Carpe Diem
Text and pictures: Edward Truter. Article from the March 2013 issue of Country Life Magazine.
In Camdeboo, flyfishingman Edward Truter and his buddies seize the day (and the carp)
Flyfishing for carp seems as unlikely a mix as the London Philharmonic headlining at a Brakpan potjiekos competition. But I can tell you that the former is every bit as entertaining as I’d imagine the goings-on around the latter would be, and that’s even without the witblits.
Most flyfishermen live some distance from really good flyfishing venues and waters with typical flyfishing species like trout and yellowfish, or all those exciting saltwater fishes. This is where carp can help; find carp in the right setting and you can enjoy some of the best elements of flyfishing in trying to catch them.
I caught my first carp in the Vaal River, on pap (porridge). A local angling legend had mixed mieliemeel, bread flour, custard powder, honey, and other secret ingredients into an apple-sized ball for me. From this I pinched grape-like wads of the boiled mixture and kneaded them around a hook that, once cast out, required that the rod be rested on mikstokke (forked sticks). A pea-sized pinch of pap, called the polisieman (policeman), was then pressed onto the line just beyond the rod’s tip. The theory is that carp are so super-cautious it’s impossible to hold one’s rod still enough for them not to sense something amiss should they mouth the bait. A carp tasting the dough ball causes the polisieman to bob up and down, which movement the fisherman interprets to time the strike just right. That in a nutshell is Papgooi in its most basic form, one of South Africa’s unofficial national sports.
Papgooi is fun; it can be social and terribly laidback. It’s that picture of friends lazing about on camp chairs or picnic blankets at the dam, umbrella-shade sprouting thickets of rods, a few beating tunes to help pass the time waiting for a polisieman to give the signal, and all met ys ja. In flyfishing for carp, though, all that is common to the Papgooi scene is the fish.
Carp are adapted to living in murky water. Actually, carp are often responsible for making their own water dirty. They feed by sucking up bottom sediment, processing it to remove any edible plant or animal matter, before spitting out the muck. Enough carp doing this over a muddy substrate turns the water a milky-chocolate colour. Fish living in such don’t need good eyes; all they need is a super-sense of smell and a highly sensitive lateral line. That sense of smell is why I had custard and honey in my carp pap and why you can walk into any specialist carp-gear shop in South Africa and find hundreds of liquid flavours for dipping your carp bait into. The dips are a creative culinary art on their own and have imaginative names like Wasted (peach flavour and spirits), Gatvol (almond essence and TCP mouthwash) and Vatikaki (almond and musk). But like I said, that is another world to flyfishing, and we can’t tie flies to smell and taste like Tuttifrutti.
The bottom line is carp can smell and they can sense movement but they’re nearly blind. A bit like that kid at school who sat right against the blackboard and had the goggle spectacles with lenses thick like cash-in-transit car windscreens. So, to catch a carp on a fly, the fly has to be in the fish’s face; right there on the nose. And to do that, you have to find carp in places where they’re in the shallows, or near the surface and in water that’s not the colour of chai. In other words where you can see them, which is why it’s called sight-fishing.
There are plenty of places to look, though you will certainly have to practise your powers of observation. Urban waterways are a good start but aren’t always flyfishing-friendly. You may have to fight off the ducks, there may be a no fishing sign (and real polisiemanne to watch out for), or it could be that your back cast might hook a boerboel being walked by a litigation lawyer. Golf courses can work too, but no-one makes a trendy enough hardhat to match the Harrods fly vest Aunty Ida sent you. Plus, the fishing will be tougher if you have to lie low every time you hear ‘fore!’
There’s good flyfishing for carp in the Breede River in the Western Cape, the uMlazi River and Albert Falls Dam in KwaZulu-Natal, Sterkfontein Dam in the Free State, and backwaters along the Vaal among many other spots. There are probably more carp waters than there are scales on a trout’s back in SA and most of our bigger rivers and dams are worth a recce between September and April.
“Pierre, by the way can make you a pink miniskirt out of a springbuck skin if you get bored with fishing in boardshorts.”
Among my Eastern Cape home waters I’ve had poor luck finding consistent carp sight-fishing, but that recently changed when I caught wind of the carp in Nqweba Dam in Camdeboo National Park (the dam wall towers over the urban edge of the Karoo town of Graaff-Reinet).
My own look-see visit to Nqweba was last October and in our fishing group was a newish fishing friend, Andrew Pautz, a big-brand fishing tackle rep. After the scale (and gnarly whitewater) of the largely fishless wild goose chase I’d put Andrew through on the Orange River the month before, I was surprised he joined me.
Probably because of buffalo, bank access is restricted within the park, so we hired a boat provided by local fishing guide and bespoke leather worker, Pierre Swartz. Pierre by the way can make you a pink miniskirt out of a springbuck skin if you get bored with fishing in boardshorts.
Pierre took us to a bay and stopped the boat far from shore, directing us to jump in. We slid into water up to our armpits and I could feel it wasn’t summer yet. A likely looking shallow area caught my eye and I waded quickly in that direction. As I got there I stepped into a flooded aardvark hole and basically saw my bum without a mirror. What I didn’t see were the hordes of carp I had been expecting, which I was okay with as it was early in the day and I’d done carp enough before to expect things to switch on later. What was worrying me though was Andrew’s wading far behind me, getting tangled in wads of green slime. We had driven out in his delivery van packed full of expectation and now here he was, wet to the neck, chilly but not chilled, and in danger of drowning again, though this time in an aardvark hole – and not a fish in sight, again. I could not see or hear him mumbling, but his body language told of big words in his head, words aimed at me. I knew the wounds from the last trip were festering and I just hoped his humour would hold long enough for the fish to show.
A half-hour later someone flipped the switch and the carp came streaming in. The first fish I cast to was a slow cruiser, head down in the muck. I managed to line things up so that the carp almost got head-butted by my fly (remember, they are blind) and then I saw those goldfish lips open wide. What came next is typical of catching carp close-up. You know the look on your dog’s face when you’ve walked in on it eating the cat’s food? That ooh-oopsie, I’m in big poo look? Like when carp feel the prick of the hook, and you’re close enough to see the surprise on their face. Then sometimes they jump and cavort and dash for the deep water. So from a flyfishing angle it’s the whole package, the sighting, the stealthy stalk, accurate casting and the recognition that you’ve done it all right when the rod in your hand comes alive.
It wasn’t long before Andrew got his eye in, and when next I looked he was a happy man again. He was catching, laughing, kissing fish and having his photo taken and that was how it went on all weekend.
Fish on the end of our line does that to us and they don’t have to be glamour species or set against postcard backdrops. Even William Shakespeare was moved enough by carp to write: ‘The sweet bait of deceit shall catch the honest carp.’ And it was the Roman poet, Horace, who two thousand years ago wrote the phrase Carpe Diem that has nothing to do with fly fishing or carp. Or does it?
If we study the context in the original poem, we see that Horace is telling us to seize the day because the future is unforeseen. He recommends that we should scale back our longer term hopes and drink our wine while enjoying to the max the here and now and what we have in front of us. Be it life or flyfishing, he was right. Even someone floundering in a flooded aardvark hole and blinded by wads of green slime can see that.
Footnotes
♦ It has a campsite and a very fine tented camp.
♦ For a fishing guide on Nqweba Dam contact
Pierre Swartz 078 794 3821 / 049 892 3719
More info on Graaff Reinet | More info on the Karoo Heartland |
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