A beautiful Klipdrift dam carp

We finally managed to organise a second trip to the private side of Klipdrift dam and this time around we managed to get a few lines in the water, the weather was spectacular and fish was in abundance. After the disappointment we experienced during our previous trip to Klipdrift dam and seeing some of the catches submitted by Theo Greyling during his trip to the Lakeview resort side of Klipdrift dam , I was excited by the prospect of what the dam may deliver. I initially struggled to get going but took the opportunity to learn from Casper van Tonder, a local and a frequent angler at Klipdrift dam. He set the pace early on and caught a few beautiful fish.

A carp caught by Casper van Tonder

The fish was active at about 80 to 100 meters and all caught on a microwave white dough. The best catch of the day however must have been a moggel, it’s only the second time I come across this fish specie and I was totally mesmerised by it’s beauty!

A moggel caught at Klipdrift dam

Here you can see more photo’s of Klipdrift dam.

Here is his story…

Well, we at last made it to Klipdrift Dam. We at least had one day of good fishing although the wind nearly blew us away.

SA Powder used every time.

We were up and out of bed by 4:00 AM Friday morning because I still had to go to work for a few hours before we could leave for Klipdrift dam. The sheer excitement was building inside of me as the morning progressed and for some reason every minute felt like an hour. 11:00 AM finally arrived and I shot home (5:00 till 11:00 AM plus over time the week before made up for the 2 to 3 hours I cut the day short)
When I arrived home, my wife had packed all the last bits and pieces (what a diamond she is) and the only thing for me to do was to hook the trailer,wait for my brother Schalk and off we went.

When we got to the gate at Klipdrift Dam an hour and 30mins later we were told to turn around… and pay at the Café first, luckily just across the road.The dam fees were a bit of a challenge to understand as there were day-fees, children-fees, extra vehicle-fees, overnight-fees and extra person-fees. After we eventually paid, we moved on back to the dam entrance gate. Although the Café has some angling accessories , day-to-day stuff and a small yellow pharmacy (or a bottle store as some of you may know it), we had everything we needed.

Driving down to the water was a bit shaky due to the road conditions, it’s apparent that they had a lot of rain in the past few weeks and the original dirt road looked like a messy-muddy-deurgetrapte-road.
Anyways, at the water to the left are the stands with electricity points and trees available, and to the right are the stands without electricity trees. The R60 difference wasn’t worth the shallower water, and the generator couldn’t possibly use R60 of fuel per day, so it was decides, to the left. The guys sitting at the stands with electricity had it though than us to land fish.

We picked a spot, and by anonymous vote stopped at Stand 68. All the stands on the right side look very similar and very small (tiny in fact for a family of 6), although some flush toilets and water basin cabins are available 100m to 200m apart, so we sat close to one because of the children mostly.

Right, it was now time as usual to get the tent up so that the trailer could be unpacked (the tent was packed at the top of the trailer) so we could get to the fishing gear quickly.A friend of ours, Pieter Bezuidenhout had his tent rigged in no time. We were still getting our tent up, while he was getting his rods ready for the first cast. Pieter, like most boertjies, offered his help, but I denied, and said he should break the ice first (you know, catch the first fish so we don’t blank). Not even 30min later Pieter had his first fish on the line. Not very big, but a fish non the less. We struggled to get the tent anchored because the wind was quite strong. It was actually very unpleasant, but did not bother us much as we have been looking forward to this trip for a long time. So we just carried on. (Our neighbours actually had to throw out their gazebo as the wind got a hold of it and bent it to pieces.)

We eventually had our tent up and the rigging of the rods started. I mixed some white flour with the dam water, and rigged the traces with white dough and FX Floaty as backing (a tip from some forums on the internet). They were dipped in Gumtree and the mielie-bomb got a bit as well. With the wind straight in our faces I only managed to get the bait out about 100m, although my brother and Pieter said it was more to the 150m mark. Not sure, but at least I got the rods in the water. After about 2 ours of fishing, I landed 2 small fish on the exact same bait. By this time we had to get the fires going as the kids were getting hungry. The wind kept on blowing, with some quieter bits in between which did not last more than 10 minutes at a time. With the wind blowing like that, all sorts of grass and twigs got blown onto the bank, and made it miserable to fish, so I decided to leave my rods out of the water for the night. (Luckily I did because the wind grew stronger during the night and could possibly have made a mess of things.)

