Stephan Muller and Wendy.

Stephan Muller and his other halve Joined us on the Orange river on the Luxury Fly fishing package for two days from the 20th of October. An avid fly fisherman of Indigenous species and remarkable all round lifelong angler. If it swims Stephan can catch it. Stephan is a General manager of one of the top companies in the world with an exceptional general  

knowledge.This fact makes a fishing excursion like watching a discovery program every day.  His partner joined him on fishing excursions but preferred to chill next to the waters within a click of Stephan catching fish.

The water was still a bit cold for this same period due to the high waters during the flood season and low temperatures across the country. The visibility was as good as it gets in the Lower Orange so although the fishing two days before their  arrival was very good I realised that he would have to be relatively good to hook into some smallmouth’s due to the drastic water temperature drop. Very important was that the minimum temperatures were still below the 10 degrees and

the maximums had not increased to the high 30's. I knew it was about two to three weeks away from very productive fishing. The smallmouth’s have spawned in September already and during the first days fishing the mudfish have started to spawn erratically in the shallows. The Catfish were also spawning in the secondary rapids. There were barely any insects out yet and only the Damselflies have hatched  the day before.

Stephan started off with the ever green Mustad caddis and other caddis'. His first cast produced a nice fish and I thought this was going to be a great day. But the chapter repeated itself for the week to come. It took a while before Stephan caught another fish on a different location in the rapid. Then not a fish until he moved . It was the first time I experienced such skittish fish and I crossed the river with the raft and then walked upstream to the top of the rapids we were fishing in, to investigate the  area across the river not visible from where we fished.  

To my surprise the catfish were spawning right on the edge of the rapid in a eddy  that pushed them right back into the rapid. Without effort the whole school spawning was washed in a circle from the top of the school around and back 

to the back of the school. There were no other fish in the facinity. I realised that it was the catfish that scared the yellowfish. On the other side of the coin the mudfish that spawned were also very aggressive and really hit the yellowfish 

hard if they swim past the area of spawn. I told the boys to spread out around Stephan to test flies and habitats on the last day. Hardus also caught some smallmouth yellows and Adriaan a few mudfish smallmouths and a Largemouth and 

catfish.

The afternoon session Stephan concentrated in the backwater of the top pool for the largemouth yellowfish that hunt in these waters off a sandbank on the opposite side. He had no success with the yellowfish but kept on hooking into  

mudfish on a continuous basis. His success with the mudfish intrigued me and I realised it was accurate casts that caused his successes. He could literally cast to a fish that rose and hook it into the dorsal fin or cast it right in 

front of the fish leaving it no option not to swallow the fly. Without a doubt some of the more accurate casts I observed. On talking to Stephan about his successes with the mudfish and accurate casting he's mentioned that growing up

fishing for catfish he learned to cast extremely accurate into the catfish's mouth as it ensured the greatest successes with catfish. We are all aware of this.

Despite warming weather but still very cold nights the fishing remained very difficult for the two days. We didn’t drift or raft seeing that the conditions are normally the same elsewhere to a degree. Stephan did not explore the top end of the top pool and that seemed to be a small error as we found out four days later.I did not particularly want to motivate him as well, as Adriaan caught a small largemouth yellowfish that was spawning in the area where we know Largemouths are prolific.Stephan respected this and harts off to him.  The habitat that we fished in was carefully chosen years ago after investigation hundreds of kilometers of rivers in the country and are extremely favourite for all the indigenous species in the Orange river. Large specimens frequent this system to the  degree that I prefer being stationery on this system then moving downriver with the rafts as it reduces the casting hours for fish on the one hand and that the fish is just so prolific on the system that Stephan was fishing on.

Although Stephan and Wendy seemed to relax from their highly stressfull careers and appreciated the unique scenery and tranquillity of the spot lower Orange river.Stephan also felt the brunt of a good size largemouth yellowfish take! 

Smack, craccle and POP!