LEVEL HEADED
When South Africa moved, over several months, from Level 5 lockdown (Defcon 5, don’t leave your front door), to Level 4 (walk the dogs and exercise between 6-9am), to Level 3 (still no smokes or booze, but casinos, taxis and churches are cool), rebellion began to brew. To save their sanity, Graham Weakley of Bucketmouth Safaris and some bass bashing [...]
WEIRD & WONDERFUL
When Gerald Penkler and his wife Suzanne took a trip fly fishing Australia, they had goals. Specific species goals. From the fish to the fauna and flora, they got what they were looking for and then some. As featured in The Mission Issue 23. This is not a story about trophies, but stories about a journey to find a jungle [...]
SCIENCE BRU: GET AMPED – HOW TO AMPLIFY RATTLES IN YOUR FLIES
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 [...]
WHITE LIES AND GUANO FLIES
Catching carp on small white flies.
EARLY SEASON RIVER TACTICS AND TIPS
September 1st, that magical date on the South African fly fishing calendar when the trout rivers open again. For me personally it signifies the end of one fishing year and the start of the next. [...]
ROD GUIDE REPLACEMENT
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 [...]
THE VIRTUAL TOUR
Ok, so 2020 cancelled a lot of our plans, but that does not mean we can't find a workaround. Like this years F3TSA, now available online! Sure, it's not going to be in a packed [...]
WISH LIST FISH: NAMIBIAN STEENBRAS
We covet steenbras at the best of times, but we’ve recently been introduced to their butterball cousins from Namibia (aka Nambia). Instant fish crush. Just add water. Our Wish List Fish from The Mission Issue [...]
HIGH 5s – DAN FACTOR
Consistently holding pole position as South Africa’s top-ranked competition angler, Dan Factor of X-Factor Angling (www.xfactorangling.co.za), is also a fly fishing coach and a guide, taking clients all over the world. We caught up with [...]
THE LEAF LINE TRAP
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 [...]
FLEXING THE FENWICK
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 [...]
THE COSTA RICA CONVO
The Mission caught up with film makers and guides Thomas Enderlin and Federico Hampl to chat about their film, Machaca - A Botanical Tale, (currently on the Fly Fishing Film Tour lineup) the species itself, [...]