Up until the heavy rains that fell on the weekend of 19/20 April the fishing was pretty good with optimal flow of 15 – 20 cumecs and improving visibility. Following the rain the flow immediately rose to 200 cumecs and although flows are now down to 30 cumecs which is higher than we want the visibility is only about 20 cm which is poor.

From now on we expect flows to decrease (check flows on this Home page) but what is very important is the visibility. Unfortunately vis. has been poor the last couple of winters and what we really want is clarity up to 50 cm. Although 30 cm is acceptable the hatches and catch rate both improve as vis. improves and this applies to both smallmouth and largies. Winter hatches particularly of big tan mayflies can be very good in winter during the warm spells from mid morning to mid afternoon and with dry fly you can do very well with smallmouths if clarity is good while with larger wet flies fishing for largies it also improves. The fish have now left the shallow water as the temperature is down to about 15°C so concentrate on the deeper sections below the rapids at venues such as Eendekuil, Silwerstrome and the top end of Malachite.

I have also heard that flyfishers have done well from Potch downstream where visibility is often better.

Photo by Ian Couryer