Travel East Griqualand

“This is why I’ve been coming to EG for the last ten years!” Andy James screamed out of the darkness. “For this fish!”

It was just after sunset and the two of us had been throwing ‘last casts’ for the past 40 minutes, all in the hope of hooking one of the trophy trout for which this area, and this farm in particular, is legendary.

When I wanted to take the new Nissan Navara on a trip to see what all the fuss was about (it was awarded the International Pickup Award in 2016) I phoned a mate whom I knew had been trying to coax one of East Griqualand’s leviathan trout into his landing net for years, and who had built up an exceptional knowledge of where to go, and when, and how to fish.

East Griqualand is a remote and wild area of mountainous farmland and wilderness. When I grew up in Pietermaritzburg, ‘E.G.’ (as we all knew it) was a mysterious place, bordering on the mythical. Even though it was just down the drag, its actual borders were a bit vague. Where did the Midlands end and EG start? Where did the name ‘East Griqualand’ come from? And where was Swartberg in all of this geographical soup?

I had cousins who farmed down there, but we never visited them – instead, we waited for them to emerge from the mountains every few years for family functions. These are rangy guys with big hands chapped from the weather and man-handling sheep, who party like they are well aware that they’re headed back into the wilderness for whoknows- how-long.

EG was, and is, frontier country, where the folk can be as wild as the country itself. I’ve always found it slightly ironic that EG is intrinsically linked with passionate fly fishermen, a sport itself usually associated with the refined English gentleman. (If you want a reference for the esteem in which fly fishing is held, the English refer to fishing other than with a fly as ‘coarse fishing’!) But EG’s other great love is polo, so it seems that the wild-mountain-folk character could be more of a facade than anything else.

Trip Images

But, back to that moment: the countless last casts in the gathering dusk, the culmination of a decade’s fishing. Fish were nudging the water’s surface around us, but they were small, more splash than bite. Andy had caught one earlier and it couldn’t have weighed more than an ounce. Standing a few metres apart, we carried on casting our nymph patterns out there, ever hopeful. Then, out of the corner of his eye, Andy saw a swirl − a proper swirl, which suggested that it was backed by weight and substance. His fly was already in the vicinity, so he gave it one or two strips to get closer to the action, and all hell broke loose.

The fish burst out of the water, a long and meaty bruiser powering its way into the heavens more by sheer brawn than athleticism, and there was no doubt that Andy’s decade-long quest for a double digit trout had finally ended – if he managed to land it!

Most fishing stories include the mesmerising cricket-trill of the reel’s drag, but this fight played out to the agonising, irregular groan of an elderly Orvis reel that had been serviced less often than the average South African taxi. At every dash of the fish, the tortured soundtrack had us convinced that the reel was about to seize, and followed a millisecond later by a parted leader, a rod thrown into a dam, the air filled with expletives, and finally a grown man weeping into his tired hands.

But it held up, like those Hi-Aces invariably do − and 15 minutes or so later, Andy got his trembling hands on that spectacular fish’s flanks. We took guesses at its weight as he netted it and removed the fly, then carefully popped it into a bag to weigh it without causing harm. I guessed at a shade over ten pounds. Andy optimistically went for 11, but when the needle on the scale stopped shimmering, it pointed to 6.25kg. We subtracted 100g for the bag and then did the mental calculations (6.15 x 2.2 = 12.3, carry the 1.3…). “13.6 pounds?” ventured Andy tentatively. I’d come to the same figure. “It’s the fish of a lifetime!” crowed Andy. “The Muddlers are never going to believe me! Take a picture of the scale.” I did, and it turns out he was right – the Muddlers, his band of fishing mates, did indeed ask for photographic evidence, and even then queried the veracity of the scale!

Fighting that fish into the darkness put an end to our day’s fishing, so with knuckles aching from the cold but with grins of Cheshire cats, we trooped animatedly back to the warm relief of the Navara and its heated seats.