The Wild Trout Association has organised a number of successful expos, workshops and festivals dating back to 1992, starting with the Spoornet/FOSAF Flyfishing Expo held in Barkly East.
A Montane Workshop was organised at the Tiffindell Resort in 1994 and since 1996, an annual fishing event based in Rhodes has developed into a popular get-together for enthusiasts each year. This event was sponsored by Bell’s Extra Special Old Whisky until 2009 when the format was changed and the association embarked upon the Rhodes Wild Trout Festival.
The first Wild Trout Association-inspired event based in Ugie in1998 was the Pajero Ladies Fly fishing Festival. Conceived as the first-ever ladies-only event in South Africa by the late Elwin Love of Maclear, the Ladies Fly fishing Festival is held in spring each year. This milestone in fly-fishing now forms part of the Ugie calendar and will continue on an annual basis into the foreseeable future.
Under normal weather conditions, more than 200km of members’ running water can be fished within an hour’s drive of the village of Rhodes on the headwaters of the Kraai River, in the Bell River, Bokspruit, Kloppershoekspruit, Riflespruit, Sterkspruit and Joggemspruit catchment areas.
WTA representatives attended all of the “Hooked on Fishing” shows numbering 5 in the course of their existence. 6 Getaway Shows also saw representation as well as participation at Indaba for four years. Several other travel-related shows attended have also added grist to the marketing mill. However, the most productive has been the thousands of words in dozens of articles by luminaries such as Ed Herbst, Tom Sutcliffe and many others.
The catch statistics includes notes on weather and that in more recent times, has become a more sensitive issue. Historically, annual rainfall has been used as a yardstick for a range of purposes. In our case, a general observation is that in the case of aquatic species, when and how much rain falls is the arbiter of spawning but more of this in Tony Kietzman’s article.
