TIGER FISH ON CLOUSER ON THE ZAMBESI

From our Zambesi mobsters, Dimity and Phillip (The Flying Fosters)

Our trip to Africa started out as a holiday to visit certain places and maybe try for a Tiger Fish. We flew from Darwin to Singapore for a wait of about 6 hours then 10.5 hours to Johannesburg. That is painstakingly horrible. Picked up a hire car and drove to Kruger National Park via Sabie in South Africa which turned out to be an area whose prime tourist industry was Trout fishing!!

Totally took me by surprise. It is so organised that all you have to do is go and buy a permit and they tell where you are allowed to fish. Gear is available from guides doing guided trips. Guides were booked 2 weeks in advance!! I wasn't prepared for this and so was not able to have a go. If we look at it, the elevation of the area is about 4-5000 ft above sea level, quite cold with cool fast streams, as well as, well stocked dams. Some points we drove over were up to 7,000 ft elevation. The SA Rand is very weak and so buying power is very good. Tends to make you spend money and have a good time.

While at Royal Kruger Lodge, which is near the Crocodile River, I attempted to catch Tigers - succeeded but they were very small, although bigger ones are there - as was proven by Chase my guide and friend.

It was my first Tiger fish.

He is a very keen fisherman and is also quite knowledgeable. His contact is chasekurucz@gmail.com. Chase is very friendly and keen to help out in any way possible. The Hippos and crocs in the river kept you alert. In fact, while I was fly fishing I also had a bait line set with a float on it – a croc about 2-3 metres took an interest and decided to eat it – I actually had him hooked up until he decided that he had had enough and decided to go a different direction and of course the line broke off. We saw a croc about 6 metres out in the middle of the river!!

Livingstone in Zambia and Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe are very close together and survive because of tourism, which has pushed prices of everything up. There is also a lot of poverty in the area!!

We then flew to Livingstone in Zambia. We had booked a whole day trip with Anglezam which is an organisation dedicated to fishing. These fish are incredibly pretty and great sport fish although our sport fish are probably on a par. The fish appear to be ambush feeders and put on a pretty good display when hooked. They have very hard mouths and so their ability to throw a hook is really good (or bad if you want to land the fish). There are a few photos attached for info. The fish live in fast flowing rocky rivers. They are common in the shallower backwater parts of rivers - We fished the Zambesi River, which has the Victoria Falls on it, just downstream from where we fished.

Anglezam is a very professional organisation with at least two bases for tiger fishing. The guides know what they are doing and are well equipped for Flyfishing. Our pick up was for 6.30 am with a break for lunch at a lodge well up on the river. The two guides that we met were Andrew (picked us up and drove us to the launch site) and Patrick was the one with us for the day. He is in one of the photos. We fished until about 1800 hrs when it was starting to get pretty dark.

 I took my own flies, which I used to great effect, after trying theirs. They suggest dark flies during the middle of the day with lighter a flashy one in the early part of the day and later in the afternoon. The wind stayed down for us until about 3 pm. After that it got pretty blowy. The first fish to hook up, took me by surprise and of course threw the hook pretty quickly. The next one was not so lucky - about 30 cm or in their lingo 900 gms. The fish were active all morning and I managed to land three with several strikes but no more hook-ups that got away!! They just loved the light green & white clouser with red flash that I used. It lasted most of the day and I did all my catching on it. After that it was pretty tired. The red and black feather fly I tried (mine also) in the middle of the day did not even get a look. One of the rods that I used was a Loomis and the other was another good quality rod. All lines are intermediate - think to minimise gear loss. Have a look at the water in the photos. It might also be noticed that we were using a pair of pliers (my leatherman) to remove the fly from fish - due to those very sharp and long teeth. All fishing is catch and release.

The fish get bigger as you move further north and so their base further up have much bigger fish - by a factor of ten - so they tell me. Have a look at their website. www.zambezifishing.com

Phillip