Greetings all,
It took a while for Friday to come round but eventually the day of our departure to Arabie was here. I had to make a turn at work on Friday morning and so went in for a couple of hours - I left the boat at home so that when Marno arrived from JHB he could pack his kit away.
Anyways to cut a long story short We left Pretoria at 09h00 drove through Mamelodi to the Moloto - Road is in excellent condition although very busy. We arrived at Marble hall at 10h15 and decided to fill up with juice etc (Glad we did as we heard from the other guys that the town had run out of fuel in the afternoon). We arrived at the dam at 11h30 after "faffing" at the bottle store etc. Paid our accomodation and hastily set about setting up camp.
At 13h00 we launched the boat - the heat was something fierce (42 degrees) and the day was totally windless. We headed up into the dam and went up the elands river - last year I caught masses of carp here but the water level was 73% and now it was 91% we saw masses of carp feeding bubbles but no matter how hard we tried we could not pull a carpus. We did however find small schools of Blues and reds and caught quite a few of them. We then decided that we would head back and try and pull a bass of some of the small Submerged Koppies at the launch we tried for about 45mins to no avail. From here we entered a small little river inlet close to the launch and here amongst the reeds we found "Dwarf Tigers", "Ghelies", Makreil, Blues and reds so we had a good idea of where to start.
By this time it was dark and we pulled out. We had a great party that night with a few too many beers and wupskys but it was great fun to be out and about. Saturday dawned windy and remained so most of the day. We went looking for Makrels up under the nesting birds and MArno "Klopped" a big Red brested kurper on a barbel Leadhead (A first for both of us) ANyways we did not find any makrels there but we picked up Blues, DT's, Reds and Ghelies some of the other guys picked up barbel but luck was not on our side with them whiskered friends.
We moved to another batch of nesting birds and did some buddy casting here we were able to pull some Makrels.
We then headed up into the river and found some Dwarf Kurper in some submerged building structure - the wind was blowing too hard for carp and there was the Mutha of all storms heading our way we headed back to the launch just in case we had to pull out in a hurry. Here we messed around amongst the rock structure and were able to pull quite a couple of undersized vlei’s. Marno was able to pull one out that was size. After this we headed back up into the dam and by this time the storm had blown over and given us a bit of respite. We hooked up with one of the other boats and enjoyed some entertainment with Papermouth and Makriel that were feeding after the storm.
Anyways so the day was concluded and we Pulled the boat out.
10 Species were weighed of which Marno was in the top 3 with 8 species. I pulled a bad one because I failed to show another boat my papermouth even though I took a Photie of it and I failed on a redbreast as I went on the Natal’s 75mm requirement and not our 150mm required in our part of the world – anyways my loss and I could kickmyself as I caught many size reds but was hurrying to get other species and neglected to check size – Anyways a mistake made and experience learned.
Sunday came first thing we did is we burned our way up to the nesting birds to try and pull a barbel.
First set of “Klopping†produced a Blue for me and a red for Marno. Out came the curly tail rigs and we were softly klopping for reds and blues most of the time they were giving us a hiding due to all the structure – I picked up a barbel of about 1 kg that I got up to the boat and he promptly decided that my 5lb line was weaker than he and he promptly wrapped me. We then moved a little bit further into the trees and I “Klopped†softly for about 25mins – I was slammed by a “MUTHA†barbel and he proceeded to drag me and the boat deep into the heart of a “big Black Monkey Thorn tree†and promptly came loose. Now we were under all the nesting birds and they proceeded to CRAP all over Marno and myself. Anyways once we disentangled ourselves from that mess we went in search of Dwarfs which we found quite quickly we also managed to find Dwarf tigers and ghielies in between. Weigh in was at 12h30 and we pretty much blanked apart from a funny incident.
We went back to the inlet to see if we could pull another Makrel and when we arrived there was a massive Chineese carp feeding (Looked like a barrel -15kgs maybe) anyways I decided that I was going to try and feed it a loodkoppie and was pulling myself closer using reeds and then standing on them whilist trying to reach with the 6m rod anyways anyone ever tell you crocs are slippery with a yelp I went man overboard up to my eyeballs in croc infested water – did not take me very long to get back on the boat……… Anyways I have this massive bruise to remind of my “little oopsie†on the inside of my inner thigh. We were commenting how lucky I was not to get a dead reed up my shorts – that could be very painfull I would imagine.
Again Marno did very well and I was just a fe short places behind him just about all the top places were separated by .02 of a point so it was very close.
Congrats to Marno for still being on top of the club log.
