Louis Storm sent us a few pictures of the fish he caught at Roodekopjes. Unfortunately we have a (hopefully) tiny problem with our gallery plugin so it doesn’t show as a slideshow yet, but evidence is evidence.

Halo Willie, Andre,

Just thought I would show-off with a good day’s fishing at Roodekopjes dam, yes,yes the same place I got mugged two months ago. It is very difficult to stay away from a good fishing spot no matter what. The first carp weighed 5.25kg and second 6.6kg, third a whopping 9.9kg!!!

Great catch Louis! Thanks for sharing!

I’ve been to Klipdrift dam twice and must say that thus far the dam isn’t a happy hunting ground for me. although my fishing tempo was quite high and I ended the day on 9 “fish”, the size was far from ideal. It must however be said that even the locals struggled to catch anything worth while.

Below I listed the dips and flavours that worked for me on the day,

We received a photo from Sherwin Singh a few days back. Klipdrift dam is not one of the easiest venues to fish and to get fish you will have to cast quite far out.

This is a picture of the 3.5kg carp Sherwin caught at Klipdrift dam. The fish took on bunspice floats and was the only fish caught for the day. The weather was a bit bad with a lot of wind and the distance to catch was very far. They were casting at 150m plus. The weather changes may also have an effect now.

Thanks for sharing the photo Sherwin!

When I left for Bosparadys early Saturday morning I was blissfully unaware of the wonderful weekend awaiting us, hardly containing the excitement I packed my fishing gear and started the 89 km journey, 30 minutes later than anticipated. This was the first of many W&D socials and I was eager to meet some of our loyal readers joining us for the two day fishing trip at this beautiful venue 24 km outside Magaliesburg.

At Bosparadys the camping site was a buzz with activity, tents were going up left and right, baits were being prepared and the smell of coffee was filling the air. It didn’t take long for Louis Storm to land the first fish of the day, a beautiful common carp of approximately 1kg. Dirk and Joggie Taljaardt soon followed with barbel of 10.52 kg and 8.51 kg respectively while Willie Storm, Christo Coetzee, Timo Brown and Annelize Snyman all joined in the action soon thereafter. Between myself and Willem we struggled to photograph, weigh and write down the baits being used by all the anglers.

Thank you to everyone that joined us on the first W&D social, the weekend was truely spectacular. We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Here is a list of some of the dips used during the weekend for those that are intrested:

• Honey
• Hasbeen
• Caramel
• Banjo
• Devlisfork
• Rooiplakker
• Tjop-Tjop
• FX

We recieved the following email from Louis Storm,

I wish to warn people of Roodekopjes dam outside Brits. I was there on the 21/01/2012 and we were five grown men with two small boys and we were robbed the Sunday morning. Cell phones, backpacks with clothes, Garmin and wallets were stolen. We found foot prints and followed them, only to find out that one of the guards at the gate was part of four robbing people on the camp site. We were not the only people robbed at the same campsite over the weekend. My new rooftop tent was cut with minora blades for them to enter. Why do we pay to stay there if it’s not safe?

Avoid going there, even in a group!

A man was shot and killed this weekend at De Rust, Hartebeespoort dam. Six men approached mr. Jaco de Jager and his friend Hennie Jones. De Jager was shot in his camping chair and died in the arms of his wife. You can read the original article as it was written in Beeld here

Please make sure that you always visit De Rust and nearby venues as a group. We do not recommend camping at this moment in time. The owner claims that security takes priority and that they are working hard to improve the safety of their campers. Unfortunately, as an angling community we can only rely on ourselves when it comes to safety at our fishing venues. This is an unforgiving and selfish act by people with no regard for human life.

Our prayers are with the family of the victim.

Johan Ryan shared some photos of the 4,7 kg carp caught during his visit to Bosparadys on 4 September 2011. Nice catch Johan!

Last weekend we had a workshop at De Rust with our new fishing club and decided to face the cold in return for some valuable knowledge from the more experienced anglers.

Some of the photos below were provided by Koedoe angling club.

We arrived early Saturday morning and was soon greeted by a few friendly faces, a warm fire and a cup of coffee. Because this was a workshop and we had a prior engagement later that afternoon we decided not to take our rods along, in hindsight, clearly a mistake. Two of the youngsters, Charldon and Roald Matthee caught two beautiful Hartebeespoort dam carps of 5.30 and 5.90 kilograms respectively early on and as the day progressed Markus Swart, Elrich Lambrechts, Sarel Boshoff, Barend Booyse and Peet Vorster joined in with their fish weighing in at 5.50, 3.90, 6.95, 6.00 and 3.30 kilograms.

Fishing depths varied, carp caught earlier the morning fed at 70 to 80 metres while the carp that came out as the day progressed was caught at a distance of 100 to 120 metres, all on sweet white dough.

In the past Hartebeespoort dam have been criticised for the amount of pollution in and around the dam. Altough there is still a fair amount of pollution affecting the area it must be said that conditions have greatly improved in the past two years and fishing standards are once again good. Unfortunately crime is still a problem and there are no real facilities for women to speak of at De Rust. If you decide to pay this venue a visit and to spend the night, make a point of going in a group and have at least two or more people awake at any point during the night.

For more information or to leave your comments, visit our De Rust page.

We decided to follow the advice of Dirk Taljaardt and pay a visit to Bosparadys near Magaliesburg in the North West province. The main fish species to choose from at Bosparadys are carp and barbel, but bass and trout dams are also available. Accomodation in the form of rondawels are close to the water and all camping facilities are equiped with water and electricity.

We arrived late friday afternoon and had a quick talk with our neighbours who didn’t seem to have much luck the day before. Because of the extreme cold and the success of a fellow angler on the far end of the dam we decided to follow a mixed strategy and fish with tiger nuts, boilies and white dough. As is usually the case, winter fishing requires alot of patience and we had our first run at 10:20 pm, a small carp caught on a caramel white dough. We had a second run at 1:15 am, but lost the fish close to the bank and decided to call it a day.

Bosparadys is located on a dairy farm and is your typical farm dam. The venue is kept very neat and not overcrowded like most other venues these days.

Beeld reported this morning that Riaan and Ruan Nabal, two local freshwater anglers caught a crocodile in Hartebeespoort dam. Altough various dams around the country is known to host these creatures, I’ve never heard of crocodiles in this dam. It makes you think, where do they come from? Where’s mommy and daddy? Are the stories of big barbel near the Hartebeespoort dam wall really about barbel?

Photo provided by Beeld.You can read the original article as written by here.