Brendan Body, aka Boderick, aka Bod, aka Hoender, aka Pterodactyl Toes and many other monikers, is a seven-foot-tall human giraffe with verbal diarrhoea, skateboarding injuries, claws for feet and a penchant for bad behaviour. Bod operating under the strict supervision of Bailey, The Mission's spirit animal. He’s also our art director, the man [...]
...but sometimes you get what you need. No doubt most fisherman dream of chasing big fish, in wild waters that are in far flung exotic locations. We want to explore unfished rivers high, wild and hidden, we want to drift down deep jungle waters teeming with life, and we want to walk endless exotic flats [...]
Text by Ewan Naude and photos by Leonard Flemming Looking for another piece of the puzzle, new water, and new expectations. The palpable excitement of seeing a different section of the same river for the first time and knowing that the archives document a time when your unicorn was one of many. Getting to this [...]
WITH THE RELEASE of Goodoo, the new Murray cod film from Josh Hutchins' (aka Aussie Fly Fisher), we've been looking back in the archives at when we featured this impressive indigenous Aussie species as our issue 4 Wish List Fish. For the WHAT, WHERE, HOW and WHO of targeting these freakish freshwater behemoths, check it [...]
If you ever find yourself around the south east Zambian shores of Lake Tanganyika, nkupe (aka Giant Emperor Cichlids), a beefy African cousin of the Amazon’s peacock bass, warrants your attention. Gareth George, of television show WildfFly Fishing Series, is one of the few to target them on fly. In issue 14 of The Mission, he reveals the what, [...]
The Evolution of the Bubble-butt Beetle by Ed Herbst If you Google Philip Hills + Persistence Pays Off On the Smalblaar you will find a 2005 Piscator article on the website of the Cape Piscatorial Society which gives an indication of how even the most selective trout rarely ignore a properly-presented beetle pattern. A growing [...]
"Some fish are meant to come to hand, while some seem doomed from the second the hook up happens. My fish was a bit of both. The swing had finished and I’d begun to retrieve to set my next cast in the lie. I felt a rock or two on the fly, and, not completely concentrating, [...]
"You can see the glow from the bridge when the fish is at 30 feet. You can see the tips of the fins, the outline of the bill, the entire thing in perfect fluorescence. It's a sight to behold." Garry Cullen and Jeremy Block weigh in on what it's like to fly fish for broadbill [...]
The mighty Zambezi River, specifically the Batoka Gorge below Victoria Falls is under threat from a hydro-electric power scheme. Aside from the Falls being one of the seven wonders of the natural world, the gorge below them is an area that attracts thousands of visitors each year for the white water rafting, the rare bird [...]
Consider the humble bonito. Prolific-breeding, fast-growing. Beautiful. So iridescently easy-on-the-eyes in fact, that the Spanish and Portuguese ‘bonito’ translates to 'pretty'. (Although there is some disagreement that this is the true origin of its name). Its great downfall – for those which pass for a time through my home bay, at least – is that [...]
