Lower Orange report back

[Korrie]

Nice tip Korrie. I suspect flying to Upington and fishing thereabouts will make sense to many, especially given the cost of petrol, tolls, wear and tear, etc.

Edit: just checked, at R5400 a return ticket I take back my comment. I used to fly the Upington often, and the prices were usually quite reasonable. Not anymore it seems.

About 2 years ago, after receiving a lot of enquiries about the Richtersveld, I did some enquiries of chartering a plane, as there is a landing strip at Sendelingsdrift, to bring 2 consecutive weeks of fly fishers from Gauteng to the Richtersveld. What killed the price option, as the one trip was one empty trip back,
but if you think about it, a 3,5hour flight in a Cessna Caravan versus a 16 hour drive in a car, plus the return journey, that is 32 hours. That is a full day and half on the road. Where if you leave early from work, get on the plane Grand Central at 15:00, you could be in the Richtersveld by 18;30. The same applies when flying back. Fish the morning, till 12:00, get your kit ready and get on the plane by 15:00, Which have dropped the second group off and you are back in the big smoke by 18:30, and at your home by 19:30.
I did a lot of homework on it, but I think the market is a bit small for such an operation to run at a profit. You will bring in 9 passengers, and to cater for 9 people, you will need a full time camp man, to cook and work his but off, plus you as the "guide and general taxi operator" to take people upstream, down stream etc.
you will have to have a full camp setup, tents, beds etc as the fly in guests will only have a carry on bag and fly fishing gear.

[Korrie]

I once drove all the way to Lilydale and got flash floods and orange water with zero visibility. That was a bummer.

We went up to the Richtersveld, 10 hour drive. Booked at Potjiespram. Huge flash floods in Namibia, the Vis River came down and the water was like that.
We could not change the camping to De Hoop as De Hoop had its max allowable campers.
We ended up catching the muddies on the edges of the river, 50cm from the side in water that is 10cm deep.
With the higher water, the muddies moved up and foraged on the edges

[DJR]

I've done the Lower Orange for about the last 15 years, mostly in September and October, but a couple of times in July also. I have only once had the water so muddy that there was virtually zero fishing. It gave me the chance, which I always wanted to do, but which always lost out to fishing, to climb the mountains and explore the amazing fauna of the place. There are some good books on the subject and it has some very unusual and rare plants that are found nowhere else. At night we used a UV light to catch some scorpions for the boys to see and learn about them. (Yes, catch and release.) The bird, fish, mammal, insect and reptile books always come along too. That year also allowed me to concentarte on the "golden hour" with photography. For once, I got fantastic pictures, because usually that last hour around sunset was spent on the water.

[FlyCraft]

Some great pics from Mike Dolhoff few weeks back on the Orange.

[FlyCraft]

[JadeDsantos]

Some awesome fish there!

[Korrie]

WOW, good fish.

[Korrie]

This year with the early rains that fell inland, it is another 2 weeks of the clear water and then the color will change

[DJR]

Sheesh, those BIG yellows make me GREEN!

[Korrie]

I know nothing about this section of the river, any one have done this trip?
https://www.nightjartravel.com/rafti...-gorge-rafting