Bizarre bid at fly fishing charity auction: Ed Herbst and Sharland Urquhart
The setting
The annual Wild Trout Association Fly Fishing Festival in Rhodes has become a much-loved and eagerly awaited event among aficionados and the 2013 event was no exception.
The Epson-sponsored Festival allows fly fishers to re-connect with far flung friends some of whom, in the previous year, they would only have been in touch with by phone or email. Many of those friendships have been made and cemented at this Festival.
The quiet beauty of the village, the pristine streams that surround it and the procedures honed over many years by Dave Walker and his team at the Walkerbouts Inn ensure that the festival’s combination of good angling, good fellowship and good food proves perennially popular.
The Wild Trout Association was started in 1991 and the background story to its founding can be found in a personality profile on Dave Walker posted on Tom Sutcliffe’s website. The idea was to create a formal and symbiotic relationship between fly fisher and riparian owner. It has been significantly beneficial not only to them but to the region as whole, both in terms of favourable media publicity and financially. Today the WTA puts more than 200 kilometres of stream and river at the disposal of day ticket purchasers. Furthermore, a study done by Dr Mario du Preez and Deborah Lee of the Department of Economics, at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth shows that fly fishing results in a R5.6 million annual contribution to a village economy where the majority of people are unemployed and dependent on social grants.
If anything, the camaraderie and companionship which are so much part of the festival play almost as big a role as the fishing and 2013 was no exception. The good food and drink, the banter in the Thankshjalot pub at Walkerbouts and the after-hours fly tying, all help to make each festival memorable.
The unlikely vision
An eagerly awaited facet of the festival is the charity auction. The proceeds go to the Wild Trout Association and to good local causes such as a free sterilisation programme for dogs belonging to residents of the Zakhele township at Rhodes.
The auctioneer is Mike McKeown of Frontier Fly Fishing in Johannesburg, a company which has supported the event for many years and which this year donated a Sage Circa 2 weight fly rod, surely the pinnacle of current technology for small stream fly fishing.
Another rod on auction was a superb split cane model built by a consummate craftsman, Stephen Boshoff of Cape Town. Assisting Mike was another festival regular, Miles Divett of Underberg.
However, it was not the rods which drew most attention and comment but one which, according to regular bidders at this function, was nothing less than bizarre.
Such was the consternation, the hubbub of astonished voices when this item was posted on the pre-auction list that one of the festival attendees, a historian of note, compared it to the reaction when the noted dandy Beau Brummel first walked the streets of London wearing a cravat: “Horses bolted and washerwomen miscarried.”
Such was the bewilderment that questions were immediately asked. Could Messrs. McKeown and Divett have been partaking of what is locally known as “Laughing Lettuce” or “High-altitude Broccoli?” Were they, this school of thought wondered, “Fishing high in the mountains where the grass is greener?”
Others, less inclined to conspiracy theories, simply averred that McKeown and Divett were “… in the grip of the grape”.
The auction item which caused such puzzled looks and comment was “A day with Dave Walker during which he will remain cool, calm and collected, display outstanding good humour, kindness and every manifestation normally associated with the milk of human kindness.”
Walker did not take kindly to the notion that he could be anything other than irascible and scoffed at the thought that anyone would bid for something so clearly preposterous.
However, we, the authors of this immortal prose, felt that Walker, with superhuman effort mind you, would grasp the high-altitude … er nettle, experience a damascene conversion and treat us to a truly outstanding day of good humour, fine food and fishing in spectacularly scenic surroundings, a day which would warmly linger in the memory as testimony to Dave’s innate congeniality.
We, the authors, thus expected that there would be few bidders for what we had a sneaking suspicion would prove the naysayers wrong, a day in which Dave’s renowned culinary expertise and intimate knowledge of the streams around Rhodes would come to the fore.
Perhaps it was the frenzy which often prevails at auctions or simply that fly fishers are charitable by nature, but the bidding was not slow and, after a tense few moments, our bid of R1500 was victorious.
Initially Dave sought refuge in the non-existent fine print, saying that the bid did not stipulate in which year he would have to implement what he clearly saw as a nigh-impossible, deeply onerous forfeit.
However, after being accused in the Walkerbouts pub later that night of “Ducking and diving like Brett Kebble’s lawyer”, he meekly submitted and promised a day to remember.
And so it transpired.
The vision realised
On a cloudless autumn day Dave first took us on a scenic drive along the upper Rifle Spruit with pool after pool of delectable fly fishing water within easy access of the road and much of it available to those who book day tickets through the Wild Trout Association.
Our first destination was the farm Mount Morne where Braam Botha and his wife Sue entertained us to tea, melktert and stories about the district.
Then we were back on the road and heading towards the Bokspruit and everywhere the scenic beauty was a cogent reminder of why those who justifiably love this area call it “the centre of the universe”
Sharland Urquhart on the Birnam/Killmore bridge
The majestic poplars for which the Rhodes area is renowned were dropping their golden leaves onto the fields and into the gently flowing rivers as we drove. So spectacular was the sight that every so often we stopped the car to take photographs.
We were heading for the farm Birnam and its vacant farmhouse where a “skrik vir niks” braaing device made from the wheel rim of a truck and all the other necessities waited in the coolth of the stoep.
“Skrik vir niks braai-bak”
The trees and plants in the garden were resplendent in their autumn hues, silhouetted against the shadowed slopes of the koppie which towered over the farmyard.
Dave opened cool boxes to reveal an array of produce for which the area and the Walkerbouts kitchen are renowned – succulent lamb chops and boerewors, salads and herbs from his garden, fine wines, Bombay Sapphire gin, bottled water for the driver and a snifter of brandy for himself. Out of other cool boxes, as if by magic, appeared tablecloths, cutlery, salt and pepper cellars, lemons, beautiful serviettes – the list goes on.
He suggested we walk down a nearby road leading to the farm Killmore and that we fished from the bridge crossing the Bokspruit. He would, in the meantime, prepare lunch.
Dave Walker and Ed Herbst stoepsitting at Birnam
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The Bokspruit was running high and clean but the only trout of the day, a feisty fish of about 12 inches, fell to a Zak nymph given to Sharland by Tom Sutcliffe. It quickly sought refuge under the bridge and was gone in an instant.
We returned to find that Dave had produced a barbeque of note.
He proved not only to be a good cook but the perfect host. As we basked in the warmth of the autumn sun he regaled us with fascinating accounts of local history and we mphasiz at the fortitude of the early farmers and the way in which they supported themselves in a region with such arduous winters. It was a day filled with joy, fun and laughter.
In the end our auctioneers, Messrs McKeown and Divett, were vindicated. Far from suffering from the “Old Brown syndrome”, they were clearly “on the wagon” and treading the paths of virtue and righteousness when they perspicaciously saw in Dave Walker a latent potential for being an affable, gracious and convivial host.
For us it had been a day to remember but Dave became evasive when we suggested that it should be celebrated as an annual event. He beseeched us not to destroy his hard-earned (“Don’t forget your lunch packs!”) reputation as a cantankerous old grump.
We could but guess at the toll it had taken of him but we are determined – all in the interests of charity of course – that “Dave’s day of being friendly” will be on the auction list at the 2014 WTA Fly Fishing Festival and we will, with the news having spread, no doubt have some fierce bidding to overcome.
“A toast to the generosity of the highest bidder”