Some Photies to follow – we were a bit lazy in taking photies of a truly excellent Artlure venue so we have just a few photies of Saturdays fish
MArno with a papermouth
It took a while for Friday to come round but eventually the day of our departure to Arabie was here. I had to make a turn at work on Friday morning and so went in for a couple of hours - I left the boat at home so that when Marno arrived from JHB he could pack his kit away.
Anyways to cut a long story short We left Pretoria at 09h00 drove through Mamelodi to the Moloto - Road is in excellent condition although very busy. We arrived at Marble hall at 10h15 and decided to fill up with juice etc (Glad we did as we heard from the other guys that the town had run out of fuel in the afternoon). We arrived at the dam at 11h30 after "faffing" at the bottle store etc. Paid our accomodation and hastily set about setting up camp.
At 13h00 we launched the boat - the heat was something fierce (42 degrees) and the day was totally windless. We headed up into the dam and went up the elands river - last year I caught masses of carp here but the water level was 73% and now it was 91% we saw masses of carp feeding bubbles but no matter how hard we tried we could not pull a carpus. We did however find small schools of Blues and reds and caught quite a few of them. We then decided that we would head back and try and pull a bass of some of the small Submerged Koppies at the launch we tried for about 45mins to no avail. From here we entered a small little river inlet close to the launch and here amongst the reeds we found "Dwarf Tigers", "Ghelies", Makreil, Blues and reds so we had a good idea of where to start.
By this time it was dark and we pulled out. We had a great party that night with a few too many beers and wupskys but it was great fun to be out and about. Saturday dawned windy and remained so most of the day. We went looking for Makrels up under the nesting birds and MArno "Klopped" a big Red brested kurper on a barbel Leadhead (A first for both of us) ANyways we did not find any makrels there but we picked up Blues, DT's, Reds and Ghelies some of the other guys picked up barbel but luck was not on our side with them whiskered friends.
We moved to another batch of nesting birds and did some buddy casting here we were able to pull some Makrels.
We then headed up into the river and found some Dwarf Kurper in some submerged building structure - the wind was blowing too hard for carp and there was the Mutha of all storms heading our way we headed back to the launch just in case we had to pull out in a hurry. Here we messed around amongst the rock structure and were able to pull quite a couple of undersized vlei’s. Marno was able to pull one out that was size. After this we headed back up into the dam and by this time the storm had blown over and given us a bit of respite. We hooked up with one of the other boats and enjoyed some entertainment with Papermouth and Makriel that were feeding after the storm.
Anyways so the day was concluded and we Pulled the boat out.
10 Species were weighed of which Marno was in the top 3 with 8 species. I pulled a bad one because I failed to show another boat my papermouth even though I took a Photie of it and I failed on a redbreast as I went on the Natal’s 75mm requirement and not our 150mm required in our part of the world – anyways my loss and I could kickmyself as I caught many size reds but was hurrying to get other species and neglected to check size – Anyways a mistake made and experience learned.
Sunday came first thing we did is we burned our way up to the nesting birds to try and pull a barbel.
First set of “Klopping†produced a Blue for me and a red for Marno. Out came the curly tail rigs and we were softly klopping for reds and blues most of the time they were giving us a hiding due to all the structure – I picked up a barbel of about 1 kg that I got up to the boat and he promptly decided that my 5lb line was weaker than he and he promptly wrapped me. We then moved a little bit further into the trees and I “Klopped†softly for about 25mins – I was slammed by a “MUTHA†barbel and he proceeded to drag me and the boat deep into the heart of a “big Black Monkey Thorn tree†and promptly came loose. Now we were under all the nesting birds and they proceeded to CRAP all over Marno and myself. Anyways once we disentangled ourselves from that mess we went in search of Dwarfs which we found quite quickly we also managed to find Dwarf tigers and ghielies in between. Weigh in was at 12h30 and we pretty much blanked apart from a funny incident.
We went back to the inlet to see if we could pull another Makrel and when we arrived there was a massive Chineese carp feeding (Looked like a barrel -15kgs maybe) anyways I decided that I was going to try and feed it a loodkoppie and was pulling myself closer using reeds and then standing on them whilist trying to reach with the 6m rod anyways anyone ever tell you crocs are slippery with a yelp I went man overboard up to my eyeballs in croc infested water – did not take me very long to get back on the boat……… Anyways I have this massive bruise to remind of my “little oopsie†on the inside of my inner thigh. We were commenting how lucky I was not to get a dead reed up my shorts – that could be very painfull I would imagine.
Again Marno did very well and I was just a fe short places behind him just about all the top places were separated by .02 of a point so it was very close.
Congrats to Marno for still being on top of the club log.
Some Photies to follow – we were a bit lazy in taking photies of a truly excellent Artlure venue so we have just a few photies of Saturdays fish
MArno with a papermouth
