FLY FISHING THE RHODES DISTRICT – MAY 2011

The trip begins

The portents were not good. Reports of anglers running into grey skies, wind, storms and swollen streams in the Eastern Cape Highlands seemed the rule. But I’d put this trip off too often already and I finally left in early May, hoping to cheat the weather. But into the Karoo heavy cumulus clouds already formed massive landscapes of their own and it seemed like I was driving into wall after wall of bad weather the further I went.

At Mount Melsetter, Mike and Candy Ferrar's guest farm 44 kms from Middelburg, the stream, normally bone dry was flowing!

 

And, as expected, I arrived at Basie and Carien Vosloo’s farm, Birkhall, on a day you would describe the weather as unsettled at best.

The Sterkspruit on Birkhall in perfect weather and in perfect condition

 

Late that same afternoon I drove to the Sterkspruit where it flows under the Lindesfarne Bridge. The river was full and running clear and pods of small fish were rising to a hatch of midges. I walked downstream and took a few on my single feather midge pattern before the sun set.

Next day Tony Kietzman drove over from Rhodes. We fished up the gorge section of the Sterkspruit on Branksome. Sunlight splashed through gaps in the clouds, but the clouds stayed heavy-bellied and lurked on the fringes for most of the day.

Tony Kietzman tackling up

We parked in a paddock, tackled up at a slow pace, walked downstream for half an hour planning to fish back to the truck. On the way we flushed a few African Black Duck and Tony spoke of seeing Black Stork in the area.

The piece of the Sterkspruit running in the gorge is pretty. The gradient is also a little higher, so there’s enough flow through the runs and riffles to carry your dry fly well.

 

In places the rocks in the gorge form slate and tan coloured cliffs, their muddled linear geometry full of texture and colour. Clumps of emerald green moss clung in crevices, often alongside rocks covered in orange-coloured lichen so gaudy the rocks looked painted, almost graffiti-like.

In runs that were plump with water we caught fish on dry flies and when we didn’t catch with a dry fly we ran a nymph through the run. We pretty well stuck with Al Troth’s Elk Hair Caddis or RABs, size 16, all fished on 7X tippets.

 

They were well-conditioned fish, the best about 14 inches, but we had to release plenty of really small trout between the better fish we got.

Late in the afternoon back at the truck I boiled a kettle of coffee. It was after 3.00 and the day had turned really cold.

We moved off upstream to near the upper boundary of Branksome hoping for more sunlight than you find this time of day in the gorge and despite the weather, we still caught fish on dry flies until it got too cold and gloomy to fish comfortably and we headed out.

Fly tying

The next morning was overcast and cold. I sat on the veranda and tied flies, trying to copy Agostino Roncallo’s beautiful Mirage dry fly pattern. He had sent me a full box of his flies from Italy just before I left Cape Town and Tony and I marvelled at the skill of his tying.

Agostino Roncallo's flies

While I tied and encouraged by some cheese I put out, a tame Cape Robin landed on the stone balustrade of the veranda and posed just long enough for a picture.

Later a dramatic storm swept across the mountains to the west of Birkhall. When it was over the roads had turned to mud. I tried the farm track down to the Sterkspruit for some late afternoon fishing but the truck felt like a cake of soap in a hot bath so I gave it best.

The next day the sun was out  after a bright pink sunrise and as usual the dogs were jostling for space on the roof of a shed where the sun comes in bright and early. It all goes strictly to an unspoken canine pecking order.

Fishing the Birnham section of the Bokspruit

Tony Kietzman joined me for a day on Birnham, a farm where the Bokspruit runs in places over green-coloured bedrock. I wanted pictures of trout over this pretty substrate and we both wanted to try the Japanese Tenkara fly rod and the exquisitely crafted Steve Boshoff Tenkara landing net I had brought along. The rod is 11’ long, telescoping down to a mere two feet. At the tip end is a small nylon loop to which we attached a 12’ braided fly line with a long, level leader and an arm’s length of 7X tippet.

Tenkara rod and exquistitely crafted Steve Boshoff Tenkara net

The day was pretty, with intermittent sunshine and fluffy clouds. We stopped at the Welgemoed bridge where dozens of nervous fish held in the clear flow like glass slippers over their shadows.  They were best spotted by first finding their shadows.

The Bokspruit at the Welgemoed Bridge

 

A few kilometres on I came close to putting the truck into a hole where a culvert had collapsed almost half way across the road.

The stream was perfect; clear and turquoise-coloured over the pale green bedrock. We assembled the Tenkara and with a long 7X tippet, tied on a Roncallo Mirage dry fly and took fish at will from pockets and undercut banks, really close, almost under our noses.

The Tenkara seemed to lend an unaccustomed sense of delicacy, freedom and poetry to the fly fishing. From one small run we landed eight fish and missed three more.

When we got to the top of the section where the east bank is lined with poplar trees, now leafless, we turned around and fished the Tenkara back to where we had started, taking fish from every other run.

In the deep run where we had started, Tony took the best fish of the day, a brightly coloured rainbow of at least 14 inches, a female we felt convinced had already spawned.

In the late afternoon sun on the way home I took a landscape shot of the Bokspruit on the farm Clontarf . I’d never seen the river or the countryside looking more magnificent.

 

Brucedell

A day later we made for Brucedell, also on the upper Bokspruit, where there is quick flowing pocket water interspersed with long, very deep pools. The day was wet and cold with a high downstream wind and we battled with the Tentkara.

We caught fish, though not with any freedom and persisted with a dry fly. In one of the deep pools I had a very large rainbow come to a small yellow DDD and hooked him. He was a handful to manage on a long slender rod without a reel and he eventually got off as Tony tried to net him. We guessed he was 16 inches long and he was very deep-sided.

Light rain was falling when we left the valley, but the clouds soon gave way to sunshine. We decided to explore the Riflespruit valley on the way home, the intention being to head back to fish it as soon as we could if it looked okay. The valley was beautiful and the Riflespruit was like something from a fly fishing calendar. As we watched a trout rose in the middle of the run.

 

A bend on the lower Riflespruit

Rhodes and the Bell

I drove slowly over to Rhodes a day later, using the back road that crosses the Sterkspruit and the Bok, and noticed that both rivers were now sadly bank high and cloudy. I spent the night at Walkerbouts Inn catching up on all the local news with the owner, Dave Walker.

Dave’s pub features in South Africa’s top 100 pubs I learned. Rightly so. It’s cosy and full of character and tradition. It’s also the only pub I ever dared sketch a few trout on the wall with a black Koki pen. Dave framed the picture and it’s still there, dated 1996 I think.

Dave and his assistent, Penny, in his famous pub

 

Tony and I fished the Bell below town next morning, again taking fish on the Tenkara, which we had come to enjoy enough to admit we were getting hooked. Despite its limitations – and our inexperience with the technique – it is a delightful way to fly fish small pocket waters and open mountain streams.

On the way back we stopped and took some landscape shots in lovely treacly light.

That evening lightening whipped across an ink black sky and I heard the ominous rumble of thunder.

Rain

The weather stayed wet and miserable for the next two days and I had to make the painful decision whether to leave Birkhall or stay on. I tried the Sterkspruit, but it was bank high and unfishable and the Bokspruit valley was hardly any better. In the end I packed my truck and left two full days earlier than planned. Later Tony confirmed that I had made the right call. Rain washed out the fishing for the next four days.