During the week Nick had taken a bold step and joined the NFFC (Natal Fly Fishers Club), so on Sunday we jumped in the Paj and headed for Uitzicht, a club water in the Kamberg area. Neither of us had fished this water before, but due to a rather humorous Butt Farming sign, we both knew exactly where it was.
A cup of coffee and toilet break later (which involved me getting locked in the gents by an excited Nick) and we were inflating the tubes on the side of a great looking dam. We waded into the chilly water and just after kicking out Nick realised he’d lost his net. He sulkily headed back to shore and as he turned I had my first knock. Yeehah! Sadly I missed it, but it did leave me expecting good things.
After finding his net in the shallows Nick headed back out and we fished pretty much the whole dam with no luck. Two hours later, fishless, were back where we started. Thankfully, on my last cast before breakfast, I got into a nice size Rainbow Trout which jumped several times before I got it into Nick’s net (hey, someone’s got to use it). It measure 20 inches and was caught with a large Mrs Simpson on a slow retrieve.
Our energy was revived by the fish and after a couple of rolls we were back in the water. At this point another member joined us and the 3 of us fished for another 2 hours with no luck. Since there were 2 dams on the site we deflated our tubes and headed for the other, smaller dam.
Sadly the cattle must’ve been drinking just before we arrived and the water was churned up and muddy. The area near the wall (where it was deeper) was clean so we headed onto the wall to fish. This smaller dam contains a lot of good looking weed and would’ve been better fished with a floating line. Sadly we both had intermediates on, and were too lazy to change them, so we ended up fishing a small area between the weed but with no luck.
At this point it was only lunch time so we decided to move to one of the other club waters in the area. We canceled our Uitzicht booking and headed for Bracken Waters.
Once parked in amongst what appeared to be carnivorous cows, we noticed you had to pass through a small gate in a barbed wire fence to get to the dam. Nick, deciding he wanted to be first in the water, made a dash for it. Sadly this resulted in his tube catching the fence. Hehehe…my cunning plan was working. We got into the water and he quickly realised he was sinking. Bwahaaaa! This was a good chance for me to nail a few fish while he drowned. Sadly this was not to be. The dam was badly weeded up, and it took me 10 minutes to make my way through thick weed to open water. When I finally got there I decided I felt too guilty and headed back to shore. I opted for a different route which turned out to be even weedier. FAIL! By the time I got back to the shore I was stuffed, and there was a fence between me and the car, so I had to get back into the water and go back through the weed. F#$#!!
Anyway, after this disaster we packed up, hit a few Laurentinas, and then headed home. All in all a very eventful day, even if we didn’t get a lot of fish.