A cold, wet and windy day on the river.

I spend a few cold, wet and windy hours on the river this morning. Woke up early and looked out the windows to see what the weather gods were up to. It looked pretty miserable outside but I packed my stuff anyway. Just as I was about to leave at about 7AM my wife reminded me that today was actually a normal working day and that the school moms would be keeping up traffic as normal. This would mean an hour stuck in traffic so I made another cup of coffee and waited it out.

I eventually got on the water at about 10am. While rigging up it started to drizzle and I got myself ready for a wet day. I only planned to fish a wider, open section of the river and got my first brownie on about my third cast on a dry fly. Soon after I got a nice rainbow on a nymph. All the time I was wishing for it to stop raining. I got my wish a bit later, but 10 min later I was wishing for the rain again as the wind came screaming downstream as soon as the rain stopped.

I was fishing a dry and dropper rig and shortened my leader and put a heavier nymph on to try and punch the flies into the wind. Eventually I gave up as I couldn't get in a decent cast or a proper drift and walked downstream to some pools that is more sheltered.  A small hatch of Mayflies were happening and I continued to catch fish on both dry and nymphs for the next hour or so. Even managed to catch a Small Mouth Bass.

Someone then switched of the lights and the fish went to bed as I couldn't move anything else after that. It started to rain again at about 1pm and I decided to pack it up for the day.

From this.....

To this

Saterday small stream fishing

With temperatures in the high 30C this past week I didn't have to much hope for fishing this weekend. Saturday proofed to be a bit cooler and I though I would go check out one of my favorite little streams. The section I planed to fish is mostly covered in trees and shade so I thought that I might stand a change to still get a few fish early morning.

On arriving at the river I notices that it was considerably lower than the last time I have been there, with some of the normal pools only ankle deep. I rigged up however and walked up the river to only look for deeper pools. I found a few and casted a dry fly over the water. I had plenty of strikes at my fly, but these were all really small fish. However in most of the deeper pools I could find there was always a bigger fish sitting in the head, and they were more than happy to take my fly.

I ended with three relatively decent sized fish for this stream, but it was a nice day to be out and enjoyed the walk much more than the actual fishing.

Rainbow trout from a small stream

I finally had some spare time to get on the rivers today. I left home early and arrived at the water a short while later. It was a beautiful summers day with not a breath of wind here in Cape Town, but being mindful of the expected hot temperatures later in the day I got onto the water fast.

The second cast in the first pool had a small rainbow slashing at my fly, but unfortunately I missed it. The next pool produced another little rainbow and that was an indication of things to come. I only fished for a few hours and skipped a lot of water but I had about 15 rainbow landed at the end of the day. What was also great to see was all the really small rainbow trout that was slashing at my fly. These bugger actually became quite annoying after a while as they were gunning for my fly in almost every pool, but were to small to actually take the size 16 parachute spider pattern I had on. As soon as I got a good drift on my fly they would slash at the fly and knock it over before the dry could get to the bigger fish that I spotted in the pool, but as mentioned above it was good to see that the river is very healthy and that there is a good amount of small fish in the river.

As the temperature started heating up the fish also got scarcer and I decided to rather pack it up.

Why you need to stay fit when going fishing.

I have finally found the perfect excuse for why I missed the strike when a fish rose to my fly.

This is how the conversation normally goes when my fishing buddy Roland and I fish a small stream together.

Roland  : "You slow bastard. You completely missed that fish. Do you want me to wake you up next time I see a fish?"

Me : "Shut up. The glare on the water was blinding me. Anyway your loud scream of excitement  gave me a fright"

Well no more. From now one I will be saying the following.

Me : "I was keeping an eye out for those Leopards roaming around wild. Someone has to make sure they don't come and eat your lazy ass"

It used to be that we only had to keep an eye out for the occasional baboon or snake when we went fishing on some remote little mountain stream down here in the Cape. Well, ignorance was bliss as it was recently found that the Endangered Cape Leopard is alive and well in the mountain ranges that we fish.

Read full story here

 The above Leopard was captured on camera by the Cape Leopard Trust on the beautiful Lourensford Estate

I know it is a fair distance between where the Leopard was spotted and the ussual places we fish, but it is part of the same mountain range after all.

And why would a leopard chase another wild animal if all he has to do is sit in wait next to a trout stream and wait for a fly fisher to show up packed full of goodies. I am pretty sure he wont mind the size 20 parachute Adams or Elk Hair Caddis's that he inevitably would need to spit out.

So why do you need to stay fit to go fishing I hear you ask.

" So that you can run faster than your buddy"