Bell Blog 29/11/2011 by Tony Kietzman (8601)

Stephanus is a frequent visitor to the area and has become a fishing buddy. Waters around Rhodes were on the thin side so we decided to visit Wildside on the Kraai in search of Yellowfish. I was fishing with Stephanus and we walked downstream to fish back up. It was quite a warm day and there was no sign of any fish activity. A twitched fly through one of the deeper pools soon put a bend in my rod and a Yellowfish of about 20” came to hand. Stephanus soon started catching Trout but the Yellows proved to be illusive to him. Once again the trout were of a very high condition factor and fought very strongly.

As we moved upstream we became aware of a commotion in a riffle. This proved to be spawning mudfish. We watched for a while and took a few photos. This is the furthest upstream that I have yet observed these activities. I am uncertain whether the Mudfish come this far up to spawn every year or have we only become aware of these migrations because we are fishing the Kraai at this time of the year. In seasons past the water was always murky at this juncture so we didn’t visit this wonderful river. (this will require some serious investigation next spring)

We spent the late afternoon at the upper boundary of  Wildside pursuing some larger Yellows which we saw. They were not interested  in our offerings but the Trout were. Stephanus dropped the fish of the day when trying to land it – a trout of about 18”.