Trout were introduced to rivers around Lydenburg in the 1940’s through the dedication of the German born jeweler F C Braun. He made it his business to breed fingerlings and distribute them, driving out to rivers in the vicinity over weekends, and striding many miles through the veld carrying two 5 gallon paraffin cans teeming with fingerlings.

The Crocodile River just below the escarpment at Verlorenkloof remains a fine spawning river for trout. The river is carefully stocked at intervals throughout the year to satisfy anglers, but the greatest thrill is catching, admiring and releasing one of the thousands of fingerlings that hatch each year. These little fish survive summer flooding of the river and all manner of threats to get to the size where they are real little predators themselves, attacking a trout fly with astounding vigour.

Trout in this river underpin a leisure industry that creates work for a whole farming community in breeding fish, tending the waters, servicing accommodation, and a host of other aptly named downstream activities. This community would have unraveled long ago and the young people especially would have drifted to the cities and towns had it not been for this precious resource.

The trout also exist side by side with other farming activities.  Grazing animals on the riparian flats prevents unnecessary veld burning, making it possible for indigenous trees to grow and provide an environment for a whole range of arboreal species. Cattle also re-circulate nutrients and the areas where they graze are much more biologically diverse than elsewhere.

The most important management consideration however is the health and biodiversity of the aquatic environment. Regular bio-monitoring confirms that the system is alive and well, teeming with tiny invertebrates, crustaceans and  tiny Barbus species. The trout are permanent visitors who seem to know how to avoid exploiting their hosts. They are certainly good guardians of the system, as the people who depend for their livelihood on the trout’s love for a fly will protect this resource at all cost.

Threats to the pristine rivers of the Mpumalanga escarpment abound, ranging from the intention to prospect and mine short lived coal seams upstream to residential developments in the grasslands of the catchments, which could in so many ways affect the rivers.

The valuable and trusty trout will see to it that these threats never win. It may be that F C Braun knew what lay ahead years hence for the rivers of the escarpment, and saw to it that a custodian species would be jealously guarding the rivers long after he was gone, and would give great pleasure to men and  boys while doing so.