Kassie wrote:
There was a large competition at Wriggleswade this past weekend.
The result of the comp was the removal of quite a large number of fair sized carp.
First prize was R3000...
Yep! That was the second load, I took the first load at 06h30 to a local settlement about 20k's away, lots of smiling faces when they found out it was for "MAHAALA"
I suppose a lot of people will be shocked at the size of fish here, especially when I see pics of someone with a total bag weight for a weekend of 12kg's of Carp weighing around 1,5kg's each... Eish! Shame man!
The problem with this dam is because of the near perfect water conditions and lack of predators Carp numbers have grown and the water/food can no longer sustain the numbers, Carp are getting thinner every month with a lot of the bigger ones very close to death or taking serious strain due to malnutrition. Our resident Fish eagles and Osprey cant keep up... The fact that very few fisherman target Carp here doesn't help matters either.
BUT! as I said BIG FISH be here! Average size was over 5kg's and the biggest one caught was only 7,7kg's!!! I think all the big boys had gone to deep waters in an effort to get away from all the Garlic, TCP and other stinking unknown baits being thrown into this "old school" dam. lol!
Fishing started off very slow with only one boat catching friday night,first bank fish only came out on Saturday at 09h00. I had guys "bitterly" complaining and telling me that they dont believe this dam has fish in it! lol! The more I told them to keep the baits simple the more they changed and over complicated things. One of the anglers took my advice and moved to fish a very shallow gravel bed used by the bass for nesting, His first fish only came out on Saturday at 4pm followed by another 140kg's that night... (Plain Koo meilie pip on a single hook)What was very lekker to hear from some guys when fighting fish in on Sat night was this, Pffft! Another small one! 4 maybe 5 kg's!!! Grrrrrr! Strange how fast one can be spoilt hey!
Total prize money handed out on the day was just under R16000.00
This dam is horribly overstocked at the moment and the Carp weight and health are showing serious signs of stress. A management plan has been put into place for both Bass and Carp in this dam, we are trying to ecourage fisherman to remove smaller fish from these waters. We should see this venue turn into one of the finest Specimen carp venues in the country. We are so fortunate to have a dam locally that can not only host one of the best Bass Classics in the country but also boast some of the best Carp fishing in SA. The Amatola Carp Classic will be an annual event and will more than likely be hosted on the first weekend in February every year. Next year will see even more shore angling areas being opened up with even larger prizes, one in particular will be for the heavies fish over this years comp winner of 7,7kg's...
