Hook, line and sinker – not a bite

TROUT fishing was on the Chiel programme last weekend – a nice long period when combined with Tuesday’s public holiday.

Unfortunately, however, trout were not on my particular catch menu. Not a bite, not a touch, not a nibble, nothing.

The seven other anglers (including two women) all caught or felt fish on their lines. Not this one though.

I think I’m going to have to practise the art a little longer and get my tackle back up to standard.

You see, I used to do a lot of trout fishing 25 or more years ago – Gubu Dam, Barkley East, Hogsback, Underberg and Drakensberg Gardens, even Scotland and England among others. They were halcyon days. My father was an avid trout fisherman and as a boy I grew up alongside trout streams and dams. Dad often took me with him, and I would rate the pleasure of trout fishing among my most enjoyable life experiences.

The sound and sight of a stream, clear as crystal, cascading through a valley; hills and mountains in the background; guinea fowl chattering in a field nearby; the peace, the tranquillity … it got to my soul.

And I caught lots of fish. Most were released, others eaten.

Well, last weekend Mrs Chiel and and fuel stop, where we enjoyed a trout pie for lunch – what else!

Radish Cottage, where we stayed on the Matekula estate, is a gem, overlooking one of the dams and weirs where trout are stocked. Fish were caught there, but none by me. Then there’s dam 21, near the top of the river where “big ones” lurk.

It was there that Chas, one of our party, hooked and, after a fiveminute duel, landed a 600g (about 40cm) rainbow trout. The rest of us were green with envy.

We fished every day, sometimes early morning, mostly in the late afternoon, but the days were hot and water perhaps too warm for trout that like it to be cool, so they were probably lurking in the depths and not keen on feeding.

Matekula also stocks some game and it was fun fishing and also watching giraffe feeding, zebras grazing, bushbuck along the road and birds aplenty.

But I’m going to have to modernise my collection of flies, get a new sinking line and that sort of thing.

As an aside, we drove ourselves to East London Airport, instead of worrying friends to take and fetch us, and left our car in car park B where the charge is R60 a day for the first three days and R37 a day thereafter. We were away five days, so our parked car cost R240 in total. Not bad at all, as if we had taken a taxi it would have been R300 each way.

At the other end … O R Tambo Airport, we’d booked a car to drive to Matekula and back. We chose a Ford Fiesta which was the cheapest, but when we went to pick it up were told there were none available and were offered a Renault or Volkswagen Polo instead.

All the small print on the form we had to sign was overwhelming with so many bits and pieces of claims for e-tolls and claims for that, and costs and insurance and checks and responsibilities, legalities and so on, that my head was spinning after reading it all and I was practically a gibbering lunatic at what we’d have to do to settle our bill at the end.

Getting out of the airport area was like trying to negotiate a maze of roads and we ended up at the Protea Hotel.

Oh well, after receiving new directions we were on our way past Benoni, Boksburg and the rest, the little Polo whizzing along at a healthy 120km/h, and it was also good to get out of a busy, buzzing Jo’burg.

Then we wondered about the fuel gauge. After 263km to Matekula it hadn’t dropped a millimetre, but started dropping on our return journey and needed just 25.83 litres to refuel, consumption being a miserly 4.9 litres per 100km. Yoh! Incredible!