Ceres Valley Fly Fishing

Ceres River Fly Fishing Part One

Another beautiful river in magnificent surroundings on a wonderfully sunny November day. Jan van Huyssteen , Tony Biggs and I fished from about 09.00 to 13.00 and covered about 1 1/2 kms of river – freestone in character with more pocket water than the Olifants or Witte.

Caught 5 rainbows up to 300gms on RAB (named after the creator … RA Biggs but it’s also known as Red-arsed bastard) dry flies. I was striking too hard today and broke off on 1 fish which was not that big. Once we finished fishing we had to tackle about 400 metres of “jungle” to reach the road – saw no snakes but we must have passed a few. Its important to take care in this kind of country. Tony Biggs led the way through the jungle.

Ceres Valley Fly Fishing: Part Two

Jan Van Huyssteen, Inga, Vicki and Pascala, Patty, Gareth and I drove to the farm “Visgat” (some 30 km the other side of Ceres on a gradually worsening dirt road) in Jan’s Kombi. The day’s fishing started by wading the river pool below the derelict cottage with water up to 4 feet deep – Gareth went across on my shoulders.

I caught 1 fish in this pool before the mass wading took place. Once the picnic area had been arranged Jan and I climbed the rocks to fish about 50 to 100 metres down from the pool referred to above. This was mountaineering prior to fishing. The river was probably a foot higher than normal but despite the strong flow the water was very clear. Fishing was upstream into likely looking runs, and pockets. Depth varied quite significantly with some pools – looking very deep. Access to the river was very difficult whilst access to the river was critical in order to get into any worthwhile position for casting. The black wattle was all along both banks.

I caught 5 Browns today – 1 on a Trude and 4 on special elk hair caddis (red body). All fish were about 300 / 400 gms and in good condition. Jan caught about 3 and missed a few. The derelict hut was actually very sound structurally and well positioned above the picnic pool. Something nice could be made of this relatively cheaply and this is probably the way to begin this development. Before leaving Jan showed us the site for the larger house. The house will be positioned over a large deep pool giving a super look – out from the balcony.

This river has super potential but there is a great deal of access cleaning necessary. The river runs from North to South and because of thick bank coverage fishing in a wind should be no great problem. So long as access could be made reasonable most of the river I saw was quite fishable and the variety of holding water was good. Fish were seen rising occasionally. Wading was difficult in places because of the large boulders.

Both Jan and I got ducklings to chest level. A snake swam across the picnic pool later in the afternoon. The drive was magnificent and countryside around the river was super. I must watch the way I was tending to splash the fly down onto the water at times.