Tigers

[Kipi die kingfisher]

You are one of the most fortunate people to have access to such an amazing piece of water at your doorstep. I only have carp, barbel and bass by me.

Not sure if you know, but using live bait in freshwater is illegal, so maybe keep it on the down low.

It is true that you need to strike hard as you can time after time to make that hook set. What I would suggest is using as thin as possible gauge hook (but strong as hell), to help penetrate that hard mouth. I'm sure a 3/0 hook will also work.

Keep us up to date on your mission.

 

[Tiger Hunters]

Hi Rei

Wow sounds great where you are, i have been catching Tigers now for 23 years in lake jozini, the methods i find best is about 12-18 inch Black carbon coated steel wire on the trace i add 4 orange beads and at the end a 0/8 gamagatsu or vmc live bait hook 0/5 is very small and the wider the gape of the hook the better your chance of setting it trough the bone, problem with cirkle hooks and hooks smaller than 0/7 is because the tiger has such a hard mouth and the hook has such a small gape it only goes trough the skin and he will shake the hook out on the first jump, with the big hooks as soon as you strike it goes straight trough. i also see you are using braid excuse my french but when tigerfishing aspecially with bait then braid is the biggest load of crsp out there when the braid scene first came out i went and equiped all my reels with 60lb braid and every singly tiger i striked broke my line i now fish 25-30lb mono and i can not complain havnt broke a single line, with tigers you need the strech in the line, aspecially with the innitial take and the strike braid has 0% strech and i promise you they will even break the 80lb, swith to mono for tigers and keep the braid for the bass, it does also work if you troughinhg lures, but when you fishing with live bait dont mess with braid, then when hooking your bait do so right trough the lateral line above the anal fin that is the best place and you will have most hookups there, if the curent isnt to strong i recomend fishing with your spool open let the fish take the bait and get up to speed and then engage your spool wait for the laine to go as tight as possible and hit to break the rod, hold on nd enjoy the fight.!!! below are some pictures of my rigs

 

[Tiger Hunters]

Making of the tiger trace

 

[Tiger Hunters]

Hooking of the bait

 

[Tiger Hunters]

more hooking of bait

 

[Tiger Hunters]

The Result

 

[Kipi die kingfisher]

Tiger Hunters have you tried hooking the bait just from one side. In at the rear of the fin and exit on that same side, if you understand what I meen.

 

[Tiger Hunters]

The best way we have found is right trough the fish, stays alive much longer, cast further and best hook up

 

[Rei420]

hi tiger hunter! Thanx a mil! Your help is realy appreciated! Im very close to the komati sugar mill! A friend caught a wopper of 6.72kg on saterday! Wil coax the pic from him and post it here! The weather has been off lately so i havent tried ! Also struggeling to get the right size liveys in this weather! Whats your p.b on tigerfish?
Stywe lyne!

 

[Rei420]

o I checked 7kg! Cögrats! Thats huge!
How long can I expect to fight such a fish in fast to moderate flowing river? Dont whanto ruch the fish! Thanx man!

 

[Tiger Hunters]

its impossible for me to count how many ive caught my p.b is 7kg, dont be scared to use big livies i sometimes use livies up to 20cm

 

[Tiger Hunters]

in river from shore you can give it atleast 20-30min

 

[Rei420]

hectic ! Thanx alot! Awsome fish!:

 

[Tiger Hunters]

Not a problem, would love to come fish komati one day, i go up to kruger pretty often, maybe on my next trip i will stop over

 

[Willz]

Rei!

THis thread is killing me! Think that visit is in order sooner than later!

Great advise from Tiger hunter though, let us know how it goes!

 

[Rei420]

the pic of the 6.7kg tiger caught in komati river this past weekend!

 

[Fishpaste]

biggest I caught in the Komati some 15years ago was a 2.8kg and lost numerous bigger fish of around 4 to 5kg range off the low water bridge. Used to wade throught the shallow pools to reach the edge where the water flowed into the deeper section of the river. Awesome times back then. A lot of the places along the river is no longer fishable due to people messing around and farmers getting fed-up and closed their farms by means of wires etc. Same goes for the Krokodil river above Nelspruit all the way down to Komati.