It seemed that the lights attracted small mullet and prawns that were soon followed by schools of juvenile kob (snotties in local parlance) and the occasional double figure fish. During the 70's and 80's, local flyfishers targeted these fish with seven weight outfits using Mrs Simpsons and other trout flies and although they caught their fair share of fish, many more were lost to the pylons of the mooring jetties.

Armed with this knowledge, we set out to find our own "Eldorado" and located a small restaurant called the Sandbar. The appropriately named venue consists of an old houseboat that has been modified into a licensed restaurant that serves as a watering hole for local farmers and a novel eatery for tourists.

Located on the Bushman's River within an hour's drive of the university town of Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, the Sandbar seemed an ideal option. With the chance of a few beers and a good feed thrown in, the deal seemed almost done and we set out to negotiate with the manager.

Traditional theory suggested that flies suitable for night fishing needed to be dark to produce a good silhouette which gamefish good perceive as some kind of prey item. On our first few sorties, we used black woolly buggers tied on 1/0 to 2/0 saltwater hooks but to no avail. Such flies had worked and are still highly successful in other locations but the presence of spotlights shining onto the water necessitated a different approach.

Once we put our flyrods down, picked up our beers and started watching the water, we were amazed to see the kob chasing prawns just below the surface and occasionally slashing at the surface as the prawns leapt to freedom. What struck us most was the clearly discernable white colour of the prawns. The kob were obviously keyed into the colour as they attacked anything white that came their way including moths and bits of foam.

We initially tried using white foam poppers and while we did catch a few fish including some other species such as tailor (shad or elf in South Africa) and spotted grunter (a close relative of the javelin fish of northern Queensland), the results were not as consistent as we would have liked.

Back to the drawing board and the mission to create the perfect prawn imitation. What we wanted was something that was white in colour and resembled the general shape of the prawns or small baitfish that the kob were feeding on.