After years of planning; inconvenienced by COVID pandemics and nonsensical interventions in all matters of human well-being and travel, the time is near for me to relocate.
I will be leaving South Africa, and with that many of the people and rivers that have been a significant part of life for more than forty years.
It is a time of mixed emotions. The house, that had been my home of more than twenty years; a space that I have modified and improved over that time with my own hands, has been sold. My Toyota Hilux 4×4 is about to change hands; but at least to a good mate who I know will appreciate her as much as I have. He will, at least, take her on the odd fishing adventure, just so that she doesn’t get bored. I wouldn’t like to leave her to a life of driving spoiled kids to private schools and never seeing a dirt road again.
It is summer here, the weather is warm and sunny and the fishing season is open. It is time to say goodbye, but it would be nice to have a real send off, with a great day on one of the streams. We have been trying and planning, but all too often the planets didn’t align or perhaps the fishing gods are angry at my departure.
Peter and my first attempts of “a last day” were aimed at one of our favourite early season sections on the Lower Molenaars beat of the Smallblaar River. We caught some fish, but the place was far from “on fire” and we had really hoped for more, particularly as these might be the last casts on a Cape Stream for some time.
Then we planned an even more ostentatious gamble, a crack of dawn start, and a long hike into “Stream X.”
The river is crystal clear even by Cape standards, but the lower sections tend to be a bit warm for trout and hold too many bass to be a viable option for a last blast. So, we left the truck and hiked for two hours; boulder hopping “off piste”, into a river valley from which there is no easy escape. A place of spectacular beauty and not inconsiderable risk. But this was to be a final cast after all and it was worth pulling out all the stops.
On our arrival at our planned starting point, we saw no fish moving, but we rigged up expecting to see some action at any moment.
We fished on for an hour or so, taking turns on likely runs, we saw nothing but for a bass or two, and then I fell. It wasn’t for the first time, or for that matter the last, it wasn’t even that serious, I wasn’t bleeding and nothing was broken. Well, nothing but for my brand-new reel, which had taken a serious knock on the boulders. A knock, of sufficient severity to render the reel all but useless; fruitless attempts to cut off bent bits with my hook file and panel beat the remaining sections into some sort of functionality didn’t work, and I resigned myself to simply sharing a rod with Peter for the rest of the trip. Two hours is a long way to head back to the car for a replacement reel, even had there been one there.
During my vigorous attempts at remodelling the reel with limited tools, and even more limited expectations, Peter had reconnoitred further upstream. On his return, to my bankside workshop, he declared that the river was dead. It seemed odd, there had been no prediction of impending cold fronts but there wasn’t a feeding fish to be found. The combination of a mortally wounded reel and Peter’s conviction that it really wasn’t worth the effort we packed up and headed home. It turned out that the rod and reel must have taken more of a knock than I had imagined, we struggled to separate the sections, and had to go to some extremes, far beyond the normal four handed grips or “behind the knees” techniques to separate the stuck ferrules.
We finally got them apart; I hadn’t fancied that long a hike with half of a made-up rod to deal with. In the end we arrived back at the truck, earlier than expected and tired out after some five hours of serious trekking. Whatever the day was, and it wasn’t without its pleasures, it was hardly the wild, multi-fish, dry fly purist end to an era. We resolved that we would have to try again, if not on this stream, then somewhere else.
A week later I was out on the Smallblaar again, on my own this time, and hoping for a red-letter day. I had picked a beat which can be exceptional at times and which holds not just good numbers of fish but is equally some of the larger specimens in the system. Would this be the grand send off, the day of days to make an appropriate farewell? I had hoped as much all the way to the parking, which in this instance lies right next to the river. However, instead of being greeted by clear water and rising trout, my heart sank, as I looked on at a stream in trouble. The rocks were covered with silt and effluent, and the water, of this normally crystal stream, was turbid to the point of obscuring the bottom. I had my ideas as to the culprits, a fish farming operation upstream which habitually doesn’t give the proverbial “#$%^” about the pollution they create or the environment that it damages. It also, in this instance went a long way to spoiling, what was potentially “My Last Day”.
I was not pleased, but fished on, the river looked sad and although I took a few fish it was hardly the send off I was hoping for.
The only solution was to try again and only a few days later I planned another trip, not far this time, or at least not a long hike, I figured if the gods were still rather out of sorts about my departure, and the fishing was poor, I could at least call it a day without overly taxing myself.
As things turned out, the stars aligned, the gods, whether out of sympathy or exhaustion, granted me good weather, clear water and rising fish. A day to remember, a day of sight fishing where one’s mind wanders to the point of foolishness. “I wonder if I can get a fish out of that tiny pocket?,” a day where fishing becomes not simply entertaining but actually playful, where you have caught enough that you are prepared to experiment, mess about and simply enjoy it all.
A fifty plus fish day, all taken on either dries or barely subsurface soft hackle patterns and just about every fish sighted prior to casting. This was a good day to say good-bye, a day to remember, the sort of send-off I figured I deserved to give myself. But would it really be the last?
It was a cracking day, but of course such days make one more determined to “fit in another,” there doesn’t seem to be a way to win, if the fishing is poor you want to go back, if the fishing is great you want to go back, it would seem that actually the fishing doesn’t make any difference.
Anyway, Peter and I, determined to have a decent day on the river together as a send-off, tried once more. Again, the weather didn’t play ball, there seemed that perhaps there was a cold font coming in, despite the weather forecast telling a different tale. We struggled a while, caught the odd fish but things were slow.
Finally, on the walk back to the car we spotted one small fish rising in a pool below the bridge and Peter gallantly suggested that this might make for some sort of positive finale. Getting into position I put my dry fly over the fish, which continued to rise but ignored my offerings.
“Try the soft-hackle” commented Peter at exactly the same moment I was reaching for my fly box. “The Soft-Hackle” requires no further description between us. It is the simplest of patterns which had caught so many fish I sometimes feel as though it is cheating. A pattern designed by myself, if you could call such a simple twist of CDC “designed.”
The first cast was off target and the second elicited a take, and a fish in the net. Not spectacular, not large, but my last Cape Town trout and memorable for that if nothing else. More memorable still perhaps, that our favourite fly of the past 5 or 6 years proved the fish’s undoing.
So that was it, the next day I was due to hop on a plane without plans to return, at least not in the near future. It had been one of the most unsuccessful starts to the season that I ever recall, far more poor days for us than good ones. It is a pity that my best trip didn’t include Peter, he has been a special friend and ideal fishing partner for years. We have shared trips to the Orange River, the local streams and notable excursions into Lesotho, I am going to miss him greatly. Perhaps in time, he will visit me in the UK and we can uncover some great angling together.
Corollary: Since writing this piece I have moved home, and I am currently resident in North Cornwall, suffering two winters in a row with a view to a better future. There isn’t going to be much fishing to write about for a while, but I have started blogging about my adventures here. So, for the time being, until I can get back on the water and pen something of piscatorial interest, readers may like to follow other musings on https://escape2andfrom.wordpress.com
Recent posts include:
A flight to a new adventure
The Fishing Gene 