The 2019 World Masters Flyfishing Championship here in Dullstroom, South Africa takes place next week and consists of four 3 hour sessions. One of the sessions takes place on the Spekboom River while the other three sessions take place on the local lakes. Lakes have never been a strong point for American fly fishing teams so our manager Jerry Arnold brought me and my teammates over early for practice.
The actual tournament waters are closed 60 days prior to the competition so we can’t practice on them. However, our guide Daniel Factor carefully put together an itinerary of similar lakes for us to fish. Today we left Nooitgedacht Lodge at 5 AM because Dan got us permission for the private Brookwood Dam (Dam is the word for reservoirs here in South Africa).
The weather threw a hitch at us. February is normally the hottest month of the South African summer but today was cold and drizzly and we had the thickest of fogs. I was hoping for a hot summer day like I had back in November on another private lake when I had superb fishing on dries. Despite the cold, Loren and I gave the dries a try from shore while Scott, Jerry and Daniel fished wet flies from a raft.
Things started slow. Loren and I walked the lakes edge looking for rises for the first hour. There were none. Finally we began fishing blind. I used the same black size 8 PMX that worked for me in November. Soon after I landed a lengthy but thin rainbow while skittering the fly. Loren started stripping his big caddis and he landed a nice one. We thought we had the technique but these were the only two fish we caught for another hour.
Mid-morning Loren and I could hear the guys hooting and hollering. No doubt they were on fish. Despite this being a small lake, it was so foggy we couldn’t see them. We eased down the bank where the noise was coming. Once we got to them, we could see they parked the boat and were casting from shore to an entering creek mouth. Scott was landing a nice rainbow as we arrived.
Loren and I joined the action and my fly was hot. I hooked fish on my first five casts – all nice ones. We feasted in this spot for nearly an hour and landed a heap of fish before heading to the Mayfly Restaurant for an early lunch.
For our afternoon session the fog burnt mostly off and we had hot sun. There were still no rising trout and in fact the weather change undoubtedly shut the fishing down from what it was. I perched on a rock overlooking a weed bed and a drop-off. It took some patience but over a couple hour period I saw four big rainbows swim by and managed to catch three of them.
We fished until around 4 PM then packed up the raft and headed back to the Lodge. We’ve only been here two days but we’ve packed it with fishing. We are all exhausted and there were heads bobbing at the dinner table. I need to hit the sack even though its just before 9. Tomorrow Scott and I are hitting the Spekboom River.
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