Bell Blog by Tony Kietzman 16-10-2011

Yesterday Sean didn’t have the kind of experience that I like my clients to have (and He’s a nice guy) so I invited him to join me on a personal fish. I chose Jennerville on the lower Sterkspruit hoping to encounter some Yellowfish. The river as with all others in the area is running low but crystal clear. There is a build up of dead algae waiting for the first real rains to scour out the streambed. There are still clean channels and the trout that we found were all hugging the bottom on bedrock or clean sand substrate as opposed to the cobbles and gravel.

The Yellowfish were present, in droves. Large fish of about 24” were cruising around in circles and coming in and out of undercuts at quite high speed. They refused all offerings without even spooking. I suspect that these were females involved in some pre-spawning ritual, probably looking for suitable gravel to drop their eggs. Experience at Sterkfontein dam has taught me that these fish will not take a fly until they have spawned for the first time- they are multi-brooders. I can’t wait!!

Back to the trout. There were no noticeable hatches but a few were rising. Wind kept on blowing dries back from where I wanted to place them so out came my go-to fly, a size sixteen Zak and fish started coming out. We were fishing up and across the stream mostly. Very few fish took on the dead drift so I resorted to the Leisenring lift and corruptions thereof. What transpired was very successful day of flyfishing, infact cormorant style. We caught numerous fish using the lift. To me what was most remarkable was the number of fish that we managed to pull out of each spot. All the fish were over 11” in size and I was broken twice, once by a fish of about 18” and the other unseen, on 5X tippet.

Intuitively the the Leisenring lift goes against the grain but, it works !!!. Add it to your armory of techniques and it may well save the day.