River runs deep for fly fishing champion

“I used to think I was the only Jew who did fly fishing, but surprisingly, a lot of Jews do it in South Africa,” says 35-year-old Daniel Factor, who is at the top of this sport in South Africa.

Factor came sixth at the South African Fly Fishing Association A Nationals in Underberg, KwaZulu-Natal from 2 to 5 April, and will be competing in the 44th FIPS-Mouche World Championships in the Czech Republic at the end of May.

Factor, who has been fishing his whole life, said “I know about 10 Jews who fly fish competitively with me.”

His fellow Johannesburg fisherman Tamir Sacks came nineteenth in the Underberg in this sport that uses an artificial fly as bait.

Factor, who owns a trout farm and matriculated at King David Victory Park in 2007, has been to 12 national championships. His team has won 10 times, with him finishing only once outside the top three. He has been ranked number one in South Africa for the past nine years. “My dad passed away when I was three years old, and he left a fishing rod for me,” he said.

About 75 anglers competed in the Underberg competition, including the top five fishermen from each province. Other than these experts, there were national junior, ladies, and invitation teams. The 38-year-old Sacks competed in the A nationals for the first time, having started fishing competitively only two years ago.

Sacks, who represented Central Gauteng, got a special invitation. “The invitational team consists of people who have displayed ability to compete at the national level,” he said.

The competition consisted of five three-hour long sessions. “We fished a mix of rivers. There were three river sessions and two still-water sessions. Essentially, the person who catches the most fish over the five days is crowned the winner.”

Sacks, a businessman and a King David Linksfield alumnus, started fishing as a three-year-old with his dad. “We would go and walk around Kensington Lake with a little line, hook, some bread, and catch little Cupra fish.

“Fly fishing, in my opinion, is the purest form of fishing that you can do because there’s no bait. You’re using artificial flies that you need to make yourself,” he said.

Through his fly fishing business, Factor takes people around the world to fish in exotic destinations and the world’s best fly fishing locations. “My favourites would be Seychelles, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, and Australia. I fish the whole of Europe for the international fishing circuit. I fish the world championships every year in a different country.”

Factor has caught fish weighing anything from one pound to four hundred pounds.

“There are a lot of skills to fly fishing,” he says. “The most important thing is technique. You must be able to read the water and know the conditions. Sometimes there is a cold front, a low-pressure system, or a full moon, and the fish swim differently.

“You try to figure out what the fish are feeding on at that point in the day,” Sacks said. “You might find that they are feeding on a specific pattern or insect during the morning, and they completely switch in the afternoon. Your objective is to try and crack the code as to what’s working, and you need to do this in the quickest time possible because the session is three hours long.”

Factor insists fly fishing is one of the most technical and complex sports “because if you play rugby, cricket, or soccer, you always compete in a game against a human. We know how humans think. Now we are competing against fish, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t know what a fish thinks about.

“I can give you 100 000 hours of my life fishing and every day, every minute, I learn something new. I’ve fished tens of thousands of rivers across the world, and each one is different.”

Fly fishing, which is believed to have its origins in the 1890s in South Africa, appeals to Sacks as he loves being in the outdoors, going to incredible places to fish, harnessing his competitive streak, and meeting like-minded people.

The sport is like a science, he said. “First, the fly rod is hard to cast. But the real fun comes in understanding the fish. The inputs to that are weather, air pressure, wind, cloud cover, sunshine, how fast the river or the water is flowing, the colouration of the water, and so on, because the fish ultimately will move into different areas of the water.

“You need to be incredibly fit and strong to compete nationally because you don’t just sit on the side of the river and cast the rod at length. You navigate the river system, with water currents going against you, and you’ve got boulders at the bottom. You’ve got three hours to navigate the whole system, and you run between five sessions.”

Factor runs, cycles, and gyms every day for his fishing practice. “I’m on the water two to three times a week training, especially towards a competition,” he said.