A LESOTHO LOCKDOWN
The Bokong valley at sunset The ongoing pandemic has been detrimental on a worldwide level and continues to, sadly, run its course in 2021 thus far. It’s truly difficult to see the silver lining during such a tough period but at least there’s been some light at the end of the tunnel for both myself and Philip Geldart, [...]
THE FEATHERS AWARD
When we announced the Feathers Award in December 2020, we knew it would attract some very special entries. This was not only because for this inaugural competition we allowed for entries from any time in the past 24 months, but also because in our experience fly anglers in Africa are, for the most part, hard-charging lunatics driven to push the [...]
THE RECONNECT
Flycastaway guide Brendan Becker's grandfather introduced him to fly fishing in the trout dams of Machadodorp. Years later, even though the old man is gone, for Brendan it still feels like he is there. I [...]
SNAKE BITE 101
What to do if you (or one of your fishing buddies) gets bitten by a snake... The black mamba is pretty high up my shit-your-pants list. Right up there with a croc, bull shark and [...]
BOOKS GALORE
"I don't know how to put this but I'm kind of a big deal. People know me. I'm very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany." Ron Burgundy There [...]
THE CLIFFS OF AL KURI
Sixty meters off that point was one and a half meters of the reason I'd run the war gauntlet. It lay suspended in an enormous current line that the GTs in these [...]
WHEN THE RIVER RAN RED
Regardless of your skill level, being an angler always involves a modicum of luck. In Gareth Tate and Craig Pappin’s case, they hit the motherlode in a Tsitsikamma estuary. Full story in issue 25. By [...]
BUCKETS OF BUCKETS
"Hot and wet, thees ees the best time for the black bass" - said in a strong Greek Cypriot accent. As I looked outside at a hot and rainy day full of excitement for the [...]
WISH LIST FISH: BLUE KURPER
A favourite of farm dams and local ponds, this aggro bridge troll the blue kurper deserves your attention as Leonard Flemming reports in issue 24. WHAT The blue kurper, aka Mozambique tilapia or Oreochromis mossambicus [...]
TAIL STRUMMING GUITARFISH
Tails slapped and splashed ahead. Excitedly, we crunched our way forward through shells and the West Coast mist that enveloped everything in white. This was it - white steenbras tailing on the flats. [...]
THE LONG WAY HOME
When Peter Coetzee went to the Yemeni archipelago of Socotra, he had two weeks spent chasing giant trevally on the cards. Then the pandemic shut the world down. Stuck between a civil war in Yemen, [...]
AN APPLE A DAY…
I've been so focused on ticking off a 2020 fly fishing bucket list - trying to fit in special fishing trips in the limited free time I had, rather than squeezing in the regular stuff [...]