The Mission Fly Fishing Magazine

15/07/2025

M A G I C • J U N G L E
When not dodging flatdogs and throwing flies at Nile perch on Lake Turkana or the Murchison Nile, Andrew Nightingale likes to retreat to the Matthews Mountains of northern Kenya where dry sand gives way to a wealth of water and waiting fish around every bend at Kitich Forest Camp.

Read Andrew’s full story below.

Andrew Nightingale retreats to the Matthews Mountains of northern Kenya where dry sand gives way to a wealth of water and waiting yellowfish.

11/07/2025

B E A T S • B Y • B R E T T
Lead guitarist for Cape Town-based punk rock band LLSO, when he’s not shredding the strings and screaming back-up vocals to renditions of Rancid’s “Time Bomb”, Brett Bellairs manages and curates 131 A Gallery – a contemporary art gallery – in Woodstock. In between all of that, he still makes time to hassle the resident carp and bass at the local university dam and the elusive leervis in the less rancid sections of Zandvlei estuary.

Read more about Brett in issue 52 of The Mission and listen to his punk-rock playlist below

Brett Bellairs is a man of many hats. Lead guitarist for Cape Town-based punk rock band LLSO, curator at 131 A Gallery and fly fisherman.

10/07/2025

W A Y N E ’ S • W O R L D S
Low-key and unassuming, you'd be forgiven for not knowing enough about Wayne Haselau, one of the Seychelles' and saltwater fly fishing's great veteran guides. To remedy that we finally pinned him down to chat (amongst other things) about milkfish, triggers and clivias.

Read “Wayne’s Worlds”, the full character profile on Wayne Haselau in issue 52 of The Mission now.

You'd be forgiven for not knowing Wayne Haselau, one of the Seychelles' and saltwater fly fishing's great veteran guides.

09/07/2025

I S S U E • 5 2

Hurtling towards you across time and space like a digital carrier pigeon (that also happens to exist in print), we present to you, the 52nd issue of The Mission. What can you expect? How about deep dive profiles, awesome destination pieces, a motley crew of misfits, a classy collection of clobber, booze, beats, munchies and so much more? Frothing? We are, so without further ado, it’s time to get stuck in.

We kick things off with our cover story, a long-awaited profile of Seychelles legend, Wayne Haselau. From setting the story straight on how the milkfish breakthrough went down to his second career as a clivia expert, Wayne lifts the lid on a life extremely well-fished.

Then our editor Tudor sets off to Nottingham Road for beeeg business with the browns of the Mooi (plus the bonus of watching blokes from the Tops Corporate Challenge headbutt brass pots in the Notties Pub). That’s followed up by Andrew Nightingale taking us down the elephant paths of the Kitich Valley in northern Samburuland, Kenya where a cut-off population of mystery yellowfish thrive in the forests. ��What else? We’ve got an Undercurrents set in Mongolia as James Topham runs us through his (initial) scorn and subsequent conversion to the touchy-feely wonder of Brent Nickerson’s bamboo rods; we’ve got a Lifer with Sterkfontein Dam expert David Weaver, aka Dawiegras, a High Fives with African Waters guide David Taylor, a Little Guy with Andre van Wyk of Bucktail Flies, a triple-whammy Wands rod review, the verdict on the Walt Otter 30 waterproof pack, mackerel tacos for munchies, knobheads in a creek for booze, beats from Brett Bellairs of punk band LLSO and more.

Read The Mission Issue 52 online for free, or, if you live in South Africa, you can grab a free copy from your nearest STOCKIST this week.

04/07/2025

C R O C O D I L E ’ S • T E A R S
Think fly fishing in urban Gauteng and chances are, outside of the odd stockie pond or your mom’s pampered koi, options really don’t spring to mind. But, as Matt Kennedy discovered when he joined Stream & Sea’s Pieter Snyders, if you’re willing to wade through some suspect water and watch each other’s backs, there are yellowfish and other species to be found in urban Johannesburg.

Read the full blog below.

The upper Crocodile River system into a cesspool - albeit habitable by native smallscale and largescale yellowfish.

01/07/2025

FROM THE ARCHIVES: LIVE AT RED ROCK
What feels like a lifetime ago, while the rest of us went through Netflix re-runs this year (2020, lockdown, C*vid-19 etc), freelance guide James Kirsten escaped to Red Rock River Camp on the Orange where he lost himself in the upper section of the gorge. James’s experience of boulder hopping, turbulent water and slabby yellowfish is from issue 23 of The Mission fly fishing magazine.

Freelance guide James Kirsten escapes to Red Rock River Camp on the Orange River where he lost himself in the gorge and its yellowfish.

29/06/2025

P S Y C H E D E L I C A T E S S E N
Freshly returned from another trip to northern Zambia where he was targeting the area’s special “blue” yellowfish and bream species, Leonard Flemming runs us through the flies that worked for him and his crew. He also shares photos (thanks to the ID work of Prof. Gordon O’Brien) of the smaller psychedelic baitfish their expedition’s flies were based on.

Prof. Gordon O’Brien shared an entire photo album of weird and wonderful fish species from a river in northern Zambia

20/06/2025

E D’ S • H O P P E R
As with most things in fly tying, you can make hoppers as complicated and layered as you like… Or, you can keep things really simple and effective. Ed’s Hopper, originally developed by venerable Cape small streams guru Ed Herbst, is one such pattern.

In this step-by-step tutorial Platon Trakoshis demonstrates how to tie this effective terrestrial pattern.

For a quick, simple hopper pattern packed with triggers, check out Platon Trakoshis's step-by-step fly tying tutorial of Ed's Hopper.

17/06/2025

I N • W I T H • T H E • O L D

We all love new and shiny things, but to eschew all clobber older than a season would be silly. Some of the greatest fly fishing apparel, tackle and other gear, is great because it endures. And when it starts to come apart, it deserves mending, not throwing it away.

So, to celebrate products that deserve a second or third life, we’ve put together a collection of our own: of thrift experts, menders & fixers and other people & brands who believe as we do in reusing, repurposing and breathing new life into quality gear.

Read the full feature ‘In With The Old’ in issue 51 of The Mission Fly Fishing Magazine.

Thrift experts, gear menders, fixers and other people who believe as we do in reusing and repurposing quality fly fishing gear.

06/06/2025

H I G H • F I V E S • A L E X • H A L L E R
If you’re looking to tackle billfish on fly, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better person to put you onto fish than hard-charging Kenyan Captain Alex Haller of House Sea (siraihouse.com), who has already garnered the kind of special fish-finding reputation many old salty sea dogs would kill for.

If you’re looking to tackle billfish on fly, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better person to put you on fish than Kenyan Captain Alex Haller.

29/05/2025

S U Z U K I
Found next to container ships and factory docks, the urban, grungy Japanese seabass is our new obsession. Noguchi (Guchi) Kazuhiko who works for Patagonia Japan (パタゴニア) weighs in on Tokyo’s unique night-time fishery.

Like with the 30.3cm shaku yamame trout, the colloquial names for the Japanese seabass change according to size and age. Fish below 35cm are known as “seigo”, 35-60cm “fukko”, and 4 years/60cm+ “suzuki”. The average size caught on fly is fukko class, but occasionally suzuki, which Guchi says are “career fish”, are caught in a good season. Read more about the suzuki in issue 51’s Wish List Fish.

Found next to container ships and factory docks, the urban, grungy Japanese seabass "suzuki" is our new obsession.