After a good trip to the Bushmans River over Easter, I decided I’d give the Lotheni River a bash before the end of the season. So when the offices closed for a week, Sharon and I headed to Lotheni for 3 days.
Of the 3 days we spent there I only fished one morning. I hit the river at about 7:30am, Sharon bravely wading the river behind me in an old pair of takkies. I was hoping she would be able to walk on the bank, but unfortunately she had to cross a few times which isn’t ideal without boots.
The fishing itself was more difficult than the Bushmans, and after fishing 2kms of river over 3 hours, I’d landed only 3 small Brown Trout. Since then, I have however spoken to other fisherman, and apparently it was more of a time issue, rather than a river issue.
Having said that, it seems to me that it may be a good idea to nymph the river, rather than fishing it with a dry fly as I did. I say this because there are a lot of VERY deeps pools which looked fantastic for fish, and yet I picked up nothing. Looking at them I suspect they’re too deep to fish with a dry, since the fish don’t seem to rise to them in the deeper water.
All 3 fish I caught were taken in very shallow water, basically ankle deep. As I mentioned above, nothing came from the pools, but I suspect nymphing them may produce fish.
I starting fishing with an Elk Hair Caddis, but had no luck. I then switched to a DDD again with no luck. I was fishing a very fine 7x tippet, so it had to be because of the fly. Eventually I switched to a #16 RAB and was into a fish almost immediately. And I got another two shortly thereafter. So it seems that the fish were taking smaller flies.
I also noticed that the fish were all sitting in the slower shallower water, rather than in sheltered areas of the main flow.
All in all it was a great trip. When the fisher gets harder, the rewards just get greater. Its a beautiful river and I’ll definitely fish it again next season.
Oh, and one last thing. I fished from Cool Pools back to the camp, which according to my GPS was just over 2kms long. It had some good runs, and a lot of deep pools.