Those of you who like winter sports will probably have heard of Tiffindell, "South Africa's highest resort". During the winter months, lying at around 2750m, Tiffindell provides an excellent setup for learning to ski, and even a bit of entertainment for the more experienced skiers. During the summer, the challenging road lures bikers of the motorised and non variety, and the peaks are a hiker's playground. However, Tiffindell has a deep, dark secret... the fishy waters of Loch Ness. This Loch is a wee bit smaller than the famous lake in Scotland, but our Loch Ness holds more monsters.
We fished the weedbeds and shoreline drop-offs, wading and from float tubes, and although the fishing was slow, there was steady action throughout the day. We had the best luck on olive wooly buggers, although darker buggers also did well, and a solitary hotspot nymph had its moment of glory. As for the moments of glory... well! We snapped off half our fish on the strike, on 3X fluorocarbon. These fish meant business.
As luck would have it, we had no 2X, or nylon (more stretch) with us, so in desperation we started fishing with the butt section of a 9ft 3X leader (yes, the stuff as thick as a pencil) tied onto a 9ft furled leader (for more stretch). Eventually, we started landing fish, and oh! what fish they were. Deep across the belly and broad across the head but definitely not fat, and your arm could feel that in the fight... there were monster rainbows that made whooping, screaming boys out of men. We caught a selection ranging from 4 to 7 pounds until a lightning storm chased us off the mountain.
