Making New Friends

One of the many reasons why I love fly fishing is making new friends! This sport is growing fast and it can be quite a daunting prospect to start from scratch with no assistance. On the weekend of 15 April, I offered to take two new friends to fish at Vaal Streams. 

As we arrived I help them to set-up some leaders and we were of to the slower section of the river to cover the basics of casting. After the short lesson, I left them to fish on their own and I waded across the river to my usual spot. The fishing was indeed very tough and after about 2 hours fishing with dry flies I opted to switch to nymphing. After changing my rig set-up I headed back to the car where helped the two student also to switch their rigs to   a nymphing set-up. 

I decided to nymph downstream to my dry fly spot where I would try to get some fish in the late afternoon hatch. After about an hours fishing I felt a very soft take on my Czech nymph rig and quickly set the hook. The fish fought quite hard and kept to the bottom, unmistakeably a Mudfish! The fish took my bottom fly, a floating orange hotspot PTN! I found this quite interesting as you normally catch Mudfish on the bottom and not in the mid-water column.

Floating Orange Hotspot PTN!

My only Fish for the Day!

After this fish I headed back to my dry fly spot, after about a half an hour I got a take on a black foam beetle pattern, but I missed the fish with the strike. The two student met up with me a while later and asked for some dry flies as they had no success while nymphing.      I gave them a black DDD and a black foam beetle and suggested that they head further downstream as I have not fished that area before!

I fished for another 20 minutes or so and decided to call it a day and head back to the car. After I packed all my gear in the car I tried  to signal the two students to head back. I noticed they where next to the bank, possibly netting a fish... I thought to myself I would eat my hat if they managed to catch a Yellowfish on dry fly!

When they eventually got back to the car they told me that there was a decent hatch of insects on the river, the weren't sure what exactly, but the fish where going crazy! They managed to catch one yellowfish and another one snapped the the line! 

First Yellow in the Net!

Future Pro!

I did notice a lot of beetles flying around during the day and it might have been what the fish where feeding on.

One of the Prolific Beetles on the Day!

All in all it was a tough days fishing, but still a success in my eyes, another two fly fishing addicts joined the club!