WHAT’S IN MY BAG – DR PATRICK AVERY
When he’s not trying to cast a fly, Dr Patrick Avery can frequently be found tending to Sir David Attenborough and his BBC film crews all over the world … from rainforests to savannah, Iceland to Antarctica. Here’s his advice on the medical kit to pack for a proper expedition. "I was lucky to be born, raised, and schooled [...]
GRUNTER GOTTA EAT Part 1
For as long as SA fly fishers have been obsessed with grunter, misconceptions and heresies have spread about fishing for them. Noticeably, and especially in the Western Cape, many grunter hunters have focused almost exclusively on one ubiquitous grunter food, the mud prawn. But has tunnel vision inadvertently done us out of options? Yeah, maybe. I’ve noticed through many years [...]
THE NEW KID ON THE BLOCK
I’ve fished with Gloomis flyrods almost exclusively for over two decades. I simply love them and always have. In my humble opinion the 6wt stream dance and 12wt NRX (older and new models) are impossible [...]
HIP HIP HOORAY
Fly fishing – genteel sport for limp-wristed, tweed-clad, upper-class twits. Right? Try again. As Jazz Kuschke writes in his issue 30 'NO Time To Die' feature, fly-fishing can result in severe injury or death, from [...]
ED TRUTER IN ‘YER CRACK
The other day I was minding my own business, scrolling through the time-suck vortex of Instagram when a promoted post from Awesome Maps popped up advertising their new fishing map of the world. I took [...]
GOLDEN THREADS
It's been a fun couple of months and one of the highlights was a mission we made to the Orange River where we teamed up with Jeep Apparel, makers of gritty outdoor/urban clobber, who have [...]
BUCKNUTS
Whether you’re a believer in the divine, dabble in the pseudo-science of intelligent design, embrace the wonder of serendipity, or accept that humans sometimes just get lucky, there is no escaping the fact that some [...]
TAIL FETISH
I'm a sight fisherman way before I'm a fly fisherman. Faced with two options; blind casting a fly rod, or pitching live bait at a target, I will pick the latter every time. As a [...]
REVIEW: PATAGONIA SWIFTCURRENT WADERS
As published in issue 29 of The Mission, Jazz Kuschke's review of Patagonia's Swiftcurrent Expedition Zip-Front Waders. Zip-front waders are a little bit like an air fryer. Okay, if you don’t have kids then perhaps [...]
WHAT LIES BENEATH
What if we can have the best of both worlds – brilliant trout fishing in the mountains of the Western Cape AND new (yet ancient) fisheries for large indigenous species that readily take a fly? [...]
DEER HAIR AND CDC ROACH – SBS
My corruption of Herman Botes’ Papa Roach has come up in conversation quite a bit lately. It’s fair to ask why on earth I would tamper with this damn near perfect stillwater trout fly, but [...]
TIGERS VS DRAGONS
Of course I'd heard about surface-feeding vittatus. I'd seen the videos too, like this one of bird-eating tigers. In October 2019 Ewan Naude and I were on the upper Zambezi at Sioma Falls (Ngonye Falls) [...]