ABOUT MYSELF

I’ve been fly fishing pretty well all my life, although the bug bit really hard at university when I seemed like I was doing a Masters degree in fly fishing and a part-time course in medicine.

I love small streams and trout, but I realised long ago that I’m happy with a fly rod on any water, fishing for anything. And these days I am as happy to be out with a camera as with a fly rod.

I was privileged to spend six years at St Stithians College in Johannesburg where I matriculated. Privileged for a number of reasons. The first is that we got a pretty sound education even if we didn’t appreciate that at the time. But another great privilege was spending six years sitting in a classroom alongside Warwick Tarboton who is now one of South Africa’s leading ornithologists. He was keen on birding right through our school days and taught me a lot. Also at St Stithians at the time, and still one of my best friends, was Dallas Reed. He is a great ornithologist and his home in Bryanston, Tonquani, was a beautiful, thatched place on 50 acres of veld and thorn trees. His Dad, Royce, was a highly respected birder and people like Ken Newman were regular guests, which all added to my knowledge and interest in bird watching. I’m still a pretty ordinary birder, but the interest has never died and its connection to fly fishing I think is natural and seamless. Then finally we had a fine photographic society in the college that certainly tweaked my interest in photography.

Since my university days I have fished in a few interesting places. I’ll try to rate these in order of the pleasure I got from them, or in the order of the excitement of the fishing, for what that’s worth. Top of my list would be the lovely triangle of fly waters, lakes and rivers included, that lies between Lady Grey, Ugie and Rhodes in South Africa. It is still the most spectacular fly fishing scenery I ever came across. And some of the best fishing I ever did. Then there were the couple of trips I did to the steelhead waters in the Kispiox river system in British Columbia. Nothing I have ever hooked was more electric than a steelhead, no fishing more loaded with mystery and anticipation. I’d next rate the Western Cape’s gin clear dry fly streams, not for the size of the fish, but for the quality of the experience and the scenery. The chalkstreams of Hampshire are deeply soaked in tradition and history and each of the times I fished them I always felt a sense of being very privileged. The Hampshire Bourne and the upper, wild parts of the Itchen are my favourites. The Okavango trips I have done are etched in detail in my memory, a sure sign that the fishing was a profound experience. I loved Montana, but of all the places I fished, the late Datus Proper’s little spring creek running through his property was the most enjoyable. Then comes New Zealand’s South Island and a close runner up to it, the pretty streams and lakes in Tasmania. I fished a few rivers in Switzerland and one in Germany, but a stream that stands out for me in this part of the world is the river Toss outside Zurich that had scarily difficult brown trout in it.

(Below) On one of my favourite streams, the Swith, Eastern Cape  - Phil Hills photo