Magalies Barbus Haven

[pieterkriel]

dpammenter, how many fish have you seen looking at your fly in the Vaal, or wherever you call your happy hunting ground?

In my right hand I hold a red pill. Drink it and you will be immediately transported to the nearest pet store, where you will happily watch guppies. You will have no recollection of this post or the Magalies river or any of it's inhabitants. In my left hand I hold a blue pill. If you drink this one, the blindness will depart from your eyes, and you will see before you a beautiful and rare yellowfish small stream, where man is priviledged to behold his quarry peacefully going about his business, and all that the river holds. In time you will grow a soul, and even possibly the mentality and patience to actually appreciate that which sets fly fishing apart from most other sports.

The choice is yours...

now that is all true words of wisedome, that blue pill sounds nice, does it by any chance have a yellow smiley face on it?

[MaXiMuM]

I will put a little thing together latter...

[PeeKay]

Three of us spent the last day of 2006 there. Sighted fish in the pools, but not in the stream, which was pretty small and very shallow. We were disappointed with the "guide". His "guidance" i.r.o. the yellows in the stream amounted to vague directions on how to get there. Nothing resembling the web site description. The outing did not meet the expectations creatd by the marketing thereof - we blanked on the yellows. The trout in the dam was more fun in spite of windy conditions.

[dizzy]

As has been mentioned on previous replies to this thread, this species is by no means a "wooly bugger" fish!
There is alot of preperation that needs to go into catching them.

And, remember, a guide cannot catch the fish for you, he can only show where they are!

[pieterkriel]

As has been mentioned on previous replies to this thread, this species is by no means a "wooly bugger" fish!
There is alot of preperation that needs to go into catching them.

And, remember, a guide cannot catch the fish for you, he can only show where they are!

All true Dizzy, but if you do pay for a guide, certain things are to be expected, of which vague directions are not one. A good guide should:
1. Take you to the fish, and have a keen knowledge of what to do to catch the fish and be able to explain properly to his client how to go about catching the fish.
2. Go as far as giving you the flies that work, and explain how to use them.
3. If he knows a certain presentation is needed, show you how to do it properly.
4. Generally from the start he should find out what your abilities are, and compensate for it.
5. If a guide is good the client should walk away from the experience a better angler.

That is a good guide, most, not all, but most guides in South Africa does not understand the concept, heck I do more for someone(non paying), I take fishing on a Sunday afternoon than some guides do.

[dpammenter]

All true Dizzy, but if you do pay for a guide, certain things are to be expected, of which vague directions are not one. A good guide should:
1. Take you to the fish, and have a keen knowledge of what to do to catch the fish and be able to explain properly to his client how to go about catching the fish.
2. Go as far as giving you the flies that work, and explain how to use them.
3. If he knows a certain presentation is needed, show you how to do it properly.
4. Generally from the start he should find out what your abilities are, and compensate for it.
5. If a guide is good the client should walk away from the experience a better angler.

That is a good guide, most, not all, but most guides in South Africa does not understand the concept, heck I do more for someone(non paying), I take fishing on a Sunday afternoon than some guides do.

that's all good and well, but the guide at MBH doesn't do half that. he asked me if i knew how to cast - which i can do - told me that a hot spot nymph is the best fly to use, and then told me that he had to go do some shopping!?

yes, he pointed out the fish in the first two pools, but anyone could have seen them there without having someone point them out.

his description of the river in it's entirety - or at least, the part that's on their property - was lacking to say the least. i had to go and do my own exploring (no problem) to find that there were no fish where he had said there were.

i have no doubt that it's a great little stream with some wonderful little fish in it. the biggest issue i had is that it is NOTHING like they advertise it to be. that was my major disappointment. because of what you see and what you read, you expect certain things - they give a false impression

2c
(and i don't really want to start a heated debate about it - just my experience)

[MaXiMuM]

Ooooh, that made nice reading, look at how inocent we all were...

[Herman Jooste]

Ooooh, that made nice reading, look at how inocent we all were...

Reminds me very much of the discussion we had on Sunday past re: guides and the REFFIS side of things.
Just as well we wern't taped

[pieterkriel]

Reminds me very much of the discussion we had on Sunday past re: guides and the REFFIS side of things.
Just as well we wern't taped

Ok so many moons later and this thread springs up again.

REFFIS, now there is an subject, even doing the REFFIS acreditation(sp) will not make you a good guide, yes it will teach you certain very good and useful skills, but in the end it is still up to the qualified REFFIS guide to apply those in a way usefull to his paying guest/trick/customer.

To illustrate: I had in my now feeling so long ago school career several maths teachers, I was no wonder maths kid and needed all the help I could get. In my school career two math teachers stood out for how brilliant they were at showing and coaching me how to go about solving maths problems. One in standard 5 and one in standard 8 and those two years I excelled in maths. Also another two teachers stood out, they were absolute maths wizzes, but their way of explaining lacked and those two years I absolutely sucked at maths(think it was st7 and st10) the rest of the years with moderately skilled teachers and moderate teaching methods I did not excell, but got by.

The point is you can have a REFFIS guide that is absolute awesome angler, but can't teach or work with people and he will still suck at it. Then you could get that awesome REFFIS acredited deamon angler guide that can teach and work with people and he'll show you the time of your life. Then you can get those moderate good REFFIS guides that can teach and work with people and the odds are you will have a great time.

Anyone that think that guiding is just a quick buck while he is doing what he like to do is trapped in an illusion not only cheating himself but also cheating his tricks and giving guiding a bad name.

As for me, I'd rather go fish with someone, if I see I can add value to his angling help him, if not we can just enjoy the day out fishing together. If I ever start selling myself as a guide I would have before hand would have carefully considered it and know I am out there with someone to coach, teach, guide, show, tie on flies, net his/her fish, wipe their arse if needs be, and not be fishing myself.

[ed_cik]

Has anyone fished near the source of the magalies river!! I have been up there once on a hike but had no rod!!! There were somenice fish up there!!!