The Kosi Fishing Team's annual excursion took place at Bulls Inn at Mpame, in the old Transkei, now the Eastern Province (yes, it's in the east, how original is that?). It is a beautiful piece of the world and this was expressed a number of times by the team over the week.
The team were all allocated nicknames during one of our darts sessions and comprised of: Scotty (me), Fishman (he of Papvreter fame), Jonny Bravo (BMW dealer, also known as Jannie Dapper in Afrikaans), Kallie (after Kallie Knoetze, the boxer, except that it was Fishman's sister-in-law and she got the name thanks to her brashness at times), Skoonie (short for Skoonpa, Fishman's father-in-law and father of Kallie), Damba (new on the team and named for the volumes of Blacktail - known in the Cape as Damba - that he caught) and, last but by no means least, Tabard (also new on the team and named for his distant heritage). Damba and Tabard made fine new additions to the team as you'll read further down.
For the first time, our trips began from different origins, for obvious reasons. Mine began from Cape Town and the others travelled in convoy from Shit Towne, Secunda (where Jonny Bravo lives) and Sabie (where Skoonie and Kallie live). I started my trip early, leaving home at 1pm on Monday 9th March, heading to Kuils River, which is on the way, to pick up some dry ice which I was going to use to keep the bait frozen. The rest of them left a good deal later, that night.
Ice in cooler box, I hit the highway, not really looking forward to the distance which, as it turns out was 2,876km there and back. It's amazing what a guy will do for a fishing trip with his buds, though next year I might think twice about driving that distance on my own. Hopefully, I'll be able to take a couple of the Capetonian anglers with me as there are a couple of really good guys down here.
I drove straight through to Knysna where I stopped for a bit of dinner, entering the spirit of fishing with a fish supper at one of the take away joints in the quaint little town. Satisfied, I filled up the bakkie and drove through to King Williams Town, by now in the dark and thankful for my spotlights. Thoroughly tired, I tried to find somewhere safe to stop and grab a few hours sleep but all I could manage was a dark spot next to a petrol station and two hours fitful rest. I didn't completely trust the area and the canopy on the bakkie isn't the most difficult thing to break into. Later, I found out that if I'd driven a couple more km's I could have stopped at a better spot and maybe slept better too. Ah well, if there's a next time...
I grabbed a cup of horrible coffee at the station cafe and hit the road again, gee'd up cos the last leg of the trip was underway. The rest of the drive to Umtata, capital of the old Transkei homeland, was uneventful and I pulled up there at around 9am, expecting the rest of the team to be along soon. Not so...Kallie phoned me to say that they were stuck at some roadworks which was going nowhere fast and it was almost two hours later that they arrived at the Ultra City. I kept myself amused by having an oily breakfast and sat watching people from the comfort of my front seat. It was here that I noticed the interesting tailgate on the bakkie in front of me.
When the rest of the team arrived, sometime around 11am, we said our hello's, filled up the fuel tanks (or at least, Fishman did, cos his new engine drinks petrol like he drinks Capn's Organ - very heavy indeed) and headed out onto the highway for what was going to be an interesting last section. Firstly, we had to head 14km back along the highway I'd travelled along earlier as the turnoff to Mpame was back the way I'd come and the map we had was very misleading and obviously not to scale.
The little piece of tarred road was in poor condition and, at times, felt like we were driving drunk, swerving all over the road to avoid the deep potholes disguised as trenches. After about 34km, we turned off the tarred stretch and onto dirt road, which mostly turned out to be in better condition than the tar section. We still had another 30-odd km of dirt road and from the time we left Umtata and hit our lodge, we must have been driving for what felt like a couple of hours.
The lodge, which was to be our home for the next few days, was a welcome sight. The ocean was even more welcome. Unlike the Cape waters, the Indian Ocean is relatively warm, ranging from 17 to 23 degC across the seasons. When we arrived, it was calm, with small waves lapping at the shore.
Needless to say, our first priority was to quench the thirst we had developed on the dirt road. Actually, we had been doing a bit of that all the way along the dirt road, but now that we had arrived, we had a better reason to crack open a beer. After introductions to the lodge owner and their welcome, we started to unpack fishing gear into the open living area where we would spend a good deal of time, either eating, drinking, playing backgammon or just sitting talking crap. We do a lot of each of those things on these fishing trips, something that keeps drawing us back year on year.
That night, I ended up having a bedroom all to myself as the house we were staying in had enough beds for about 20 people. As we were only 7, and as they have been good friends for a while, only Damba and Tabard ended up sharing a room (single beds, I might add quickly, before I get death threats). My room had four beds in it and I settled on to the one next to the window, in case it got too warm at night. As it happened, it was quite cool in the evenings and it was a pleasure sleeping with the windows open, listening to the birds in the morning. The open windows also acted as a damper for the snoring which came from my neighbours, Damba and Tabard.
Up early on the first morning, we tackled up and took a walk along to Mpame Rocks. The water was looking great, low swell, tide going out and only a light wind blowing. Not long into the morning, Jonny Bravo hooked into a huge Bartail Flathead. It is the biggest of the species we have ever seen and, after photos, it ended up back in the water to live another day.
Fishman had timed our visit to the area to coincide with the spring tides but, as it happened it didn't really help when it came to catching fish. There were very few fish caught over the coming days, with the exception of Damba who just about caught the entire Blacktail stock on the east coast. I dropped a huge Shad on one of the outings and only caught a small sandshark which I promptly put out for a big shark, to no avail. Tabard caught a large Shad on the last evening and was very chuffed, saying that it had made his trip worthwhile. The only other fishing happening of note was the time that Jonny Bravo and I spent hooked into what we believe (and were told by the lodge owner) large guitarfish, and spent 6hrs hanging onto the end of our rods, well into the night, only for us to get bored and end up breaking our lines off in frustration and fatigue. The rest of them say we were hooked into rocks, but rocks don't pull your drag slowly, one click every few seconds. Large fish, on the other hand, do. We'll stick with our side of the story.
We had some amazing sunsets, as can be seen by the photos below.
As usual on these trips, Fishman did most of the evening meals and had us all going back for more each time.
When the days got too hot, we would go back to the lodge and sit around talking crap, drinking and planning our next trip down to the beach, lamenting on the fish we didn't catch on the previous outing, or catching up on some sleep.
I'll start Part 2 of this saga off by explaining how Tabard got his nickname...
1 comment:
Sweet start bru - sounds like fun and thank ***k you got your writing ability back!
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