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 Greetings from down here in a slightly chilly South Africa. The weather is still busy changing over from its autumn pattern, yet to really settle in to just plain Wintry cold. A bit up and down, and as such it’s the same story for the fishing.
Over the last few weeks myself and most other Carpers have been choosing the waters we'll be focusing on over the next few months.
I'm busy putting a number of syndicates together, so I'm focusing mainly on private waters, which will hopefully contain decent fish that we can then open for anglers. So far the one water has produced fish to mid 20lb's but even down here tales of unknown monsters abound, so this will be my target water for the coming months, its never been fished during its 40 odd years, due to it being within a private game-lodge, so hopefully the tales are true.
 Other waters, such as the famous Klaserie have also been up and down, even though it lies in a semi-tropical area. Up to about 4 weeks ago a few 40's had come out, but since then the biggest has been around the mid-30's, with many fish much lower.
A few guys had a trip planned for the lower lake at Donaldson Dam, which has also been producing decent fish recently, but this weekends cold front looks like a few have chickened out. The lower lake is not the same lake, which Gary from African Gold runs, that's the smaller top lake, but they are both in the same system.
One thing though about winters down here is that for 90% of the summer fishing, anglers are using particles, especially Tigers due to most waters containing large numbers of small Catfish, which just don't leave boilies alone. However, in winter the Catfish's feeding slows right down, so not only do the anglers get onto the boilies but the fish-meal baits really come into their own.
 During winter the water temperature is still high enough here for the higher oil content baits not to cause the same problems for the fish as they do in Europe, so we're quite fortunate in that regard.
The Soccer World Cup starts tomorrow, which even if your not that into soccer is still a huge occasion, especially for the first time in Africa, so I'll take in a couple of games over the next month. If any Carpers are out here for the footie and want to session in-between the games, make contact with me and I'll try and help you out.
I'm back on the water next week, trying out for some of those biggies on the game-farm, plus trying a new bait called Tiger berries or Monster Carp Berries so we'll see how these do too.
Cheers for now.
John Dearden |
