Searching For Trout The Size Of Salmon

Monster six or seven-pounders lurk in the Berg's Ngwangwane River. Like the giants on the farm Lingy Loo. And the intrepid Kingsley, believed to live in Boundary Pool

- Peter Brigg 

It was the poet Roy Campbell who wrote of ' ... trouts the size of salmon', and it was the late Bob Crass who suggested in his book Trout Fishing in Natal that this might have been a reference to the rainbows of the Ngwangwane River in the Southern Drakensberg region of KwaZulu-Natal.

If Campbell wasn't referring to these fish, then I believe he should have been. I have fished stretches of this river from the upper reaches to the Coleford Nature Reserve boundary, and have seen more than a few large rainbows taken from these waters. In fact too many to give credibility to speculation that these are escapees from stillwaters in the area. Perhaps the odd fish falls into this category, but most of those I've seen have been sleek-bodied specimens, typical of wild river trout.

The largest of these was a monster river fish, a shade under six pounds, caught by a friend, the late John Wheatley, some years ago. Only a couple of weeks back, Pete Young hooked and released — unintentionally and on a long line — a trophy fish, but not before it had stripped a full fly-line and some 20 metres of backing from his reel.

The poor fellow is still suffering that `slack line' feeling and contemplating what he should have done to hang on. So I, too, like to believe that Roy Campbell's words referred to the rainbows of the Ngwangwane River.

The river rises in two small streams on either side of the Bushman's Nek Pass, in the shadow of the lofty peaks of the Drakensberg mountains known as the Devil's Knuckles.

From its source it drops steeply and passes close to the Bushman's Nek Hotel. From here its waters flow through deep gorges and wide pastoral valleys, past high cliffs, around sandstone boulders and through a festival of gravel beds, riffles, deep pools and many long, steady glides. In places it is, in a way, reminiscent of an English chalk stream.