Highland Lodge

I recently visited Highland Lodge located in the Stormberg close to Dordrecht in the Eastern Cape, South Africa.

This trout water is known for its naturally grown huge fish. Fingerlings are mostly stocked resulting in clever big fish. The area should not be fished by the fainthearted as a person will experience all four seasons in one day.

  
Casting a 5 weight rod in gale force wind from a float tube or pontoon boat being tossed around as if you are on the sea can be challenging, but the rewards are so sweat – big hard fighting fish. The surroundings and bird live at Highland Lodge is out of this world.

 

We fished a variety flies but most fish were taken on dragon fly and blood worm patterns. The one specific dragon fly pattern, the papa roach did extremely well. We fished the roach on a floating line with a long leader extremely slowly on the bottom – basically only taking up slack in the line. In the deeper sections of the dams we utilized an intermediate line. The mumbo #5 and atomic worms did well in terms of blood worm patterns. We also caught fish on small #16 and #18 flashback mayfly nymphs. This we only started fishing on the afternoon of the last day, but should have fished these from the beginning due to its success.
The biggest fish I landed was a magnificent “Blue” rainbow trout of close to 8 lbs.


Most of the other fish were between 4 and 6 lbs.

 

Sharing the water with great friends added to the experience. 

 

 

 Spot the small flashback mayfly nymph solidly lodged.