Mountains & Trophy Trout

We rope in a Nissan Navara in the search for the Monsters of Mount Arthur – the infamous overgrown Rainbow Trout of East Griqualand.

- Stephen Smith

“This is why I’ve been coming to EG for the last ten years!” Andy James screamed out of the darkness. “For this fish!”

It was just after sunset and the two of us had been throwing ‘last casts’ for the past 40 minutes, all in the hope of hooking one of the trophy trout for which this area, and this farm in particular, is legendary.

When I wanted to take the new Nissan Navara on a trip to see what all the fuss was about (it was awarded the International Pickup Award in 2016) I phoned a mate whom I knew had been trying to coax one of East Griqualand’s leviathan trout into his landing net for years, and who had built up an exceptional knowledge of where to go, and when, and how to fish.

East Griqualand is a remote and wild area of mountainous farmland and wilderness. When I grew up in Pietermaritzburg, ‘E.G.’ (as we all knew it) was a mysterious place, bordering on the mythical. Even though it was just down the drag, its actual borders were a bit vague. Where did the Midlands end and EG start? Where did the name ‘East Griqualand’ come from? And where was Swartberg in all of this geographical soup?

I had cousins who farmed down there, but we never visited them – instead, we waited for them to emerge from the mountains every few years for family functions. These are rangy guys with big hands chapped from the weather and man-handling sheep, who party like they are well aware that they’re headed back into the wilderness for who knows-how-long.