Bass to Trout

We arrive at wriggleswade at about 6 in the morning with the hopes of catching a few nice bass on fly, the weathers not that great with a steady stiff breeze forming little waves on the surface of the dam. We head straight for the jetty and after a fruitless session decided to work our way up towards the slipway.

At about 9 with dampened spirits and a heavy hangover threatening to call our trip short a bass succumbed to my efforts and after a short tough battle was boga gripped, photographed and gently released to fight another day.A short while later my bud was into his fish of the day and after avoiding the boga for a few minutes was landed (note to self: buy a net !) then photographed and also gently released. A while later we conceded defeat and made our way back to the bakkie.

My Bass of the day:

My buddy’s Bass of the day…

On the way back to the bakkie we came up with the idea of shooting through to Gubu… just "up the road", to check it out as we’re planning a trip there soon. On the way to Stutterheim a quick browse of the Internet gave us the exact directions and we were on our way. After a terrible dirt road that carried on forever ( phone screen failed to reveal"the worst road" fine print on the map) we arrived at the bailiffs house and after enquiring about fees reluctantly paid the R60 each.

The scenery at Gubu can simply be described as beautiful: surrounded by mountains, pine forests and crystal clear waters, scenery that can be likened to a Canadian park.We made our way off road to the spot suggested by the Bailiff and spent the rest of the afternoon getting in touch with our trout basics with the only fish landed thus far being a small stockie. Under approaching darkness fish activity was high and after my bud lost a nice fish and a couple of missed takes i finally got a solid hookup: a nice little rainbow that took a few meters of line and a good tussle for its size.

My Rainbow Trout:

some Gubu scenery:

jay’s cabinetry

This is a business of mine that I’ve just started, to meet the needs for customised cabinets and woodworking in the East London area, South Africa. Take a look at the jay’s cabinetry  page for more information.

bass on fly

Its 5 in the morning when my alarm goes off, I hit the snooze button and instantly feel the anticipation building up in preparation for the mornings fishing. I quickly scramble the gear and pack the few flies I tied the night before.A quick cup of coffee and we’re on the road by 5:30

Its overcast and warm with just the subtlest of breezes every now and then, we reach our destination, grab our rods and start the short hike to the dam with the greetings of a heard of cows wearily eyeing us out as we make our way.

on arrival a scan of the small farm dam revealed a lot of surface fish movement with a few aerial displays. I tied on my trusty green and yellow frog popper and within a few casts was into my first bass of the day, it gave my 5 wt a good working wrapping itself up in the thick weed.

this popper produced a few more fish and after a few missed takes discovered the point of the popper had broken off. I decided to change tactics and fished a sub surface wooly bugger variation with white marabou tail,chain bead eyes, green chennile body and a double white hackle with chartreusemarabou tied in under a hot pink head.this combination proved deadly with the biggest catch of the day resulting from this fly.

 in our party of three we landed in excess of 30 bass, mostly average in size with a few notables.they seemed to prefer a slower retrieve often hitting the fly while stationary.After casting the popper I would let it sit for a while give it a pop then wait about 10 seconds before giving it a pop again. the wooly bugger was fished with a slow strip and pause retrieve which gave an enticing up and down fluttering motion with the marabou tail.

 

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Nahoon river… part 1

This is the Nahoon river below the weir, where my bud n i enjoyed quite an action packed afternoon. our target for the day was actually to fly fish for larger bass above the weir where the water is much deeper. fish of about 2 kg have been caught here, and I’m sure there are larger but seen as we’ve only begun to fish this often neglected river only time will tell. The fishing above the weir was slow and there seemed to be hundreds of baby bass everywhere.At the out flow of the weir my bud commented on seeing quite a few fish in the very shallow rapids, a quick search of my fly boxes produced a selection of no.10 flies which i had tied. i tied one on flicked it out into the current and two strips later…. fish on! Ok it was a small bass but the fact that it came out of a little run that looked so shallow as to be impossible to yield fish was more than enough to want to catch another one. further downstream was another pool that was probably around knee deep, this pool was very productive especially when the flies were cast between the roots of the tree ( see top pic.) the biggest fish was around 20 cm in length, and gave a nice little tussle for its size. another surprise catch was a moonie which was odd as these fish occur mainly in saltwater and brackish water, and we were quite a far way upstream. even more surprising was that there seemed to be quite a large population of them. we suspect the river also holds tilapia, yellow fish and barbel. only time will tell.