDC Elk Hair

2. Wooly Bugger, tan or olive.

3. Kenyan Special. A nymph derived from purple Duracell but with hardened UV body and CDC.

4. Muddler Minnow

5. PTN (Pheasant Tail Nymph)

5 favourite fly-fishing destinations across Africa?

1. Mount Kenya/Aberdare National Park. It’s near and dear to me and the trout fishing is my bread and butter. There are little intricate streams that are difficult to access and immense forests, old trees and, because it is a national park, an abundance of wild animals.

2. The Kenyan coast. Malindi, Lamu and Watamu offer some great offshore fishing for billfish species and other pelagic species like tuna, dorado etc.

3. Tanzania. The Tanzanian tigers are something else. We’re super-fortunate to have access to arguably the healthiest populations of these endemic species, and XL sizes too.

3. Sette Cama, Gabon. There are jacks, big tarpon, big snapper, big threadfin, big sharks from shore. Need I say more?

5. Gassa Camp, Cameroon.

5 things (outside of the fishing) that make where you fish so special?

1. The cultures. Guiding for African Waters we are extremely fortunate to be able to experience a plethora of different cultures.

2. The birds. I was not much of a twitcher before guiding. The idea of wearing full camo and spending hours waiting for birds to fly past was not that interesting but, in Gabon, Tanzania and Cameroon, it’s impossible to ignore.

3. When the other employees such as the boat captains/ drivers, river rangers etc start to get the same hype when a client hooks into a good fish.

4. Learning languages. Aside from English and Swahili, my French has improved the most with seasons spent in Gabon and Cameroon. At school I used French class as a prime time to gain some lad points by being the Chief Chat Officer as I never thought it would come in handy but, as it turns out, I should have paid a little more attention.

5. Food. I am a massive foodie and take great interest in the cooking both on season and off. Some places are astonishing with the abundance and variety of vegetables that you can buy! In Tanzania we are fortunate to have some mean chefs so it’s easy to let the rig go a little...

5 favourite fly-fishing destinations globally?

1. New Zealand. When you talk trout fishing, New Zealand is usually right at the top.

2. The chalk streams of southwest England. No, I’m not talking about the stocked rivers Test or Itchen, but their carriers instead which are predominantly wild trout fisheries in crystal clear water.

3. Australia is one of the best, intact, well-managed fisheries. You can basically fish the whole of Australia on fly, on foot, for next to nothing and have some worldclass fishing. I went on a glorified fly-fishing holiday, also known to some as a “gap year”, around Oz and paid for quite a few of my stays in hostels by catching fish for their kitchens.

4. Colorado. I was fortunate enough to do some fishing in Colorado with a good buddy and was blown away by the idea that you can ski in the morning and fish in the afternoon.

5. Any of the five destinations in Africa mentioned in the previous question, although get back to me once I have done Slovenia and Socotra.

5 flies to pack (in the smuggler kit under your driver’s seat) to cover most species?

1. PTN

2. Woolly Bugger

3. Elk Hair Caddis

4. Diawl Bach

5. Mepps Spinner (I joke)

5 fish on your species hit list?

1. Goliath tigerfish sits undisputed at the top.

2. Tarpon (I’m currently getting my arse handed to me by tarpon in Gabon with zero landed).

3. Permit

4. Blue or black marlin

5. Smallmouth yellowfish

5 of the most underrated species in your book?

1. The jack species but, in particular, the longfin and crevalle. They are easily the most overlooked/ underrated species that hits hard and burns drags. I think it’s partly due to their abundance, especially in Gabon, but I have all the time in the world for them.

2. Niger barb. Try hooking a 15lb barb and landing it on 4x with oyster beds to navigate and massive boulders to climb over. Welcome to Cameroon.

3. Tilapia – is this the gateway-drug equivalent for the fishing world? I spent countless hours fishing for them as a kid and owe them everything as fishing’s now my career.

4. Tetra – the big yellow-tailed ones (sorry to all the ichthyologists). Clients are not really keen to go after them here in Cameroon, but they get big and are sluts for dry flies.

