Spekboom River, South Africa

Nooitgedacht Trout Lodge nestled in the valley below

It took longer than expected to drive from Swaziland to the trout belt in Mpumalanga, thanks in most part to South Africa's deteriorating roads, but vast dust clouds had also slowed traffic. I don't remember South Africa being so dusty but perhaps it was always that way.

Our youngest child had woken up by the time we drove into the lively town of Dullstroom, the so-called trout capital of South Africa, and he had begun to exercise his fast developing vocal chords. Moans had turned to sobs and sobs to screams by the time we pulled off the road at a biltong shop. Some droë wors, a cured sausage, bought some extra quiet time from him on the onward journey.

Seen at a restaurant in Dullstroom.

We still had an hour to go, and the road from Dullstroom to Lydenburg had become horribly potholed since my last visit a decade ago. Once past Lydenburg we turned onto a gravel road which we would follow for 15km to our destination, Nooitgedacht Trout Lodge. The road was initially wide and level but with each kilometre it became ever more degraded and challenging. I became anxious that we had bitten off more than we could chew in our hire car. Buried somewhere in the terms and conditions was a "no gravel roads" clause.

"What was that?" my partner suddenly exclaimed from the driver's seat, a kilometre to go to the lodge. I looked up and caught a glimpse of a tail disappearing into the dusty roadside bush, a white pom-pom at its end. I knew instantly that it was a leopard, and when we drew level it was still there, camouflaged in the dry bush. Then it slunk away away into the growth and was gone, the preciously rare moment having lasted only a few seconds. 

Can you spot the leopard?

For the last kilometre of the track I faced a barrage of questions about whether our children would be safe.

We arrived at Nooitgedacht in the pink glow of evening, our car unrecognisable in a liberal coating of dust. We had made it just in time, for within a matter of minutes the night enveloped us and jackal began to bark somewhere in the distance. Our family room was large and comfortable and my children excitedly set about exploring the place. Another family was staying in the lodge on our first night, but they left the following morning, and from then we had the place exclusively to ourselves. 

The venue has fishing in two large lakes, three small ponds, and in the Spekboom River. Two gargantuan stuffed trout in the lodge attested to the size they reach in the lakes, but I was more interested in exploring the river. It was still early in the season, before the rains, so I knew the river would be rather low and I set my expectations accordingly. 

As the sun rose over the lake on our first morning, kudu, warthogs, baboons and vervet monkeys came to the lawns of the lodge's garden to eat the fruits of a large mulberry tree. I savoured the silence of the place in the crisp morning air. The lodge was a luxurious oasis in the bush. The mountain tops swallowed up the outside world and seemed to slow time. A gratifying seclusion pervaded the valley floor. 

This was a family trip first and foremost so I managed to escape only for an hour or two of fishing each day, typically before breakfast or in the hour before nightfall, on account of the hot, cloudless days. 

I spent most of that time fishing upriver from the lodge, until I was told on the last evening of my stay that that water belonged to a neighbouring estate. Oops! The water there ran through a series of weirs, and there were deep green pools beside cliff edges where the current barely flowed. This isn't my favoured water. I prefer to drift my flies through the rough and tumble of a current where my mind can keep engaged. 

The long pool above the ford

Still, I managed to catch four rainbow trout from the water upstream, all but one taken with a Hare's Ear nymph. I may have tripled my tally had I possessed a sinking line and some meatier fly patterns, like a woolly bugger or a dragonfly larva, but that would verge too close to stillwater fishing for my tastes.

Three of those trout were caught from a long pool above a ford, which I fished on consecutive days. On both occasions a much larger trout came up in the same place to my dry fly and turned away at the last second. I'm guessing it was the same fish and in those fleeting moments I thought I glimpsed the markings of a brown trout without ever being really sure it wasn't just my imagination. 

