THE MAKING OF A FLY FISHER AND IMAGES OF A LATE SEASON VISIT TO WESTERN CAPE FLY STREAMS

Marcel Terblanche

I grew up in Stellenbosch and fell in love with trout on a walk home from school when I spied a man with a cane rod landing a beast of a trout on the Eerste River just above the Coetzenburg cricket ground.

It was an instant passion.

When I graduated to Paul Roos high school, I met Andre van Rooyen who immediately questioned my sketch of a trout in my pencil case lid. So began an angling companionship that has lasted nineteen years.

As you can imagine, youthful lust for adventure and exploration saw us hunting trout almost every other day on the Eerste and as you may know, these are not the easiest trout to fool. This made us serious trouters, spending hours learning the ropes on our own, without advice from others.

Now that we are both older we have come to realize we understand the ways of trout a little better, but that we’re not able to explain much of it.

With some sadness I had to relocate to the beautiful, but troutless, Tsitsikamma area six years ago. It felt as though something had died inside of me. I was no longer near my beloved rivers and mountains.

After three troutless years I decided I needed to make a serious plan before depression took over. Now Andre and I get together once or twice a year to go hunt trout.

Our last late season expedition on the Western Cape’s waters was both testing and satisfying. The small browns that I caught the previous season had turned into much bigger fish and Andre was absolutely ecstatic after landing his first brownie and a decent one at that.

The Smalblaar was as lovely as ever and we had a few good days with lovely trout and a few bad days with only smallmouth bass snapping at our dries.

The Elandspad proved highly testing on the days we fished it. The Holsoot was in a sad mood after the recent fires and the water colour was somewhat sooty and only two fish were taken on our beat.

The day on the Holsoot started badly anyway , when we arrived at our parking area and setup our rods I realized that I had left my brand new reel on the roof of my bakkie when we left the Elandspad parking area the evening before. (If anyone picked my reel up there please contact me. It is a Lochmoor reel with a 2 weight, beige Scientific Anglers line.)

The Holsloot

Beat six of the Smalblaar was epic, even though the water level was low. There were a few 18 inch browns up there that kept us busy for hours.

In general though the past two years’ Cape stream expeditions were the best I’ve ever had. I landed my biggest stream rainbow ever at 23.5 inches, not to mention all the decent sized browns. I think the Prince of dry fly streams, the Smalblaar, will be at its best this season.

Currently I live in Stormsriver village and run a bed and breakfast and self catering establishment called Ploughmans Rest. As a sideline, I run Forest Archery pro shop in Plettenberg Bay in conjunction with Scruffy Hunters Bowhunting Club.

I am a bit of a traditionalist and currently focus on traditional bowhunting with stick and string. I am also setting up a workshop at home and plan on starting my own traditional arrow and accessories business.

Seeing that I am so far from the trout I have to keep my passions alive and the way of the bow is similar to the way of the trout.

http://www.ploughmansrest.co.za/