Hi Can-Man,
I was at Klipdrift Dam in January this year. We sat on the opposite side of the resort, on the farmers piece of land. Nice spot, with lots of reeds, and only a couple of openings through the reeds you can fish through - so get there early!! Was my first time there, and decided to go to the farmer's side as I read a report advising that the water at the resort side is quite shallow.
I had two rods out with a mix of tigers and boilies at long range (+/-300m) - but nothing. Rigged up my "play" rods and caught around 15 or so carp between 1 and 1.5kg at +/-80m out. All were caught on SWD dipped in either honey or banjo. Also used rather big "blobs" of dough. The fish seemed wary to take small presentations, and after my brother caught his first tidler on a "blob" of dough, we tried it again, and presto!!!
On the negative side - There were quite a couple of dead fish floating around at the time, and some of the fish we caught seemed to have open sores on them. Looked kinda like some sort of fungal infection thing going on. We asked the farm owner about the dead fish, and he advised that the authorities had done tests on the water in December 2011, and found nothing to report. Selected samples showed signs of heavy metals deposits, but nothing above normal limits.
I know that allot of the clubs have comps there, and I think it may have been a case whereby a club had a comp there the weekend before, kept allot of fish in nets, the fish got damaged badly, the open sores got infected, and the fish subsequently died. This is a guess, as nothing else seemed to indicate poluted water, etc....
On the positive, saw allot of big-ish carp turning in our swim, but none of the bigger fish seemed interested in our baits. There is allot of natural food in the water, ie: bloodworms and snails - so that may explain why it was difficult to get the bigger fish on the bite. Allot of juvenile fish in the shallows (carp and bass) - so for me seems to point towards a reasonably healthy system.
Other than the un-explainable dead / damaged fish - a nice dam.
Ps: If the miss's is going with, the farmer's side may not be the best option - a bit rustic with only longdrops!
