Hitting the catfish fever again

So me and Barend decided to go again to a great spot for catfish to go and finish our bait that we bought and didnt want it to go off.
First cast early in the morning and fish on, unfortunatly not the size i was looking for.
Barend says it was a bit unusual to see so many yellowfish rising for insects in the summer time, so he decided to take his fly rod with.
Tied on with a klink hammer!!
So we were scouting around for big boys and were struggling to get some big bites, so Barend started targeting yellows and caught a very nice 3.5KG this man is a master on the DRYFLY.
So i didnt wanna troll and started casting to the sides as you do for bass and Barend told me that i must troll it...didnt want to but i did as my captian told me first cast to the back and WHAM!!!It felt like a rock hit my hook, and it moved like a steaming train through the water...after about 30 min of fighting i got it to the boat and it was a vaal monster of 13KG's, i was so stoked...so the bite started to slow down and we decided to go and check out this spot where he knew there was very shallow water and then a drop off to about 5m's...when we got there i spotted a massive monster that looked like a 15kg + fish casted for it, did a bit of tapping with no luck we decided to anchor just before the drop off and retrieve like youll do with a worm in bassing, i got a big tap, STRIKE and nothing...Barend said his got something, gave it a couple of seconds and STIRKE!!!!Fish on....he struggled for about 40min. to get it to the boat because of the deep water.It weighed in at 12KG...
We quickly had a braai and went back on the water until about 19:00...with no luck of any big fish, just caught small ones.
Just when we got in the car there was a big storm...I personally think the fish could feel this and thats why we didnt have allot of action in the afternoon.
But awsome to break my PB's in a weeks time and also great to get both double figures on one day!!!
Heres some pics, enjoy.

BIGMOUTH!!!

My new PB!!!!

...:wfish

Snake!!!What snake is this??Pofadder??Rinkhals??

Barends 12KG monster!!

This was our average size...

Not what you want to catch in the late afternoon...:fbash

Nice catches there boy glad the whisker bug is starting to bite......
Looks like a mozambique spitting cobra...

Sounds like MArno broke hs Klopstok on a 20kg+ barbel yesterday so it seems the vaal is cooking for the cats.....

It sure is!!Yeah im starting to enjoy catching mr whiskers...must say big catfish like that on a small bass rod is alot of fun!!Now i need to try the catfish on fly rod.

Great Catches Basslover or should we change that to barblelover? There are some monsters in the vaal river system.

Just a question, when you talk about trolling a bait, how is this done? Do you troll midwater and what speed do you troll at? Some info would be highly appriciated. 

Congrads again on some stunners and thanks.

 

Hey Ragbag...thanks mate

Well my rig was low profile baitcaster on a 7ft Medium Heavy rod, 17pd mono with 14pd fluoro leader on swivel with mojo sinker(My friend says that the swivel helps for when that barble starts spinning, i can believe that.

And then with a wide gap hook, size 4/0 to 5/0, i used the 5/0.

Hook your bait.throw it to the back of your boat...not to far just about 5 - 10 meters behind your boat.
What we did was more like spot fishing...if we see more than two barbels coming up we will try and troll over them as we would guess there would be a school around that spot( remember these spots we trolled had lots of barbel)So its like spot fishing, find fish throw out your lines and go with the speed of the water if you feel its to fast, slow a bit down, we did have allot of success trolling up stream, what you do then is try and move as slow as possible upstream and fish on...dont know if i answered you...if anymore questions, please let me know.

Thanks very much Basslover, That souns like alot of fun and action, my kinda style of fishing. You guys should try throwing a fly or crank at them!

So almost like trolling a carrolina rig then? One more thing, are you trolling the bait on the bottom or mid water?

Thanks again buddy!! 

yeah, i still wanted to try the cranks, but we had allot of bait so we were happy with that.and we didnt get time to rig up the barbel flies were to busy with our other rigs...
Well we go slow that you can feel the sinker hitting the bottom...so ja think it was bottom, but the bait floats so its like you say carolina style, so i think it will be both...lol...dont know.