Blyde river

[Jacques O Dell]

Fished the Blyde river at the beginning of the month. What a great and humbling experience to fish all alone in those canyons!
River was nice and clear at first but after the heavy rains it flooded and was mostly unfishable. Saw plenty of fish on my first try. Nothing that would pull me into the backing though.
A view of the canyon.

Got this little largescale in the lower section (below the dam).

Also caught alot of these little buggers. They look like tasty bites for tigerfish... No jokes these are quite rae and listed as vulnerable. Called barred minnows I think.

The upper section was good for river rafting, but I gave it a shot anyway.

Got this (and a few other) little smallscales. Good old faithful bloodworm...

[Conrad Botes]

Well done. I've been there before (not yet addicted to FF then) and must admit that it's a beautiful place.
Have been wondering obout it's fly fishing potential quite a bit.

[dlampert]

Does the Blyde not contain trout as well? I remember seeing fish rising in it as a teenager and IIRC they were trout?

[Gerrit Viljoen]

Looks like a Southern Barred Minnow. The orange tail fin you see indicates a breeding male.

[Troep]

Guys,

There's quite a lot of rainbows in the upper reaches as well as the odd brownie.

There's millions of small rainbows as well as millions of largescale yellows.

I fish the upper reaches of the Blyde quite often, especially after fishing the smalblaar with korrie. Its really beautiful up there, and very few people fish there.

Ill post some pics of the area soon.

Cheers

[dlampert]

Guys,

There's quite a lot of rainbows in the upper reaches as well as the odd brownie.

There's millions of small rainbows as well as millions of largescale yellows.

I fish the upper reaches of the Blyde quite often, especially after fishing the smalblaar with korrie. Its really beautiful up there, and very few people fish there.

Ill post some pics of the area soon.

Cheers

Thanks Troep, I remember standing on the bridge at Bourkes Luck watching the trout rise - must have been 30 odd years ago. Keen to see some pics of the upper reaches.

[Troep]

I sometimes wish I was allowed to fish below that bridge with my floattube - there's some monster yellows down there!! And I think theres some huge trout as well...

It rained 60mm last night in the Blyde catchment so fishing this weekend on the Blyde is out for anyone that was wondering about it for the long weekend!!

The river is in flood...

[gazzarowan]

hey guys...where is the blyde river? it looks beautiful!!!

[Troep]

mpumalanga bourke's luck area

[Troep]

As promised some pics of the upper reaches of the Blyde.

The river is very full, and fishing is quite difficult!! But they are taking flies quite regularly, although the yellowfish, are struggling to take flies in fast flowing water with small mouths like that, I can see they try to take it, but their reaction time together with the small mouth is just not cutting it at this time.

Ill try some microflies next weekend, but it was to much of a shlep in that water...

Take a look at the bigger one Ive got, the markings look like if he was strangled in a net... hope the locals arent using nets in that water.

Here are the pics...