This entry is a short one on a Rust de Winter camping trip I did this September (2011), with Wayne “Lets Dop” Suthers.
In words:
The camping was kak, the ablutions were kak, the fishing was kak, the Potjie was lekker!
In pictures:
Mission Tent
Rigged and Ready
Wildlife
Probing for Fish
Plenty of These, NOTHING Bigger!
Last Few Casts
AWESOME Potjie
Ponchos!
So that sums up a short, fruitless trip.
Early Morning
We gave Rust de Winter in Limpopo a bash this past weekend, 17thaugust 2011. What a day’s fishing. In the morning the water was a little chilly at 56 degrees Fahrenheit, so the fishing was a little slow. I managed to land 3 fish, the biggest of which was about 1.3 kg’s and lying deep.
1.3 kg Beaut
After a short brunch we hit the water again around 12. The water temp had risen significantly to about 63 degrees Fahrenheit and this seemed to wake the fish up effectively. Two of the guys I was fishing with doubled up on their first cast back on the water. From that point on we hammered the fish for the rest of the day. The fish were much shallower now, probably enjoying the warmth. Natural coloured flukes were the ticket, although we did manage to land fish on grubs and cranks too.
Slightly Smaller 1 kg Fish
The largest fish that I landed was a 2.2kg bass, one of the nicer fish I have caught in a long time. Will definitely hit Rust de Winter this season more often than the last.
2.2 kg Mid Afternoon Fish
We made a trip up to Rust de Winter dam this past weekend expecting to pull some decent fish out of the depths. Autumn is beginning to show its face and this can sometimes be a great opportunity to hook into some awesome largemouth bass. Rust de Winter is one of the best dams to do this.
Shallow Waters
In saying that we never had too much luck, fishing was slow from morning to afternoon, until we noticed some boats congregating around a particular part of the dam. We had tried everything, deep diving cranks, spinners, flukes, worms, senkos, and brush hogs in deep water, shallowish water, along drop offs, down cliff faces, you name it! We noticed this congregation of in extremely shallow water, about 3 to 5 feet! Surely not today? Water was still cold and we were expecting the fish to be suspending fairly deep.
Fishing the Nursery
However we decided to give it a bash, we approached nearby and proceeded to throw our baits literally into the almost terrestrial reeds along the bank, fishing them slowly back to the boat along the flat dam bed. I used a simple watermelon red fluke fished weightless through the water column and had plenty of luck on that. Nothing big came out as far as fish were concerned, however we did learn one very simple yet valuable lesson: when you have tried absolutely everything that should work in a certain situation, with no joy, literally try something that shouldn’t. I mean we fished the entire day without so much as a bite, trying just about every technique we knew for the assumed situation, yet in the last hour of fishing it was as if the fish were fully on the bite.
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