Ruhan Neethling
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I have been fishing all my life, longer than since my first memory. According to my dad, I started fishing around the age of 2 and over the years the affliction just got worse. Most (read all) decisions in my life are actually made around fishing, things like where to live and where to go on holidays all are ruled by the water.
Over the years, I have been involved in and practised most disciplines of the sport. Like most, I started as a bait fisherman, moved to lures and spinners and then finally on to flyfishing. Even though I still enjoy standing with the long rod on the rocks or casting soft plastics on the flats, my big passion has been flyfishing for the last 15 or so years. And of the various "kinds" of flyfishing, I love "big" clear rivers, like the kind found in New Zealand South Island, most. In my book, there is very few things, if any, that beat standing in crystal clear water with a big feeding brown 10 meters upstream and drifting a nymph over him. I think the reason why this has such a strong pull on me is due the technical nature of it. Second to that will have to be tarpon. To cast a #2 fly at a 100 pound silver torpedo in 3 feet of water sure does set the heart racing! And to see him them inhale that fly is enough to leave the knees jelly!
I started tying flies shortly after I started flyfishing. In Nov 2009, I got one of those itches, you know, where a change is necessary, and decided to start tying classics (fully dressed salmon flies). I have now been at it just more than a year and since I started, I have actually not tied a single fishing fly! It has consumed my entire flytying live for the last year. Having said that, I am still a fisherman first and a flytyer after that. I will leave what ever I am busy with at the vise at the drop of a hat to go fishing.
