Drifting in the desert
Text: Ed Truter. Pictures: Ed Truter and Div Van Niekerk. Article from the May 2012 issue of Country Life Magazine.
I was once a geologist and I should have known better as I balanced my dixie on suspiciously dark-coloured rocks over the fire. It had been a long day on the river and all that stood between me and mouthfuls of noodles was a few minutes of simmering.
I used the time to untangle the mesh of rods and line that had woven themselves together as we’d bounced down the last rapid before making camp. A sharp thudding sound from the fire followed by that of grating aluminium made me spin around. I had little doubt as to what I would see.
It looked like a swarm of worms had wriggled from the pavement around the fire, my dixie was upside down, the fire was soggy ash, and my expectant mood was quenched.
Tip: The minerals in dark-coloured rocks can have a high water content and when heated the rock may explode.
I had long thought that the more remote parts of the Orange River downstream of Augrabies might hold a good population of largemouth yellowfish, a species that has suffered wherever it’s been close to man and his every mess.That was the excuse for this adventure, to take two inflatables and drift a thin green line through the desert for a week. I had had no idea what the fishing would be like, but I did know that the scenery and the solitude would be wild, and that would be enough.
Our drift began with a long slog shared with my paddling partner Zak, and by the end of the couple of kays of dead water we’d found our rhythm without hurting anything or each other. Still on talking terms, we reached a weir where we carried our boat over the wall and straight into a deluge of fish. Rocky channels boiled with fins, bodies and tails, so dense in places that the khaki water turned shades of grey. Catfish stuck their heads into the sunlight, like great serpents weaving in the current and seemingly ‘tasting’ the air with excited whiskers. Barrages of mudfish flung themselves into the flow topping the weir and beat a desperate silver stream fighting force with force to overpower gravity. Many made it over. Clouds of river sardines swirled in the turbulence along the sandstone edges and amongst it all largemouth yellowfish crammed into the deeper holes.
Being accustomed to seeing largemouths in ones or twos on a good day, to suddenly have nearly every hooked fish be one of these handsome, rare animals made me smug about the theory behind our trip, but especially gave me hope for the species. They were easy to catch – too easy. Each half-decent drift with a Woolly Bugger meant a fish or at least a missed strike. Every time I looked up, Zak or the third member of our party, Div, or both of them, had a bent fly rod and a river-wide smile.
Even the mudfish joined the frenzy, falling into line for our big, flashy flies. Gone was their usual fussy feeding, sucking up tiny nymphs dragged on the bottom. Mudfish are not fast, nor the flashy metallic gold or silver of yellowfish. They’re a dull gunmetal with spots of rust, but once they feel the bite of a hook they bore deep and strong and are a strain on the wrist muscles – they are no less fun to catch.
I wish that I could say that every turn of the river from the weir and beyond delivered fish-in-a-bowl, but it didn’t. Instead they came in patches, though it didn’t matter as for every moment each of us was where we wanted to be.
At our first camp we sat around the fire and watched the sun soak up the colours from the mountains around us. Just before the stars came out the air filled with the whirr of wings as sandgrouse dropped out of the gloom right amongst us to slake their thirst between soft chirps and clucks at the water’s edge. Zak counted on his fingers how many sleeps we had ahead of us and wondered out loud how we might stay longer than a week.
Tip: Give yourself plenty of time.
Fresh water in a desert is something special, even that it’s there at all. Then there’s beauty borne of the unlikely juxtaposition, and it’s often made logistically easy to enjoy.The chance of rain is almost zero so one can sleep under the stars. Days are hot so you’ll need nearly no clothes. Without bundles of gear and just a tiny boat, life is more streamlined, stripped to basics. To begin a day knowing there is nothing to do but go with the flow under a blue sky and cast a fly when you feel like it is to know you’re going to have the finest time.
Zak counted how many sleeps we had ahead of us and wondered out loud how we might stay longer than a week
Some days are made the more spectacular by encounters with the unusual. Like when we happened upon a breeding colony of African Darters, unfortunately rather suddenly. This prompted panic to which darters typically respond by falling from their perch into the water and diving away from the danger. Being an instinctive behaviour the larger fledglings did the same but faltered on their swimming stroke. I was unsurprised when I saw one of the chicks simply disappear in front of my eyes. Two more went the same way, pulled down by creatures unseen but that I was sure were catfish. Overwater roosts and nesting sites can be catfish epicentres and a death zone for any bird too close to the water Of course, it was an ideal opportunity to match the hatch, but I didn’t have any dry flies the size of a chicken and I couldn’t attract a single strike with flies the size of a sparrow.
The lower Orange River valley gets deathly hot and when Div’s swelling inflatable popped a seam in forty degree heat, I realized we both sucked at obeying physics’ basic rules. Duct tape is near magical but can’t do miracles and my faith in modern PVC had convinced me to leave the puncture kit behind. All it meant though was that stops to breathe in the surroundings also meant some huffing and puffing for the person on ‘pompdiens’ (pumping duty).
Tip: Hot air expands – don’t pop your boat.
The thing with fishing on the drift is that one simply has to drop a team of nymphs overboard suspended beneath a hunk of bright coloured floating yarn (called an indicator), and then float over prospective water. It’s like flyfishing for dummies, just easier. When the indicator hesitates or dips, strike, just like I did as Zak and I were running a very for narrow glide on day four. The hook set into what felt like a lot of muscle, more muscle than there than there should have been for a smallmouth yellowfish, the usual suspect to snack on a Deep Nymph. But seeing the tip of my fly line doing a zigzag, I realized that I’d hooked a catfish. A six-weight fly rod is not designed to pull a catfish off the bottom where the entire Orange’s flow funnels through a gap a short cast wide. Imagine using your fly rod to pull your Kreepy Krauly off the bottom of the pool. Now imagine your pool is a thundering river. It sounds unlikely, but we won that tussle.
Tip: Practice your knots till they’re perfect.
We alternated between the Namibian and South African banks each night when we made camp, like scruffy frontiersmen, vagabonds in no-man’s-land. I was not running from anything so I always slept peacefully under the desert stars. Zak would flip our Ark inflatable and sleep atop its bottom. It made the perfect bed and kept him above the hunting spiders that cause him catatonia. Div had assumed those big, double-size, blow-up mattresses from the megastores that one puts on the lounge floor for distant relatives would make a super-luxurious camp bed. It did, for about twenty minutes. Deserts are awash with thorns, they even come on the wind and papierdorings and the like quickly changed Div’s open-air Playboy penthouse plans to cuddling with a hulk of limp plastic. We did try to patch the holes repeatedly, but then a seam split, so each night Div inflated his bed then raced to fall asleep before his hips touched the ground. Most nights the mattress was victorious.
Tip: Buy the most expensive, top-end, hardcore camping mattress you can’t afford.
In the evenings, once the edge was off the heat, it was pleasant to take walks away from the river. In ten steps the soft banks where the soil and trees were tangles of life gave way to sparse sand and gnarled boulders where crackly, blackened shrubs clawed at one’s legs as though desperate to hitch a ride away from the hard living. Sometimes we scrambled over the still-hot rocks to the top of the closest ridge before dark to sit and watch the river; that thin green line where life was only as fast as the drift.
Tip: Float the Lower Orange – put it on the list.
We used the services of Raap-en-Skraap Guesthouse and campsite, a wonderful facility in a beautiful area on a working farm along the banks of the Orange River near Onseepkans. Contact Petro Moller 054 491 9503,082 393 3422, email.
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