The change of season has taken its toll. When the kids got sick I knew it was just a matter of time and I’d also catch a cold. Before it nailed me though I ventured out selectively with the boys to nearby farm dams, 1st just with Ilan, and later with Dieter as well as his snotty nose and slimy cough cleared up.

We scouted the Winelands to look for fish in a few old honey holes, and checked out some new dams too and found some of the biggest blue kurper I had ever seen with my own eyes. These blues aggressively ate a Bloody Squirmy suspended under an indicator on 5X fluoro tippet – see Bloodworm – and I also finally got to test my new Vision Nymphmaniac 9’6″ 3 wt – it didn’t disappoint!

Ilan even found an aquatic annelid ‘bloodworm’ in the dam shallows, proof that these blues were indeed after the real thing and we had been blindly ‘matching the hatch’.

While it was all fabulous for the two weeks it lasted, and I had been planning to head back to catch a few more big blue kurper, the scratchy throat eventually happened and I was on my back for most of the past weekend…Feeling the Monday blues properly now with no more big blues under the belt.