The most productive time to fish was just at the moment night fell, when the river came alive with rising trout. On Saturday, I chose to spend the final moments of daylight fishing the pool at the outflow of the main lake instead of watching the Springboks clinch the Rugby Championship against Argentina. Trout were ignoring my Parachute Adams, so I tied a little Hare's Ear nymph below it. Straining my eyes into the dark, I struck more on instinct than sight, delighted when my hunch was proved correct. A rainbow had taken the nymph and like all the trout from the Spekboom, it gave an extremely good account of itself. Other trout continued to rise in the pool in spite of its plight.

The nights were unnaturally dark and I would  return to the lodge quickly, my thoughts never far from the leopard we had seen. 

On Sunday afternoon we had an interesting tour of the trout hatchery on the premises (when I was informed I had been fishing in the wrong place). "The river downstream is more streamy and natural, with a chance of catching wild trout," I was told. My ears pricked up at this statement. An African Fish Eagle called from somewhere nearby. Our host said he didn't mind the Fish Eagle, which on most days would visit to claim a single trout. It was the cormorants that drew his ire for they were greedy and would each take three or four every day. 

I set off shortly after 5am on the morning we were to check out, now bearing knowledge that there was better water downstream. There had been a terrific thunderstorm in the night (I'd forgotten how loud they are in Africa) and the power was out. I was unable to make a cup of coffee in the dark and without my usual caffeine boost things happened just a little more slowly.

I passed along the shore of the large lake at the lodge where a handful of trout were rising, always out of casting range. At the dam wall the river was drawn away in two directions: some water cascaded over the wall into the natural river channel but most was diverted to the hatchery, cold water piped from the bottom of the lake which emerged into a fast flowing channel about four feet wide. On my visit to the hatchery I had spotted a large trout sitting in the churning water beneath the pipe. "Trout are escape artists and that trout could probably swim up the pipe into the lake if it wanted to" came the reply when I had mentioned it the day before, perhaps thinking they might try to recapture it. 

The trout was still there in the morning and it proved a target too tempting to resist, even if the circumstance were somewhat dubious. A tiger in a cage is going to eat a chicken drumstick. It took my nymph with little encouragement and bolted downstream like a shy horse. My reel groaned as line raced after it, the trout hidden by bushes which grew over the canal. I was unable to lift my rod vertically or follow after it without my line catching on bushes so I kept my rod tip low, threading the line through an opening in their branches. Adrenaline was a good alternative to a caffeine boost! I eventually managed to wrestle the trout back upriver by abusing my 3 weight rod in a way its makers would never have conceived but when I had it an agonisingly close hand's length away, the fly pinged free. The hook had been ever so slightly straightened by at least 3 lb of well fed trout mass. I rued not packing a landing net because that would have been some trout to catch.

I then skipped downstream as far as I could go without getting my shoes wet. They'd need to be packed into a suitcase soon. That was at a deep pool where a bridge had once crossed the water but had been washed away. Now the road crossed a ford. An otter hunted in this water but disappeared when it clocked me. Figuring that any trout in the vicinity were spooked, I turned back upstream and sent my klink and dink into the next pool upstream. Within a moment my dry fly was pulled under and I struck into a trout which went berserk, first stripping line from the reel, and then it ran at me. I furiously tried to reel in the line and stumbled a few steps backwards on the uneven ground to keep up the pressure. I managed somehow, and the trout eventually relented, leaving me panting for breath. There was something poetic in the pink morning sky bringing out the pink band in its flanks. 

My appetite for fishing was thus satiated. I put away my rod and walked upstream beside the river, admiring the sights and sounds of the bush for the last time, knowing that imminently I would leave this paradise for an airport and return to normal life in the frenetic first world. 

I was pleased to have introduced my European family to the African bush, to things which are second nature to me, even if they struggled with the heat, ticks, biting insects, and the long green snake which came on to the verandah. As the weather gets hotter, future guests can expect more of those. I don't know when I will next return to South Africa, where I have family, or if I will ever have a reason to visit Swaziland again. It seemed to me that so much had changed in the sense of a general, creeping decline in standards of cleanliness, maintenance and regulation. This might go unnoticed to those who live there, but it came as a jarring shock to my senses.