The Feathers & Fluoro crew have been hard at work testing out a selection of new gear, tackle and other clobber. More in-depth reviews will run in up-coming issues of The Mission, but for now here are a few first impressions. ECHO - PRIME 8-weight (seen in action above with a Garden Route grunter) [...]
Based in Namibia, but just as likely to be found in the jungles of Bolivia, running down roosters in Mexico or stalking the Seychelles atolls, Christiaan Pretorius travels a lot and, as such, has his trip preparation down to a fine art. Here’s what he packs for the plentiful permit flats of Poivre. "Fly [...]
If ever there was a time to celebrate and support local fly fishing products and manufacturers, it's now while our economy is struggling more than ever. One brand that not thaaaat many people know is actually South African is Omnispool, the line care solution guys (based out of Grahamstown noggal). I'm an unabashed patriot. Not [...]
There’s been quite a hullabaloo about Douglas Outdoors’ new Sky G rod, so we asked local South African agents Wading Waters (wadingwaters.com) for one to test. We paired it with Herman Botes, one of the country’s hardest working fly anglers who we knew would put it through its paces, and then some. Here's the the [...]
How to amplify rattles in your flies. Now, embedding rattles into flies is nothing new. Borrowed from the booming clink-clank of art lures, tyers have been using rattles for years to target a variety of species. In the past decade some of the more hardened local salt fly-fishers turned to making their own from broken [...]
I have never had a rod eye break, but last weekend I had not one, but two fail. The first, not surprisingly, was on my old Sage TCR while tussling a 7lb brown from the depths. Then a leg of the titanium recoil guide broke on my Hardy Zenith. I still cannot work out why [...]
I usually have more than one reel to clean when im coming back from a trip, and although the line winder can take two lots of backing, thats usually not enough and I hate the dance of moving things on and off. The perforations do make it great for cleaning fly reel backing. In my [...]
On Friday I blanked, well sort of. I had planned on an epic float with Nick van Rensburg of Flybru, down a section of water that I had a ball at the week before. We were psyched and the dingy was already packed in the back of the car, electric motor battery charged up, but [...]
THE FROTHING RABBIT AND TWO OTHER THINGS YOU NEVER KNEW YOU NEEDED FOR SOUTH AFRICAN TIGERFISH The theory of ‘marginal gains’ centres around the small incremental improvements (in any process) that eventually add up to one significant leap in improvement. It was popularised in the cycling world by Sir Dave Brailsford, who was the performance [...]
How to reverse a boat trailer The Feathers junior crew is starting to become a pretty strong team (with more sprouting soon). It got me thinking about some 'dad skills' (in the fishing/outdoor realm) - those things you'd crucially want to equip your kids with. Lighting a fire, casting... Things like that. And, launching a [...]
