Fly-fishing as a valuable attraction and national asset is not yet being exploited by South Africa. This country’s game parks, mountain resorts and beaches are among the best in the world. Our fly-fishing waters, too, promise a memorable
experience for the foreign tourist.
South Africa’s fly-fishing attractions are as yet largely unpromoted overseas. New Zealand, on the other hand, reaps the major percentage of its foreign tourist income from fly-fishing. When it comes to trout waters, South Africa cannot hope to compete with a country like New Zealand with its veritable bonanza of rivers and lakes.
But South Africa has its own particular charms. There are few places in the world where a fly-fisher can explore a wild river that has giraffe browsing its banks, with a herd of patient eland come down to drink. There are few highland lakes elsewhere that are so blessed with quite as fabulous a birdlife. When you go fly-fishing in South Africa, you get far more than just the trout.
If the fishing is off for a day or three, there’s always a game reserve down the road where the tourist fisherman can take in some concentrated game viewing. Some elegant trout streams are in mountain game reserves. Fly-fishers are almost invariably conservation minded.
When it comes to marine fly-fishing — a sport, which now grows by the weekend — the South African and Mozambican coastlines offer estuaries, offshore and gully-fishing which are among the finest in the world.
The fishlife on both western and eastern coastlines is profuse, host to an estimated 1 500 species. Of these, about 100 regularly inhabit the estuaries. That fly-fishing in both open sea and in these quieter bays and inlets has only recently become a favoured pastime is, for these reasons, the more remarkable. The beaches are long. Often for 20 or 30 kilometre distances there are stretches still quite wild, untouched and clean as they always were.
Bays, estuaries, lagoons and coastal deltas are everywhere. For so-called ”species fly-fishers” these are bonanza waters.
Both in this country and in Botswana and Zimbabwe there are new challenges for the cunning wielder of the fly-rod. The thrilling tiger-fish and the bream of Kariba or the Okavango Delta offer freshwater sport that has little equal. We have more of very special angling delights in this tip of the continent than many realise.
The rewards of attracting foreign fly-fishers to our tourist economy could be profound.
Gary Borger — a well-known figure in the North American fly-fishing community who was brought to South Africa in 1989 by the then President’s Council — estimated that each American fly-fisherman who visited this country would spend an average of R20 000 during a three week visit — at today’s exchange rates that’s only about $850 a week; chicken feed to a dedicated fly-fisherman who wouldn’t hesitate to spend twice that on a rod.
Another American authority — Mr Silvio Calabi of Fly Rod and Reel Outdoor Group in Maine — estimated that of the one-million dedicated fly-fishermen in the United States, some 40 000 are annually candidates for overseas fly-fishing travel.
It follows that if as little as 1% of the potential US market alone, could annually be directed to South Africa this could represent a gross tourist income of R8-million.
That’s 400 people a year, or one and a bit arriving each day, with about 25 fly-fishers enjoying our country at any one time. Already established commercial fly-fishing venues, lodges and hostelries would hardly feel the strain.
There is also a vast untapped market of Pacific Rim fly-fishers, most especially in Japan where, as with golf, the enthusiasm far outweighs the chance to get on to
an actual golf course.
Fishing of one sort or another remains the most popular of all sports-cum-pastimes in South Africa. Fly-fishing and the associated trout- farming industry already represent a sizeable turnover, running annually into the several hundreds of millions.
Attempts were made in the past to rouse the National Party government’s tourist authorities into some active overseas promotion of fly-fishing as a valuable tourist-specific asset. The attempts were met with indifference. When it came to practical eco-tourism, bronze elephants at the Lost City were the ideal to those politicians. In the late 1980s a sum of R160-million was set aside for the promotion of eco-tourism. Hardly had the funds arrived in his department’s bank account than the then minister of information and tourism was off on a ”fact-finding” junket in Sol Kerzner’s private jet.
Today the tourist marketing of South Africa is being directed by far more imaginative minds and it is to be hoped that this growing niche-market will be exploited to its full potential. It’s a delicious fly waiting to snatched.