FISHING

 

Giants Cup Wilderness Reserve has been called “one of the world’s most beautiful trout angling resorts” (Fly-Fishing in Southern Africa, Robert Brandon-Kirby). It offers self-sustaining populations of Brown and Rainbow Trout in the midst of an unspoiled wilderness. The lake varies in depth from about 1 - 2 metres over the shallows, down to 14 metres in the channel and the main basin.The Umzimkulwana River runs for 18 kilometres through the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg Mountain Park, A UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE site, and is accessible by hikers off the farm. No vehicular access is permitted, but the first few kilometres above the farm are not hard to get to. Where else can you fly-fish for wild spawning fish of up to 10.5 pounds, while surrounded by herds of grazing eland and mountain reedbuck, and with lammergeyer (bearded vulture) or black eagle circling overhead? The lake & Umzimkulwana river, which flows through it, comprise an open, naturally self-sustaining fishery. Although our hatchery produces 95% of the trout used throughout the Southern Drakensberg, we do not stock the system. Thus the fishery is a unique wild system, replenished from the wild spawning of Brown and Rainbow Trout in the headwaters of the Umzimkulwana, a major tributary of the Umzimkulu.