Hi guys and gals,
Herewith my report of my fishing for the past weekend.
After we had our little talk under the gazebos, we all started stting up our rods etc. I started of the the day with one rod at 60m and the other at 90m. Bait used were mielies on the far rod and floaties with a dough backing on the closer rod. Can't remember what dips I tried as I was glad to be fishing. Didn't catch anything until Enigma arrived at our peg. He baited up Jan's (my pegmate) rig with a small garlic dough on the top hook and one Spice Girls floatie on the pottom hook. Put a line of All Blacks and a line of Spice Girls dip on the bomb and casted about 40m in. He then turn a round and we weren't talking for 2 minutes when Jan's indicator picked up and he landed his first carp. Enigma did the same again with the same result.
He then came to my stand and baited my rig in the same way. Casted in and about 10 minutes later a landed a very small yellow. I Baited up again with the combo and landed another undersized yellow. What whent wrong? It was the I realized that my hooklinks were very short and changed my rig with ones that were a bit longer and this seemed to help me land a carp at last. For the rest of the day I was very relaxed as I wasn't really feeling up to fishing. I started the arrangements for the comp and at 17:00 we started with empty nets. I emedietly started with mielies and it was long before I landed a carp over 2kg. I thought it would last but I only managed one more for the night. I Fell asleep at 01:00. 06:30 I was awake. I peered out my tent and saw Gert getting ready to my right. Mark and Johan on my left were still inactive. I decided to start the day off making a feeding spot. Baited up one rod and let it ly. Baited up the other rod with plain raptor floaties and plain feed and castes in around 40m. Baited up another rig with the same bait and feed, reeled in my rod, swopped rigs and casted in again. So I had feed going in every 5 minute. Did this about 6 times. I mixed some semolina dough the previous day and added some garlic flavour. This I used on the top hook as shown to us by enigma, and on the bottom I used one plain yellow floatie. One line of looti and one one line of Champion Dips' Odyssey (Bunspice). By 08:00 I had 3 fish for the morning. I ended at 12:00 with a total of 12 fish (10 for the morning) weighing in just over 10kg.
I also caught two fish with FX and Stuttafords on the bomb. I changed to this combo when the bites went silent, but it wasn't long until the Looti and Bunspice started working again.
My findings for the day:
Yellow line as a main-line for your rig is a big no-no. Whenever I used a rig with a yellow main-line, the fish was either much smaller, or not there at all.
The rigs with the longer hooklinks got bigger fish.
I tried casting deeper at 80m, 100m and further, without any.much success. Everytime I hit the feedspot the fish was on.
Make sure your hooks are sharp. I lost 3 fish, of which 2 were decent sized, due to bad hookups. Rather use a new rig than loose fish.