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While browsing on the internet today I came across this article by Captain John McMurray on the ethics of fly fishing and light tackle angling and angling in general from the point of view of animal rights groups and anglers, and gives us his insights as to what it means to us as anglers and compassionate human beings. A good read if you’ve ever stopped and paused to think before throwing those flies or lures and might just save your next fishing trip from the hands of your conscience…
click here to read the article by Captain John McMurray.
For a while now I’ve been having the urge to do some light tackle gully fly fishing. For Blacktail, shad or watever… Early on saturday morning we made our way down to the Esplanade, and spent the better part of an hour casting into the gullys. My buddies not too keen on the idea of pulling expensive fly lines through turbulent barnicle covered gullys opted to throw some dropshot. A few anglers further down casting big baits out into the surf were rewarded with one or two nice Shad, so there were fish around. Anyways I didnt catch any Blacktail, or Shad… But I did get two little bright yellow Puffer fish.
We then decided to search greener pastures
, or should I say bluer waters and made our way to Nahoon reef to fish the gullys there. This time we stopped to buy pilchards and I swopped the fly reel with a coffee grinder. In the next two hours I hooked a nice blacktail of about 30 cm, a 40 cm mullet and a few golden stripeys on pilchard. I admit I gave up the fly pretty quickly but next weekend I want to go back and this time hopefully get a few nice fish on fly…
the time finally comes for our planned trip to Gubu, but rather than being on the second long weekend, as planned, we ended up leaving earlier in the week on the evening of monday 28th April. (my buddy managed to get the two days off between the two weekends). By the time 3 o clock came the weather was looking rather bleak with clouds steadily rolling in, but nevertheless, with high hopes it would clear we continued on, the weather forecast predicted rain by Wednesday afternoon, or so we thought they said. It was raining by the time we got there.
we arrive at the bailiff at about 5 and payed the necessary fees before going to set up camp. later in pitch black darkness broken only by the glow of the flames in an eerie silence we spoke of strategies and hopes of lunkers in the next two days.
we awake early the next morning to the surprise of clear skies the moon and stars… with a blanket of mist covering Gubu’s surface… perfect! with sunrise fast on the way we made our way towards our fishing spot. within ten minutes on a deeply sunk fly on a sinking line my buddy chris was into his first rainbow…a nice little fish that fought hard.
Chris’s 1st Rainbow:
i continued to fish a floating line with all sorts of flies and retrieves but still… nothing. not even a pull. chris continued with the sinking line and also.. nothing. we spent the afternoon at the campsite and prepared the donkey (a fire powered hot water geyser) later in the afternoon, with bad weather returning, but luckily no rain, we returned to the fishing in the hopes of catching some rising trout. the rise was slow and only later in the evening as we began packing up on literally the last cast did chris hook another rainbow (one of his two fish, the only fish, caught on our trip.) The next morning was just as perfect as the last, with clear skies and no wind but freezing, with no fish movement anywhere. after catching nothing all morning and seeing no movement we decided to call it a trip and made our way home.
The donkey:
some Gubu scenery:
...on the fly... 