Insight into Namibia

[saltydog]

Very nice fish and a good read,thanks.

[George4741]

Thanks for the info, Jeri.  I think about 99% of us learned more about Namibia from your post than we ever knew before.
  George

[Ron Jones]

Jeri,
I have an Uncle in Burundi that I'M planning on visiting this year. If I wanted to swing over to the coast when I'm done what time of year would you recommend? My wife is from SA and she has always dreamed of visiting your area.

Ron

[Jeri]

Hi Ron,

Would suggest anywhere from January through to April for the beginning of the year, then November for the other end of the year.

April would also be good for game viewing inland, so your wife wouldn't get too bored with the desert and fishing!!!

Keep me posted about your plans, and we could meet up.

Cheers


jeri

[0119]

Thank you Jeri for a great and informative report with pics.  Second least populated place....sounds like heaven!

[alantani]

sounds like an amazing place!

[fisher480]

Very interesting how the South African's use their beach overheads as a low winch mount. When my mate showed me his beach rods I had never seen them like that. He also had so centrepin type reels known as Scarborough's which he also used on the beach. Being an Australian from Queensland we were brought up with the good old Alvey sidecast reel with no drag or gearing of any description.

I would love to go over there for a look and a fish.

[CapeFish]

Very interesting how the South African's use their beach overheads as a low winch mount. When my mate showed me his beach rods I had never seen them like that. He also had so centrepin type reels known as Scarborough's which he also used on the beach. Being an Australian from Queensland we were brought up with the good old Alvey sidecast reel with no drag or gearing of any description.

I would love to go over there for a look and a fish.

It really makes casting and handling a big fish much easier. I still don't understand how you can wind in a fish with the reel almost above your head or clamping a rod between your legs or under your arm. The world distance casters use the reel at the bottom, that in it's own must say something. The grip you are able to get on a big reel is just far better with the reel at the bottom. Jeri is from Namibia, they fish the same way. We are in healthy competition and the national teams fish against each other annually.  Using a Scarborough's is a different "kettle of fish" though. That is the domain of the anglers of the KwaZulu-Natal coast line, it is the only part of the coast where those reels are still used fairly often. You need to have grown up with it to fish and cast it easily.

[Jeri]

Hi Fisher 480,

The thing down here is that generally there are some very large fish to be caught, and the more universally accepted method of reel mounting (reel up) is not very practical, as tucking the rod butt between your legs would leave you pretty useless for the rest of the week, after one good fish. This applies to edible species as well as sharks. So, the local answer was to use a boat fishing butt pad, and site the reel down at the bottom of the rod, traditionally 8" from the button to the start of the reel seat. This works fine for multipliers, and has become the accepted norm with most fishermen in the region.

I came down to Namibia from Europe, and had to adapt my casting style to 'train' my left hand to do all the reel control, away from the more European style of right hand reel control – and surprisingly it only took a little while to 'train' my left hand. Once done, it becomes the most natural method to cast, still can cast with the 'reel up', but it does feel'different.

However, this concept does not work particularly well for fixed spool reels, as basically it is an accident waiting to happen, especially with braids. Fixed spool reels in the low position have the tendency to have braid leaving the reel at a rate of knots, and the line is going over the upper hand's fingers; hence the accident waiting to happen – braid under severe tension is very prone to easily slicing through human tissue and the like.

We were very instrumental in developing a new system that keeps the reel in a high position for casting, but once the cast is complete, the long section of the lower handle can be slid into the parallel tube of the main rod blank, and hence fished with a reel in a much lower position. Best of both worlds, and despite what some folks have been advocating, the fixed spool reel in the upper position doesn't penalise the angler for distance, in fact as the reel is closer to the first and subsequent rings, fewer rings are used in the rod design, and a much greater performance can be gained from the blank. These comments obviously really only apply to surf rods, and especially to long surf rods in the 14' category which is typical down here in southern Africa.

We did do some serious investigation into the low reel – vs – high reel argument with a series of tests, and found consistently that the reel high position was optimum for casting baits, and especially heavy baits, as long as we had the option of closing down the butt section after the cast. After all, why re-invent the wheel, when the Europeans and others have been successfully casting big distances with the 'reel up' for very many years – design rods to accommodate the angles, don't try and re-design anglers to accommodate a poor rod design.

As 'Capefish' pointed out, there are annual competitions between Namibia and South Africa, I have just returned from the 'B' side part of the series, held in South Africa, where 5 teams from Namibia competed against 7 teams from South Africa, I was in the Namibian Masters 'B' team (over 50s). During the competition I noticed that an increasing number of anglers were using fixed spool reels, however, on the one day of the three that the weather looked like being less than gale force, nearly all the anglers opted for multipliers, as that was the day that we were all going to seriously focus on sharks – probably something to do with more faith in the strength of gearing in multipliers that the strength of gears in fixed spool reels. One factor here is the fact that reels designed for distance surf casting have tall and wide diameter spools, and have been built primarily for the European market, where strength of gearing in a surf situation is not such a critical factor as surf fishing in southern Africa.

We will shortly see the 'A' side of the tournament here in Namibia, and I would suspect that the majority of anglers competing will be bringing full multiplier set ups, as the likelihood is that big Copper sharks will be the major target species, and fixed spool reels and rods will only be used for 'scratching' out smaller species, where perhaps there is a benefit from using braid.

I personally did a lot of surf fishing with fixed spool reels and rods, as we did a lot of the early development rod work, and like most of the others that did the same, we have mostly reverted to multipliers, as the strength of gearing and reliability issues outweigh the few gains of fixed spool reels in our situation. Distance is a factor of the rod, rather than the reel, developments in rod blank technology are developing faster than anything in reels, and so we are more than capable of developing rods to effectively fish beyond 200 metres, at distances above 175 metres, the design liabilities of the fixed spool reel and braid become a severely limiting factor – that just doesn't happen with a multiplier.

Won't go into rod design issues, as that would need a completely new discussion group, and maybe a new website.