FOSAF FLYFISHING REPORTS - Trout - North Eastern Cape Highlands

Rhodes.

Dave Walker reports that they have had over 100ml of rain since 31 January so the rivers are running bank high which is good news for the March festival and the autumn season. Bookings are open for the Wild Trout Festival which starts on 16 March and there are still a couple of places to be filled if you are quick. For festival bookings and accomodation contact Margie Murray (045-9719003) who handles the tourism office in Rhodes.

Maclear & Ugie

Colin Moolman of the club reports that after the rains over the festive season and more recent rain all the rivers are in spate and the Little Pot is flowing over the low level bridge.

The annual Rapture of the River Festival was cancelled for 2018 but has been scheduled for 10 to 11 May 2019.

Barkly East

Andrew Clark reports that they have also had good rains which is good news also for their dams which were dropping to very low levels. He recently caught and released a rainbow well over 60cm in their main dam.

At the moment the Kraai River is too high and discoloured for fishing but if there is no further rain it should be fishable within a fortnight. The main rivers such as the Langkloof and lower Saalboom are unfishable right now, but some of the upper tributaries like the Vaalhoek and Ruitjiesvlakte should be good this weekend. The Ruitjiesvlakte which is a small tributary of the Langkloof has surprisingly big fish with 40-50 cm not uncommon.

The Eastern Cape Flyfishing committee will be visiting this weekend and Andrew plans to take them to some of the prime spots.

Apart from the dam stocked with brownies the club has restocked several other dams with rainbows, one of which has very large fish.

Day tickets at R150,00 are available from Andrew Clark at 084 5166471 or andrew.clark@bkb.co.za.

Lady Grey

The Karringmelkspruit which was extremely low is in spate again which is good news. The average size of trout in this stream is better than previous years after the recent droughts thinned out the population.

Upper Wildebees at Ugie – photo by Richard Viedge