South Africa part 1 - Sterkfontein Dam and Kwazulu-Natal

Over two full years ago Ken, Josh, Eli and I started throwing around the idea of doing a trip to Africa. At first we looked at the Rift Valley lakes, but eventually we shifted our focus to South Africa for a variety of reasons. Our two priorities were (1) the iconic freshwater tigerfish and (2) loads and loads of saltwater species from the Indian Ocean. We planned to start and end the trip in Durban with side excursions inland and up the coast. Josh and I wanted to do some big game surf fishing, so we planned a few additional days south of Cape Town. Eli tacked on a few extra days to travel north to fish Malawi, and Ken had a work start date that couldn't be moved, so he had to come back a few days early. In the end each of us had a slightly different itinerary. The map below shows all of the locations I either fished or spent the night.

My trip started in San Diego the morning of Saturday, March 9th, and after layovers in Atlanta and Johannesburg I arrived in Durban late in the evening on Sunday, March 10th. It would be two days until Josh and Eli arrived, so Ken and I decided to do an inland excursion to try for yellowfish and other freshwater native species. Ken arrived a day or two before me to do some hiking, so it was up to me to meet him at our first fishing spot, Sterkfontein Dam, the next morning. The lake was a four hour drive from Durban, so I split the distance by driving an hour an a half to Pietermaritzburg to get a hotel for the night. It was pitch black and pouring rain when I left the rental car parking lot, and I had to get used to driving on the opposite side of the road and understand the South African road signs, all while being sleep deprived from a day and a half of air travel. I won't lie - it was the scariest driving experience of my life. After 5 or 6 hours of much needed sleep, I got back on the road and enjoyed a much less stressful morning drive into the countryside.

Sterkfontein Dam is a large reservoir located in a nature reserve, and with very few towns nearby you feel like you have it all to yourself while you're fishing it. Ken and I booked a local fly fishing guide who specialized in smallmouth yellowfish, which would be our primary target for the day. The lake also had largemouth yellowfish, Orange River mudfish, and sharptooth catfish, so we were hopeful that we could finish the day with a couple of new species each.

We spent the day fishing shallow water in coves and off points, which meant motoring around the big lake. The views were fantastic, and many of the hillsides had grazing animals like antelope and zebra. That's right... wild zebra!! They were too far away to get decent photos of with my camera, so I won't bother posting them here. Later in the trip we did a safari, and I was able to get really good photos of the animals.

The first few coves we fished didn't show any signs of activity, so we moved to a new spot where we could drift with the wind along a straight section of shoreline. Ken used his fly rod with a fly that looked like a beetle, and I tried a variety of small lures on my spinning rod. Our guide was focused on Ken's fly fishing, but he assured me that the yellowfish would go for small lures as well.

It took a few drifts, but eventually Ken got a yellowfish to take his fly. It was a short but nerve-wracking fight when the fish wrapped his line up in some vegetation, but eventually he got it to the boat and into the net. Check out Ken's blog for a better photo of the fish (and hopefully a blog post to go with it at some point).

http://muskiebaitadventures.blogspot.com/p/lifelist.html

Smallmouth Yellowfish (Labeobarbus aeneus)

Unfortunately, I didn't catch a fish the entire day. We saw more yellowfish, multiple mudfish, a pair of sharptooth catfish, and I did have a largemouth bass on the line briefly, but I had to end my first day skunked and feeling defeated. I wasn't happy with the lack of attention from the guide, which I felt was because I wasn't using fly gear, but even for Ken it was a tough day of fishing. In hindsight, this day has made me realize how much I've come to expect success on all my fishing trips, which maybe isn't the best way to approach this hobby. It's something to think about. After we paid the guide, Ken and I drove back in the direction of Durban and stayed the night in the small town of Winterton, where I befriended one of the locals.

The next morning we drove south to look for Kwazulu-Natal yellowfish in the Mlambonja River. We were in a completely different drainage from Sterkfontein Dam, so there wouldn't be any of the species we encountered the day before. We had scouted out our fishing spots using Google Maps before the trip started. The lower reaches of the river looked slow and muddy, so we drove far enough upstream so we could fish below riffles where the water was decently clear.

The first spot we tried looked perfect, but it turned out to be perfect for non-native rainbrow trout, not for yellowfish. We tried worms and flies, but trout were the only fish that took our offerings, so eventually we decided that we'd have to find different habitat to find the yellowfish.

Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)

We drove back the way we came, passing through small villages and occasionally stopping to let herds of goats cross the road in front of us. The Mlambonja was a little more muddy here, but there was still the occasional riffle that we could fish below. We got out our fishing gear at one of the spots we had marked and crossed our fingers that we'd find yellowfish and not trout.

The change of location paid off, because Ken and I were each able to catch our yellowfish without much trouble. We fished worms on small hooks with split shots for weight and let them drift from the bottom of the riffle into the trough below it. I ended up catching four similarly sized fish, but Ken got a bigger, more yellow-colored one. Check out his blog for a photo. Boy was I glad to have my first lifer from Africa!

Kwazulu-Natal Yellowfish (Labeobarbus natalensis) - new hook & line species #576

Kwazulu-Natal yellowfish is a minnow endemic to the Kwazulu-Natal region of South Africa. The ones I caught were similar in size to chubs in the U.S., but they do get pretty large - the record is 10 pounds! The local name for them is scaly, which is a good name because they have scales. :)

Ken and I were lucky to catch these fish when we did, because we had no time to spare getting back to Durban to meet Josh and Eli. Traffic on the highway was bad, grinding to a halt dozens of times, but eventually we made it to downtown Durban and found Josh and Eli sitting outside the hotel restaurant waiting for us. On to the next part of our adventure!