A small tributary of the Mooi River on South Africa’s eastern seaboard in the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains. “Mooi” is the Afrikaans word for “beautiful.” The stream is named “Reekie Linn,” after a Scottish waterfall of the same name. Photo: Andrew Fowler

OPEN WATER

Shifting Baselines, Flat Trend lines

When Tom and his brother Gerald opened their old Wheatley fly box and showed me the contents, it was a bit of a time warp. The two of them had hardly fished since their dad had been around, both having been focused on the serious business of making a living. Now a sort of unspoken remembrance and celebration of their dad’s life was unfolding during a long-overdue fishing weekend. Perhaps that was something of a time warp. Gerald picked out a March Brown and turned it over. He started to say something, but his voice trailed off, and we all shifted our gaze to the row of nymphs the fly shop had sold him a few days prior.

“Of course it will still work,” I said, reluctant to see the Brown’s rich heritage dismissed so quickly. “But these ones have weight,” I added after a pause, gesturing to the row of things with beads in them.

Later, as we fished a lake in the shadow of South Africa’s Drakensberg mountains in ever more miserable spring weather, my mind wandered back to a time when our Wheatley fly boxes first had John Beams’ black Woolly Worms pinned next to the Invictas, and then bits of white foam glued badly over the sprung clips. It was an ugly and fast transition, like the molting of a shaggy coat off some large beast. Like tweed replaced by quick-dry shirts and buffs. My peers and I—enthusiastic students and newly converted fly addicts—wanted to move forward, but shaking off what our fathers had bequeathed us seemed crass and cruel. It’s easier now. We can parcel that time, that person, that phase. We can indulge in a nostalgic revisit now and then, now that the indulgence is more of a memory rather than part of a painful transition.


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