South Africa Boasts Some of the Best Fishing in the World
Fishing in South Africa is not just popular along the coastlines of the country. There are rivers, streams and dams across the length and breadth of the land that trout and bass anglers swear by. Dullstroom and the Drakensberg spring to mind, and once you've been to places like Lakenvlei north of Belfast in Mpumalanga, Big Creek in the Magaliesberg and Misty Mountain near the Tsitsikama Forest they'll be indelibly etched into your memory. Such incredible beauty!
Of course, salt water fishing can be spectacular too. Flanked by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and Indian Ocean to the south and east, South Africa has nearly 3000km of coastline and nearly every coastal spot offers rock and surf fishing opportunities. Richards Bay, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London are among the ports recommended for off-shore and deep-sea fishing charters, and if there is one place in the country that has earned a reputation as one of the best game fishing sites in the world it must surely be the waters off Cape Town and Cape Point - Hout Bay and Simon's Town in False Bay being two harbour towns on either side of the peninsula that visitors can't seem to have enough of.
There is no shortage of B&Bs, guesthouses, hotels and properties to rent wherever you plan to go fishing, whether on the coast or inland. The people who know the waters best in the various vicinities are also best placed to suggest where to stay in their areas and, to make contact with anglers in almost any given town, you could begin your search at http://www.tightlines.co.za where the details of hundreds of fishing clubs are listed.
An organisation that many a fisherman has found to be useful is the South African Deep Sea Angling Association at Tel +27 (0)35 550-5018. Fly-fisherman on the other hand might like to chat to the guys at Fly Talk, Tel +27 (0)82 376-3529.
Flyfishing Magazine and Ski-Boat Magazine are two of Africa's leading fishing periodicals. Getaway Magazine is also worth looking at if you want advice on where to go and where to stay when it comes to local fishing destinations of note. That said, most of the best reads about how and where to fish as well as accounts of fishing adventures told by master story-tellers are between the covers of some of the wonderful books that have spun out of people's passion for their subject.
Paul Curtis's Fishing the Margins provides a history and bibliography of fly- fishing in South Africa, and one of the most prolific authors on the topic is Tom Sutcliffe, teaching with his manuals and entertaining with Shadows on the Stream Bed in which he enthralls with tales about some of the places he's been to and the people he's met. For more great fishing stories there's also The Rapture of the River by Sydney Hey, a great South African classic and a must in the library of every angler for whom fishing is more than just about reeling it in.
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