Dear Forum,
I was so busy at work that I failed to get a weekend off to fish for barble during the annual spawning bonanza. I am really bummed.
So my only alternative is to adopt traditional drift bait fishing techniques from my stealth fishing ski. The ski is equipped with a fish finder, so I wull be able to track structure and drop offs.
The venue that I will be fishing was the once smallmoth mecca of Cape Town, Voelvlei dam near Gouda. Unfortunately, the barble ate all the bass and I would like to adapt my techniques.
For those of you who do not know the dam it has gentle sloping banks with a mixture of rock and sand with very little in the way of obstructions which makes it an ideal drift bait venue.
Furthermore the carp population has exploded resulting in the water changing from a 'lemon twist colour to the same clarity of strong coffee similar to that of the Vaal dam.
What makes it difficult to detect the barble is that they almost never surface and secondly that the wind almost always blows there, therefore limiting your visual ques such as on the Vaal river where it it is easy to spot the barble.
I plan to use a an Okuma bait runner reel with a six foot medium action spinning rod, sliding sinker with a single circle hook using either live vlei kurper, pilchard fillet or a carp head.
The dilemma that I have is that
I was so busy at work that I failed to get a weekend off to fish for barble during the annual spawning bonanza. I am really bummed.
So my only alternative is to adopt traditional drift bait fishing techniques from my stealth fishing ski. The ski is equipped with a fish finder, so I wull be able to track structure and drop offs.
The venue that I will be fishing was the once smallmoth mecca of Cape Town, Voelvlei dam near Gouda. Unfortunately, the barble ate all the bass and I would like to adapt my techniques.
For those of you who do not know the dam it has gentle sloping banks with a mixture of rock and sand with very little in the way of obstructions which makes it an ideal drift bait venue.
Furthermore the carp population has exploded resulting in the water changing from a 'lemon twist colour to the same clarity of strong coffee similar to that of the Vaal dam.
What makes it difficult to detect the barble is that they almost never surface and secondly that the wind almost always blows there, therefore limiting your visual ques such as on the Vaal river where it it is easy to spot the barble.
I plan to use a an Okuma bait runner reel with a six foot medium action spinning rod, sliding sinker with a single circle hook using either live vlei kurper, pilchard fillet or a carp head.
The dilemma that I have is that
- I don't know at what depth I should fish [/*]
- Whether I should drift down wind in a zig zag fashion [/*]
- or if I should be looking for underwater pinacles and following the contours [/*]
- or whether barble relay a unique shape on the fish finder.[/*]