| Date of Report: Thursday, 1st October 2026 |
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Name: Horst Filter Phone: 082 628 7702 SE Mpumalanga. Horst has enjoyed another excellent winter season on his small and largescale rivers, but he has stopped fishing until at least early April to allow the fish to spawn undisturbed. He has recorded 200 ml of rain since August, leaving the streams high and muddy so flyfishing is pointless anyway. As usual, he continues to monitor the illegal netting that is widespread on many of our yellowfish rivers. In the meantime, there is good bass and tilapia fishing in many of the local dams over the summer period. KZN. Early Spring looked promising as the streams warmed up and very good catches including some trophy sized scaly were taken at Zingela Lodge on the Tugela and there was good sport on the scaly waters right down South to the middle Umkomaas. Since then, widespread rains have fallen and most of these streams have become dirty. Possibly an exception may be the upper tributaries of the Tugela near the trout zone as these often clear quickly. If the long-term forecasts are correct, we could be in for a drought from mid-summer onwards which will be good news for those flyfishers targeting the yellowfish streams in autumn but bad news for farmers.
The upper eMweni River near Bergville. Photo courtesy of Carl Freese. |
