Mother Nature's Curveballs

MIKE WENTZEL recounts some tales of bad bovines, angry antelope and slithery things.

- Mike Wentzel

Many moons ago, when I was a skinny teenager, my dad had it in his mind to shut up shop on the used car business in Johannesburg and troop the family down to Muden Valley in the rural Natal Midlands. Thankfully, the lower reaches of the Mooi River wound their way about 50m past our main house, providing me with the perfect opportunity to hone my then rudimentary fishing skills. In the mid-Eighties and prior to the 1987 floods, the river was about 30m wide and had high-cut banks running along most of its length on the long pools. It must have been my second or third year of high school and the much-anticipated mulberry season had arrived. In October, as the mulberry trees that grow along the riverbank shed their ripe fruit, the Natal scaly and barbel gather in great numbers under the overhanging branches waiting for the bounty to plop into the water, and with massive swirls, they gulp down the ripe fruit. What I had learnt was that you had to sneak up on these fish very quietly otherwise they would spook, and if they did, it would be another hour or so before you could try again.