Our Bloemhof weekend

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necrovis

New member
We arrived at bloemhof at around 11 o'clock Friday morning (27 March).We found a very good spot at sandveld nature reserve. We started to unpack so that camp could be set up.There was a strong northerly wind blowing making the water quite choppy. The water was mild temp. and not to clear.Bloemhof is very full and led to a lot of fish lost because of snags.

At about 2 o'clock we got our first lines in the water. We started out with a plain float and plain sweet dough on a rietvlei. This led to little success. We started experimenting with different flavours, I later came to found that when using a mielie float and jericho floats had the best results.

We started early saturday morning at about 6:30.There were no wind to speak of. The fish came on bite and we nearly did not even have time to get 2 rods in the water.The fish were all between 500g and 1kg. At about 12 the fish went dead with a westerly wind.We got our barbel lines in and within the hour we had our first run but it snagged. When the wind died down the carp were coming out at high speed again, and regular barbel runs. I got a fantastic barbel run letting it take about 25 metres before I struck. After a careful fight of about 20 minutes i had a healthy barbel of just over the 12kg.

Sunday morning again there was no wind to speak about.We got to an early start again just to find out that all our fish in the keep net was missing. After alot of talking and unhappiness of about 30 carp and my 12 kg barbel. We started from scratch using our mielie float and jericho floats. We started catching fish immediatly. Catching carp, yellow fish and graskarp,Even the barbel takes were frequent, with a big boy of 13kg and one of 6kg. The wind was quiet all day long with the fish dying out again through mid afternoon and night. We then rigged the keep net on a tripod stand and closed the opening with cable ties.

Monday morning 6:30 alot of comotion agian with all our fish missing. After alot of investigation this could surely not be an otter, because ther were no holes and the cable ties were pulled open. This was the day we had to pack up and leave and we only had one photo of my 12kg barbel.

All is said and done and what a fantastic weekend we had with loads of fish. I think the bonanza will be a great success.

Ps. The lady at the tackle shop said that alot of people have moaned about their fish vanishing out of their keep nets.

 
 
Marthin

Marthin

Sealiner
Yip even had that happen 10 years ago there. But good results none the less. Did you do no night fishing? The barbel really come into their own from about 10 at night till about 3 in the morning.
 
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necrovis

New member
We used fish heads, but slightly bigger heads as the smaller ones did not bring much success.

We did night fishing but funny our bait came out exactly the same as they went in....We had runs until about 8 o'clock. The runs were constant through out the day. We took our lines about 200m as there were a deep hole of about 5m of water and there no success on lines between 80 and 120 m.
 
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bigkano

Senior Member
Very nice report. Well done....

Bloemhof does deliver nice fish!!

With all due respect how did you manage to keep all these fish in a keepnet without harming any?

I believe in catch & release and adhere to this everytime I go fishing.

Not aiming directly to you but I have seen many anglers fishing the entire weekend at a dam and all catches going into a keepnet only to find out the fish gets released on sunday afternoon just before heading home. On many occassions fish are killed during this process.

When I caught, I take a photo or 2 and set the fish back to his freedom for another day's joy:)

It is more then likely that the locals steal the fish to feed their families or selling it for money.

Sorry if you find this sarcastic but it was not my intention..

Tight Lines
 
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necrovis

New member
With all due respect, we kept the smaller fish for barbel bait (as the runs were not far between) and the bigger ones we let free, we also wanted to keep a few for our workers as we do this on every trip. We always try to help them aswell.

Thank you for your concern and it was not my intention to harm any fish and i do support catch and release.

The photo will be coming soon as we only got a photo of the 12kg one, the other ones we did not get a chance.
 
M

mz

New member
hi. a group of us also fished at bloemhof this past wkend. we stayed at Die Hoek in town. we were 3 adults and 8 kids. arrived at about 19h00 on Friday; a few kids fished a bit at night. quite a few carp were caught, also in the 500g to 1kg range, with 1 being around 2.5kg.

on saturday we fished at North West side at the dam; the water is high and very muddy. the small carp were very active, and many were caught on a variety of baits. we tried for barbel with a carp head, but only had half a run!

we fished the river where we stayed on sunday, till about lunch time (put out a carp head for barbel on saturday night, but no take on it). again the small carp came out one after the other.

in total we caught over 50 carp, and 1 barbel, which was caught on mealies. the kids had great fun, as there was action all the time.

 
 
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