SAVING THE SANDFISH
The Clanwilliam sandfish (Labeo seeberi) is one of the most enigmatic indigenous fishes in South Africa, even more so than its river mate the Clanwilliam yellowfish which is praised by fisherman across our country. Sandfish ‘live’ in the Olifants/Doring River system in the Western Cape and where it once thrived in schools of ‘thousands’ that engulfed the riverbed on upstream [...]
HIGH 5s – JEREMY ROCHESTER
5 favourite fly fishing destinations globally? Slovenia with Hunter Fly Fishing. Seychelles with the Alphonse Fishing Company. Lower Zambezi. Kilombero North Safaris, Ruhudji and Mnyera Rivers, Tanzania. Kamchatka, Zhupanova Float Trip. 5 indispensable flies for freshwater? Zonker muddlers. Simon Bunn’s Cinnamon Caddis. CDC Elk Wing Caddis. Cluster Fuck. Pheasant tail flashback. 5 fishing items you don’t leave home without before [...]
PREPPING FOR HEAVY DAYS ON THE ZAMBEZI
“I’ve just tied up 10 more mega clousers, bru,” came Ewan Naude’s words late last week, following a phone call to James Williams from Wildman Fishing co. Ewan's mega clousers “Basically, like I [...]
HEAD WATER FEVER
"It's 9:43am, high summer beneath a glass-like sky and there’s a dazzling sun on a pastoral, some might say bucolic, Southland river. The upstream breeze triggers the grey-green tussock to radiate in rippling undulations below [...]
HARLEY SHAKES
The Harley Shakes is a fly created by Stuart Hartley, a guide for Tourettes Fishing, designed specifically for the Tiger Fish (Hydrocynus Tanzaniae) of the Mnyera and Ruhudji Rivers in Tanzania. It's a surface fly [...]
SCIENCE BRU: THE ESTUARY TIDAL PUZZLE
Neap is not (necessarily) the worst river fishing tide… “Without the moon’s steadying influence,” writes Bill Bryson in his ultimate idiot’s guide to science, A Short History of Nearly Everything, “the earth would wobble like [...]
ORANGE RIVER PACK LIST 101
I had obviously packed everything that could possibly fit into my car for the 4 day Orange River Largemouth Yellowfish Conservancy drift with Kalahari Outventures, but besides your general fishing tackle and your favourite polarised [...]
NORMAN NO-MATES
“Like being on the edge of a waking dream, they appear, those damn Omani permit, melting in and out of your vision as they float through the mess of the shore break. But they are [...]
DOUBLE RAPALA KNOT & PIANO WIRE FOR TIGERFISH
As explained in the original post (Terminal Tricks for Tigers) this piano wire trace setup (or single stranded stainless steel trace) was still regularly used when the Tanzanian tigerfish played 'hard-to-get' and it is also [...]
SPANISH GOLD
"A mirror-calm bay glided into view as we hiked around a dry wheat-coloured hillock. Dry grass lined the banks as far as the eye could see and I regretted wearing the thick socks that had [...]
FLIES FOR SPANISH BARBEL
Spanish barbel gently sip dries, but what follows is an electric, turbo charged, dash into the depths. Here are some patterns that worked during the trip to Extremadura covered in The Mission Magazine #17. The [...]
THE RIO GRANDE ROOKIE
"If you had asked me a year ago what my future plans were, I’d probably have told you that I’d still be stuck at university, scraping through the shitty pages of textbooks, while frothing over [...]