Random Stuff - Africa Edition

Things on the fishing front has been rather slow lately. Work and other commitments have kept me away from the rivers, though I did get to go fish this past Sunday after first watching our national team bow out of the Rugby World Cup. I got on the water rather late and only fished for a few hours. The water levels are near perfect and I managed to catch quite a number of Rainbow's on both dry flies and nymphs. I took lots of pics but when I downloaded them I found out that I had my camera on the wrong setting all the times so all I have is a mix of blurry photos. When I have the time I might turn them into some obscure work of art though.

Anyway with not much else to report I though that I would share a few random items with you guys and girls.

Firstly a new Fly Fishing E-Zine. With these thing a dime a dozen now a days I can at least say that this is a Proudly South African one, though there is not much content about South African fly fishing in the first edition.

Some local guys took on a epic trip to Bassas Da India of the African coast. They are in the process of writing an epic trip report on the Flytalk Forum. This must be one of the best trip reports I have ever read. Check it out HERE.

A friend of mine also send me the below cellphone pictures of a monster Barber (Catfish) that he caught on a 9 weight rod and a Fish Skull fly this past weekend. The fish took him 35minutes to land.Awesome stuff.

And lastly, just to proof that Africa is not for the weak check out the below video.

Fish Skull Deceiver - Step by Step

 

 

 

Materials

HOOK: Mustad 34007
BODY: SF Flash Blend
FLASH/LATERAL LINE: Krystal Flash
HEAD: Small/ Medium Fish Skull

 

STEP 1:

Attach thread to hook.

 

 

 STEP 2:

Tie in your chosen color of SF Flash Blend.

 

 

Fold the Flash Blend backwards and tie the remainder down.

 

 

 Step 3 :

Rotate the hook and repeat step 2 on the bottom of the hook with a different colour of Flash Blend.

 

 

 Step 4:

Return the fly the right way up and form a small head for the Fish Skull to fit over. Attach the Krystal flash. Whip finish the fly at this point. Add a drop of superglue to the head to help the Fish Skull to seat properly.

 

 

Step 5:

Fit the Fish Skull Head over the eye of the hook and make sure it seats properly. Re attach the thread in front of the Fish Skull Head and whip finish immediately making sure that the Fish Skull cannot slip of the hook.

 

Step 6:

Trim the Flash Blend to shape.

Sunday18-09

I finally managed to celebrate the season  opening today by heading down to a local stream. Unfortunately the weather Gods didn't want to play along and I arrived at the river to a howling downstream wind at 8Am this morning. It was also freezing cold and the sky looked like it was going to pour buckets of water down on me at any moment. Nevertheless I rigged up, but on layers of clothing and cursed myself for not bringing my waders along. As I got to the river I quickly realized that there was no point in fishing upstream as I just couldn't get a cast in. My line and flies just kept on blowing back at me, so I turned around, added some heavy nymphs and a softhackle to my tippet and started to fish downstream.

The river is also still quite a bit high and in between this and the wind fishing wasn't easy. I hopped downstream from pool to pool for an hour an managed to land one brown trout for the effort.  This just isn't my preferred way of fishing and as I turned around I changed my flies to a dry and dropper and fished back upstream as the wind has dropped slightly by this time.  I missed one fish that came up to my dry and landed another brownie. By the time I got back to my starting point the heavens looked like it was going to open up at any moment and sure enough as I got to my car it started raining. All in all it wasn't  a very successful day, but at least I got to finally get out on the streams again and I did get to try out my new reel.

SAGE CLICK III

Getting back home I remembered that we got a notice that out power will be of for most of the day, and boy I realized today how spoiled we are. Normally Sundays are for playing around on the internet, catching up on some movies, and relaxing around home. Well without any electricity we kind of wondered what we are going to do the whole day. My wife suggested the shops and before I could come up with something else I was dragged away.

Returning home I decided to tie some flies (something I haven't really been doing much of lately) to fill some of the gaps in my flybox. After about 20 flies my eyes started to droop and it was snooze time. By the time I woke up the power was still not back on so the fire was lit and we had some delicious Lamb chops and pork ribs on the fire.

Size 16 grey parachute adams

                           Size 18 grey parachute adams 

Size 18 black parachute adams

I have also been playing around with a new shop logo the last couple of days. Let me know what you guys think.