It’s my pleasure to post the first of a two-part interview with Tudor Caradoc-Davies, one of the principals behind The Mission, the very well done digital fly fishing mag out of Cape Town, South Africa.
Garnering perspectives from guys and gals in other countries is always interesting and serves as a healthy reminder that the “lifestyle” that many fly fishers aspire to is by no means a uniquely American experience…
Thanks for taking the time to share a bit about yourself and The Mission; please tell us a bit about your personal history and how you’ve evolved as a fly fisher.
I’m from Cape Town in the Western Cape of South Africa. I’m a freelance writer and editor with a varied background from being a dishwasher and playing rugby in Heidelberg, Germany to working on an English newspaper (The Citizen) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to working for men’s magazines in South Africa (GQ, Best Life, Men’s Health). I’ve been freelance for quite a while now (I’ve actually lost track of when that happened) and during that time I’ve done everything from working on cookbooks (e.g. The Real Meal Revolution or Braai: Reuben on Fire) to ghostwriting memoirs and being the Agony Uncle/Sex & Relationships columnist for Women’s Health magazine (yes, you read that right). Most of what I do is lifestyle-focused and that was something I wanted to bring into The Mission with booze, food, travel and humour – all aspects of a good fly fishing mission.
On the fishing front, I grew up learning to fly fish for bluegill and largemouth bass, before graduating to join my dad on the rainbow trout streams of Cape mountains. The trout up in the kloofs are small, but the fishing is rewarding, especially when they’re smashing dry flies. Over time I have become more omnivorous in my fly fishing, from targeting our local saltwater species, like kob (aka mulloway/jewfish), spotted grunter, leervis and blacktail to spooky carp, our coveted indigenous yellowfish species and even the mean and toothy species of Gabon (tarpon, snapper, jacks, threadfin). In short, if it takes a fly, I’m keen.
Please share a bit about your team there at The Mission and what makes the project work for guys?
There’s a three-man team behind The Mission. Myself, Brendan Body (formerly of Session skateboarding magazine and a sort of hipster culture mag called The Lake) and Conrad Botes (one of South Africa’s top artists – check his website here and his cult comic series Bitterkomix here). Brendan is head honcho on design, Conrad weighs in with art and illustrations and writes for us, while I do the editorial, social media, ad sales and other stuff. We are probably the perfect example of how not to start a magazine as, with all three of us identifying as creatives, we had next to zero business skills. In retrospect it seems we worked off the “if you build it, they will come,” approach, because the one thing we knew our art, design and editorial skillset would allow us to do well, was to put out a quality magazine that was going to be a bit different to whatever else was out there. The rest – from ad sales to merchandise, accounting and tax – we’ve just learned on the job. Come to think of it, maybe if we had done it the right way (setting up all the boring stuff first), we would have lost momentum. Perhaps indulging in the creative kick of putting together the mag first was smart even if it wasn’t by design.
With my conventional magazine career, Brendan’s niche magazine background and Conrad’s history in art and publishing, we all bring very different opinions and ideas to the mix. I think that plays a big part in what makes The Mission work. That, and the fact that we have adopted a free business model. Our mag is both free online and in print. While we are based in South Africa and proud to feature a lot of African species and destinations (from CNN to Fox, Africa is often neglected in world coverage), we position and market ourselves as a global title. After all, fly anglers travel all over the world for different species and destinations. What’s really encouraging is that that global approach is working. Over 60% of our online readership now comes from North America with Europe, Australia and New Zealand also accounting for a hefty chunk along with our fellow South Africans. The digital magazine is turning into a beast, because with each new issue we put out, the old issues get more reads as new fans discover them. We also have a limited print run of 3000 copies delivered to fly shops, lodges and clubs across South Africa.
We’ve recently partnered up with our friends, Feathers & Fluoro, a hugely popular fly fishing blog, so in effect the blog on our website is Feathers & Fluoro and vice versa, we are their magazine. Conrad was always part of Feathers & Fluoro and most of their team (there are about 8-10 of them) have written for The Mission, so it made sense to join forces.
Lastly, what we think makes The Mission work is that fact that we are independent. We are not owned by a media house, there’s no cross-selling across titles or awkward unethical dictates from a publisher. We get to do what we want, creating each magazine from scratch. It’s at once scary, exhilarating and empowering, especially when we see how stoked our readers are with what we are doing.
Without giving away too much, what waters in your mind best capture the charm and uniqueness of fly fishing South Africa?
Ask this of any South African fly angler and you’ll get a different answer each time, because our country has so many different options depending on where you are based, but three places spring to mind for me.
One is not in South Africa, but in Lesotho (which, technically, is in South Africa if you look at it on a map). It’s the Bokong river where you can catch big, hard-fighting indigenous smallmouth yellowfish on dry flies, while also catching rainbow trout and wily old browns. That combination of alien and indigenous fish, up a faraway valley where life has not changed much for centuries, make it a very special place. Tourette Fishing run a great operation there from the Makhangoa Community Camp. Check out “The Legend of F#@k You Valley,” the issue 4 story I wrote on it for more.
The next one would be the Tankwa Karoo for Clanwilliam yellowfish. Perhaps the most coveted of all the yellowfish species, “Clannies” have this mystical reputation about them, perhaps because they are so scarce and because they somehow continue to survive in the harshest of conditions. The Tankwa Karoo is a semi-desert area in the middle of nowhere, but if you find these fish and manage to catch them in deep Kloofs, where ancient Bushman rock art is still daubed onto the valley walls, it’s a decent achievement.
Lastly, I’d choose estuary fishing on the Breede river in the Overberg. One of the big rivers in the Western Cape, the area around Infanta where the Breede river hits the coast, is the place to go for wily spotted grunter on JAM and/or floating turd flies, Kob (aka Mulloway or Jewfish) on DMAs, Spongebobs, Silicone mullets and Nose Jobs and Leervis on baitfish patterns.
The second part of TcD’s interview follows tomorrow. All images via The Mission.
