A RAINY DAY ON THE SMALBLAAR

I fished on my own on The Smalblaar River in Du Toitskloof on my last outing to a local river. It started off as a fairly sunny day and I thought no way is there going to be any rain later on as was the predicted weather forecast.

It was really interesting to see klipspringers, baboons and a dassie before even getting on the water. I spotted a mongoose as well within the first few hours of fishing and an inquisitive Cape Robin.

Then the clouds started to gather and conditions got very overcast. As often happens I found some trout in very shallow water at the side of fast flowing runs right up against the banks.

I got my first rainbow on a brown foam and deerhair hopper with rubber legs. As I do almost all of the time I was fishing with two flies, the dry fly on the top and a small gold beadhead red tag nymph below it, the Kiwi nymph/dropper style rig that's proved to be so effective for me over the years.

Tiny water droplets started to fall and the sky got much darker so I knew rain was on the way. As it started to gently rain I wondered if it would bring out a hatch of masses of flying ants as I remembered in the past that with rain falling at this time of year they would appear in their thousands. Initially I thought the first few I saw were small mayflies but as more and more fluttered all over the place and I got a closer look at some I identified what they were....more than I'd ever seen on a river before.

The rain started to fall heavily and I regretted purposefully leaving my waterproof jacket in the car so I decided to eat some lunch huddled under a huge rock that part of was leaning at an angle so it provided some shelter. I sat out the worst part of the downpour and then continued upstream. By now it was drizzling lightly as I got to a big pool and there were flying ants all over the water, the fish were reacting well to them and rising regularly. I had earlier switched to a much bigger foam and deerhair hopper and a pink shrimp pattern but decided to go against what I normally do and fish a dry fly on it's own so I tied on a small grey wulff with light brown deerhair wings and tail. I was stood at the top section of the pool with fish rising in a concentrated area and caught a feisty rainbow straight away. I then hooked a much bigger fish which I stalked after watching it feeding off the surface. It went crazy and unfortunately I didn't apply enough pressure with my little two weight rod and it ran into some rocks, came off and the fly got snagged. Oh well, I know where that fish is and will get him next time hopefully.

I carried on up the river with fish rising freely to my fly and landed another couple of fish.

What was surprising was finding fish in places where I'd never seen them before and at the end of the day I had never witnessed such a good hatch of any insects on one of our rivers.

Seeing the wild animals and enjoying the whole experience was really rewarding as well like on so many previous occasions and it's something I still appreciate...to be able to fish these rivers and catch such quality wild rainbow trout as I did as a "lightie" many moons ago.