Gone Fishin'

One of South Africa’s premier river races, simply known as ‘The Fish’, takes place in Cradock at the end of September. The canoeing skills, the parties and the costumes are legendary

- Julienne Du Toit

What is it like for a desert child to live next to a flowing river? In the mid-70s, when Karoo farmer Roy Copeman was in his early teens, the Great Fish River was linked via the Orange-Fish Tunnel to what is now the mighty Gariep Dam.

Suddenly, the water-starved Eastern Cape Midlands became a lush, irrigation region. It was like The Wind in the Willows had descended on the Karoo. Who wouldn’t want to take to a boat to that clucking, gurgling river rush that the Great Fish had become?

Roy and his brother Louis were no exceptions. When the river came down in its new form in 1976, they hammered flat a piece of corrugated iron, attached canvas to make it more likely to float, and tried out a couple of planks for paddles. And, of course, they ended up swimming, because this new river was as boisterous as a puppy. Roy later became an irrigation farmer just outside Cradock, and is currently chairman of the Fish River Canoe Marathon.

Ted and Norman Collett were also former riverside farm boys. They made rafts by tying together inner tubes and then fending off hanging thorn branches with pitchfork handles, getting scratched to pieces in the process. They later ended up farming Adamsfontein and Grassridge farms respectively, straddling some of the river’s liveliest rapids.

By 1979, it had become clear that this river could be heaven for paddlers. The Fish River Canoe Marathon’s website records some of the history. ‘Cape paddler Dave Alexander was one of the first to see the potential of the river for canoeing. He was contacted by KO Bang, who was the Circle Engineer at the Dept of Water Affairs in Cradock, and they put an article into the Midlands News in 1979, looking for paddlers keen to try out the rejuvenated river. There was no response.