Flyfishing report: Trout - Kwa-Zulu Natal Midlands

Date of Report: Friday, 9th May 2025
Name: Andrew Fowler
Email: truttablog@gmail.com
Web: http://truttablog.com
Phone: 082 574 4262

With ongoing rains throughout March and the majority of April, our autumn season has been sandwiched into just a few weeks, in terms of when it will have been possible to get out there.

It all really only started a week ago (the last days of April), but I for one have been "making hay" as the saying goes.

In terms of stillwaters: all are full, and to hazard a guess, still overflowing strongly, and all are cooling now. Some are still a bit coloured, but that will be settling out fast, as we are in a cycle of cool, stable, clear weather. Magnificent weather!

So, as I say every year at this time...GET OUT THERE!

The rivers have been sublime. On 1 May the Bushmans was arguably a tad high, but you could still fish a dry fly and I reckon 3 days later you may have been able to stick with a dry fly all day, in the sense that flow would have slowed to a point where Trout could afford the energy to come up through the column of flowing water to take something off the surface.

That was certainly true on the upper Mooi and the uMngeni all of last week, and this week.

The dries that Trout were coming up to, for me at least, were hoppers.  What a delight!  My several days on the water in the last 10 had us witnessing fish wriggling up to the top to look at, and if we were lucky, take our dries. Sometimes they missed or changed their minds. Sometimes we fluffed the strike, and some slipped off a barbless hook. But it was magical!

Water temps: 14 to 16 degrees.

Go get them!

FOSAF_6533.jpg

Krantz pool on the Mooi.