An Introduction to Fly Fishing

Whenever a person, old or young, is exposed to the “art” of fly fishing for the first time it could be extremely daunting. To start with, you need to get a whole “fly fishing” dictionary under the belt. You need to be able to strip (your line) in front of other fly fishers although they could have bigger fishing rods than you. You need to link the terminology with the actual articles. A leader is not necessarily the person in front of you in the stream. The appropriate attitude must be adopted not to reveal you’re a newbie to the sport, but your uncontrolled tripping, sliding and half drowned look is a dead giveaway anyway. There are flies in the fly box and black flies biting your legs.

Well, not all true! The key aspect to reveal when introducing a person to the sport is to enjoy the experience (and to catch a fish). During the past holiday, I had the opportunity to expose some family members, who had never touched a fly rod (with the exception of my dad who joins me regularly on the river), to the magnificent sport of fly fishing. I decided to release them on the Vaal river in South Africa. The Vaal do not require long accurate casts in general and a basic indicator set-up could allow them to catch a couple of fish and to experience an explosive run of a yellow fish bolting upstream.

After a short “This Is This” and “That Is That” they were released on the awaiting fish population. The “Team”, all caught fish, some big some small, and a particular team member was seriously hooked – we had to visit the river again after two days.  Another team member was also seriously hooked – I managed to remove the hook from his leg without serious blood loss.  Their smiles said it all and I had an awesome experience!

First mudfish

Next mudfish

Biggest mudfish

Good yellowfish

 Big yellowfish

Another mudfish

Smallest fish

Another yellowfish

I also caught a yellowfish. 

Yellow!

Yellow!

St Lucia South Africa 2008

Catching various species of fish on fly in the estuary at St Lucia.

Brown ray caught on small clouser.

Croc not caught on fly, foul hooked it once or twice.

Caught a small soul on fly.

La Verpa

I had a quick afternoon session at La Verpa in Dullstroom South Africa recently. Fishing was done in three still waters which are crystal clear with a well balanced stocking policy. The clarity resulted in the fishing being technical with no margin of error. I caught some beautiful rainbows and a magnificent brown.

Catfish on fly

Sterkfontein Yellows on fly

Tiger on Fly

10 lb Smallmouth Yellowfish!

The pleasure of catching a 10 lb. smallmouth yellowfish eluded me for a long time. On my first outing to the Vaal River this year, I was fishing on my own and within my first couple of casts below a shallow riffle which ran into a slow deeper section of the river, I was rewarded with a small yellowfish and even smaller mudfish – maybe 3 inches in length. 

 Seeing small fish is always pleasing as it creates that assurance that our rivers are still producing next generations of fish. While pondering on this, my nymphs stopped dead in their tracks and slowly moved a foot or two to the right away from me. I immediately knew this was a big fish, which, by the look of it, was not even aware that a small size 16 nymph has been lodged in its upper lip. 

Large mudfish tend to do this when hooked and to start the fight I normally give the rod another flick in the opposite direction just to let the beast know that the games must begin. As I carefully administered this flick with the rod, the water in front of me exploded and this BIG yellow raced down stream. It took my fly line and almost all of my backing before I managed to stop it. From there it was smooth sailing as I was playing the fish in deeper open water with not too many obstacles. I managed to land the fish – it weighed 10, 1 lbs. A friend joined me and took a couple of photos before releasing the fish.

 Perfect start to a new year of fly fishing!