Mike Burgess has fished the Saalboomspruit in the Eastern Cape’s Barkly East district for almost four decades. He shares how he has never been disappointed with the exceptional indigenous yellowfish this pristine highland ecosystem produces.
The tail-end of the Baboon Pool on the lower Saalboomspruit.
Photo: Mike Burgess
I was about 12 years old when I first stripped a ‘Mrs Simpson’ fly pattern through the waters of the Saalboomspruit in Barkly East in search of smallmouth yellowfish (Labeobarbus aeneus). I am still engaged in this marvellous pursuit almost 40 years later.
For me, the Saalboomspruit is much more than just a highland stream; it’s a familiar and exquisite ecosystem that’s helped me produce a lifetime of fishing memories.
This beautiful connection to place has proved to be a telling influence in the development of my very sense of self, and now, when I assemble a fly rod along the Saalboomspruit, it feels more like I’m about to embark on a spiritual pilgrimage rather than just a day’s fly fishing.
De Hoek in Barkly East during the June 2025 snowstorms. For the past 20 years, this beautiful farm has been the base from which the writer fishes the Saalboomspruit.
Getting to know the Saalboomspruit
I grew up on the farm Bannockburn in the Indwe district of the Eastern Cape. My brothers – Don and Chris – and I were avid fly fishermen from a very early age.
Our gateway to the nearby Barkly East district and its legendary rivers was the Otto du Plessis Pass winding its way over the Drakensberg less than 50km away from Indwe.
First my dad, Billy, would drive us up this beautiful pass to enjoy arguably the best fly fishing in the country. By the late 1980s when Don received his learner’s licence, and my dad allowed his boys to explore the Saalboomspruit in his battered farm bakkie.
I fondly remember the life-defining camping and fishing adventures my brothers and I had along this delightful stream, and it was during one of these trips that we discovered a weir on a farm several kilometres from where the Saalboomspruit flows into the Kraai River.
The weir, a formidable fish barrier, denies migrating yellowfish access to the upper reaches of the Saalboomspruit in spring and summer, and as early as the 1990s, we had fantastic fishing for these mercurial fish below it.
When I lived in Barkly East from 2002 to 2006, I obsessively fished this section of the Saalboomspruit, and in 2004 the Burgesses were lucky enough to acquire a small farm in the region called De Hoek, which we still own.
Although I left Barkly East in 2007, I have returned every Christmas holiday to this lovely farm and region to target its magnificent yellowfish.
A tale of three pools
Over the decades, I have come to know the lower Saalboomspruit in intimate detail, and three pools have constantly produced outstanding yellowfish of over 60cm in length during my Christmas holidays.
The Long Pool is defined by reed grass on both banks and a couple of crack willows (alien trees introduced to the district in the mid-1900s), whose submerged roots offer some structure for the fish.
It is a pool that I always fish in the morning before the sun rises, a time when yellowfish are more active in open water and when their bright golden bodies seems more accentuated when lifted out the water.
The lower Saalboomspruit, not far from its confluence with the Kraai River, which then joins the Orange River near Aliwal North, well over 100km to the west.
The Bridge Pool, as the name implies, is directly below a bridge over the Saalboomspruit, and despite the odd car thundering over it, it always produces extraordinary yellowfish.
As it is easily accessible, I would often rush to this pool after a long trip from East London or Pretoria, and a good cast in fading light down the centre of the pool (past a submerged rock) would often end in success.
Then there was the Baboon Pool, named in honour of a troop of noisy primates that had occupied a nearby cliff. The pool itself was defined by a sandstone ledge covering the entire right-hand side, and deep undercut banks on which crack willows grew on the left bank.
On one occasion, I hooked and landed several fish from this pool by simply ‘resting’ the pool, brewing a cup of tea a little downstream before reapproaching the pool for more fly-fishing bliss.
It is during these magical tea breaks along the Saalboomspruit that I always realise how privileged I am to be able to interact with this pristine highland ecosystem with just a fly rod in hand and a life-time of memories.
