Whereas I won’t be caught dead driving fifteen minutes to target 40cm leeries, I’ll drive hours to hunt smallstream trout. In my favourite stream a 40cm trout is absolutely a trophy. It’s weird. Perhaps I just have different ideas of what good fishing entails in salt water as opposed to fresh, but then why do [...]
Big witvis (Cape whitefish), an old nemesis, have plagued my thoughts for a long time. They seemed impossible to catch on fly, which simply didn't make sense to me, that was until I was introduced to micro-nymphing... It's amazing how aggressive small fish can be to large flies and then sometimes, how comparatively big fish [...]
Picture this: 9 km of river with big, crystal clear pools full of big sandfish, yellowfish and sawfin feeding on bedrock and sand...Drool, drool, drool. This image of a magic fly fishing destination could become reality with the Saving Sandfish conservation project. The possibility of a weir in the Biedouw River Valley, that will make [...]
SMALLMOUTH, largemouth, Natal Scalies, Lowveld, Clannies… South Africa’s yellowfish species are loved and lauded, but some cousins fly under the radar like the endangered Witvis. Leonard Flemming recounts what it took to catch his first one and how he’s been consistently targeting them since then. "Once upon a time, long ago, before I had caught [...]
