From: 01/01/2015
To: 01/31/2015
Type of Water: Freshwater
Species: Brown trout
It has been characteristically hot in January. That is kind of how we expect it. Big storms and lots of cloud cover in December, with a killer storm around Christmas day or so. Then it gets sunny and just too damned hot in January. And that’s what we have had. Stillwater temperatures are at 21 or 22 degrees, and not just at the surface. While I haven’t done it this season, in previous ones, I have lowed a thermometer on an electrical cord with a digital read-out up at the float tube, and at eight meters deep I am still getting readings of twenty degrees!
Wayne Stegen was telling us in the pub the other night how he and his buddies landed a good size fish in the shallows, and that they realized that there on the downwind side, the mercury was near 25 degrees as you can get. So they t View more...It has been characteristically hot in January. That is kind of how we expect it. Big storms and lots of cloud cover in December, with a killer storm around Christmas day or so. Then it gets sunny and just too damned hot in January. And that’s what we have had. Stillwater temperatures are at 21 or 22 degrees, and not just at the surface. While I haven’t done it this season, in previous ones, I have lowed a thermometer on an electrical cord with a digital read-out up at the float tube, and at eight meters deep I am still getting readings of twenty degrees!
Wayne Stegen was telling us in the pub the other night how he and his buddies landed a good size fish in the shallows, and that they realized that there on the downwind side, the mercury was near 25 degrees as you can get. So they towed the fish to cooler water, and there sat for a full half hour revising it. Well done to them. Sadly I think few anglers go to that sort of trouble, and as a consequence end up killing more fish than they realise. Wayne’s group hit the water before sun-up, which at this time of the year means getting up at around 3 am. That is what you call commitment! They were off the water by 8 am, with 21 fish between them including a 7 lb fish for John Barr. The location? Private I’m afraid, and John isn’t telling. Not even if you buy him beer!
There have been some reports of good fish up on one of the Wildfly waters too, but as Anton Smith said to me the other day, he prefers to rest the Stillwater Trout until it starts to cool down.
The rivers have been highly variable as one can expect. Last week, when we were in a heatwave, I heard news of some guys on the Umgeni. They caught a few small fish, but in water that was dirty and 21 degrees. Hardly ideal. Two weeks earlier an NFFC member wrote on his catch return, something along the lines of “ Heavily overgrown with wattles, long grass, bramble etc. Just the way I like it!”, and proceeded to record four browns with lengths evenly distributed from 10 to 18 inches. Now that is the Umgeni as I remember it in the eighties!
I phoned Jan Korrubel this morning, and he filled me in on the weather while I was away last week. It seems I left in the heat, and returned in the heat, but in between we had 40 to 70 mm of rain, depending on where you were. The Bushmans was reported as unfishable after the rain set in last Tuesday, but is apparently picture perfect as of yesterday. The Mooi is apparently as fine as you could ever hope to see, but never got more than a bit grey in the upper reaches last week.
So in summary: The rivers would be my first choice. And if you get out there quick, before the next bout of heavy rain, you might just be in for a treat. With strong flows, some Czech nymphing in the white water is likely to yield results. Don’t be shy to pack on the weight to execute this method properly. In fact even if you are doing conventional upstream nymphing, don’t be shy on the weight. The trout will almost certainly be holding up in that cushion of slower water against the bottom, and you want your morsel to be right there with them. Heavy flows will do a fair job of obscuring the plop of the bead.
Then again, on a morning about two weeks ago on the upper Mooi, I went off upstream dredging with a heavy nymph, only to return later to find that Graeme Steart had been taking them off the top with an oversized halo hackle type fly. Never say never. Browns rising to a dry on a bright sunny day with no sign of a hatch.
Tight lines.