5. Ripping streamers for pellet-fed rainbow trout that look like carp on still waters.

5 destinations on your bucket list?

1. Socotra

2. Sudan

3. Seychelles

4. Patagonia

5. Bolivia

5 things you would take up if you weren’t always fly fishing?

1. A proper job.

2. Rehab for a chilli and Maggi sauce addiction.

3. Counselling to integrate back into society.

4. A healthy sleeping routine.

5. Paying tax.

5 essential ingredients for an incredible mission?

1. Bata Bullets (or trainers). From squeaking tekkie and doing burnouts on the dancefloor to scrambling up canyons, these are essential to a proper fishing mission.

2. The good juju juice. Described as “the golden edge of an autumn afternoon”, a bottle of 18-year-old Glenmorangie is of paramount importance. It is a good way of sorting the boys from the men; it starts the trip full and ends the trip empty and it’s always there to warm you up from a day of hanging flies in trees.

3. Well-vetted company to help with answer 2.

4. Good coffee. You can’t trust those that don’t take their coffee drinking seriously.

5. A generic selection of flies in a fly box for when your mates raid your box (won’t name any names).

5 flies that to look at make no sense but that catch fish all the time?

1. Tequila Blob

2. Sunrise Blob

3. Fluorescent pink Blob

4. Pastel orange Blob

5. White Blob

6. ANY BLOB

5 common mistakes that most clients make?

1. Asking the guide if you “missed it” on day six.

2. KVD SPECIAL (Kevin VanDam hook set).

3. The trout strip for tigers.

4. A client suggesting mothballs to prevent holes appearing in the back of my work shirts while I’ve previously spent the day removing hooks out of my back and the shirt.

5. Fifteen false casts with a shooting head.

5 of the most difficult guiding/teaching experiences so far?

1. Firmly at the top of this list is guiding/working with a heavy dose of malaria. This season in Cameroon my dry spell came to an end and I managed to get a good dose. I don’t remember two of the days and had to do shopping for the next set of clients in 49 point something degree Centigrade weather. Not a vibe.

2. When it rains, it pours. Inevitably, and especially in fisheries which are still being discovered, you can do everything right (moon phases, tides etc) and the fish just don’t play their part. As a guide, automatically this pressure falls on you and sometimes you don’t have the exact answer, and that perhaps is the beauty of Mother Nature.

3. Honestly, one of the most difficult things is getting clients who are not quite at the casting level you need them to be to catch fish. We often get quite a few who are completely new to fishing. This can make it tricky when you’re trying to get them to cast a 20, 40, 80ft line on a boat that’s drifting and they need to land it a few inches from a log. This is compounded when the client has big expectations.

4. Matching the energy. You have to look at a guiding season as a marathon. Pacing yourself is key as one of the biggest factors that you encounter is that every week there is a group of clients that have been looking forward to this trip for the last year… or for a lifetime. So, even if you are three months deep into the season, you have to match that energy each week.

5. Motivation: keeping clients motivated and focused when things have gone quiet.

5 of the best things you have picked up from guiding?

1. Problem solving. Considering the areas we operate in and that some are in incredibly remote areas, you need to think ahead of the f**k up that’s about to happen, before it happens and ensure that there are plans B, C, D, all the way through to Z.

2. DIY self-qualified bush engineering. Linked to problem solving, it’s all the work outside of the guiding part of the job. With African Waters, we are also in charge of managing the logistics in camp. We host, we are fully self quali-failed plumbers and electricians. A few shocks here and there and you soon know what not to do.

3. Solitude. As a guide and working in the areas we do, one has to be good at being alone, without reception or direct contact with the outside world and generally keeping the mind and body busy. This is a rewarding skill to have in a world that is obsessed with short-form stimulation.

4. An ability to match the sound of the drag made from reels to the brand… without looking.

5. Speaking to clients while having a quick power nap.

Your last five casts were to….

1. Nile perch

2. Niger barb

3. Yellowfin tuna