I was up again early the next morning before dawn, and started rigging the traces the same as the day before. It took a while for the fish to get active again, but I got my first fish of the day soon after the sun made an appearance. (The wind still blowing strong. Not lekker.) Some friends (Jeanne, Etieen & Alicia) joined us for the day, but were unlucky and didn’t catch anything, even after trying the bait combination I used. After a few 200-300g carps between Pieter and myself, I decided to change to mielies. Our neighbours caught bigger fish (2kg+), on mielies and the decision to use mielies mainly stemmed from that because I was getting tired of catching the small ones.
The top hook was baited with 2 plain mielies (van Heerden’s) and the bottom with 3 small 10 year old Almond and Egg Yellow mielies, with some flouro-jam on the mielie-bomb. It took some time, but after about 2 hours caught the first pan-sized carp of about 2kg.The second rod also delivered a 1.5kg carp. My brother managed to land a few fish on this combination as well.

One of the beautiful carps caught by Theo at Klipdrift dam

Now it was time to make some breakfast… what a challenge again due to the wind factor. Luckily Pieter had his 3-burner gas-braai in the trailer which produces more gas pressure than the conventional gas-braai. At some point we even had to move around to the other side of the tent just to try and get away from the wind and keep the gas-braai going.

Preparing breakfast at Klipdrift dam

After breakfast I baited the rods again with the mielie combination used before, which delivered a few extra carp between 1 & 2kg (mostly on the Almond pitte this time). As the day progressed, the wind got quieter but so did the fish. I managed to land 2 more fish of 2 and 2.5kg, but had to pull out all the stops with getting the bait out far enough. At this time the fish retreated into deeper waters and only found myself and the guys with canoes and bait boats catching some.

Another Klipdrift dam carp

At night time, the fish were really nowhere to be found, so I decided not to put my rods in the water.The wind eventually died down, and we were able to get a better night’s rest.

Up at dawn again, and time to fish with a perfect day ahead of us. Or so I thought with the fresh morning smell in my nostrils. Little did I know fishing would almost be non-existent.Sunday proved to be one of those days, no one catching fish except the guys with the canoes and bait boats taking their bait out at least 300m. Not even a P4 bullet, baited, will get that far, no matter who you are. I tried several baits, dips, riggs etc, but only got one little yellow fish when I tried the white dough with FX floaty and Gumtree dip again. Earthworms, Floaties, Brown bread, Dough, Mielies dipped in TCP, Behoedmiddel, Strawberry, Banjo, FX, Almond, Garlic, Cinnamon etc were tried, but nothing… only a couple of small pushes like the fish pushed the mielie bomb around.The day in itself was perfect, weather wise, but fishing became almost imaginary. My youngest (with the assistance of my wife) managed to catch the last, and only second fish for the day, 2 hours before we started packing up; a 600g carp on an Almond mielie again.(We even got new neighbours on Sunday, but they did not last 4 hours until they decided to leave again because the fish were not biting.)

This dam is very shallow at the Lakeview Resort side. Some guys even walked in 80-100m to get their bait out. Even at these distances the water only came up to their chests.

It will be interesting to see what the SAs will deliver at this venue mid March 2010 as it seems the more noise on the bank, the deeper the fish retreats. Logical I suppose. The resort was packed on Sunday with a lot of kids swimming in the dam, thus also contributing to the bank noise, so it’s understandable for the fish to seek quieter waters. The wind was also a factor of cause, a little wind is good for fishing, which obviously also dampens the noise, plus adds oxygen in the water which makes the fish more respondent and lively.

All-in-all I was not very impressed with the resort. First of all, 30 – 50 calls to the resort’s land line (018 290 1104 ) to “book” were fruitless. Luckily I found a cell number (082 215 1413) on the internet , but even this was fruitless, as the owner of that number never returned with a booking or reference number as he said he would, and was somewhat rude when I spoke to him (Perhaps I caught him on a bad day.) We were told when we paid our fees at the Café; Telkom fixed their lines just that morning, so hopefully any future bookings can be made with fewer issues.The shallow water has a lot of green algae and loose grass (nothing like Bloemhof or Harties) but makes it difficult to fish. (A tip: Keep the rods high on the stands with the rod tip at quite an angle to try and clear the first few meters from the bank in order to prevent the line from dangling in the algae and floating grass being washed back by the waves.) The smell from the dam from time-to-time is also very unpleasant. I suppose if the fish played along on Sunday as well, I would have written a more positive report, but the fact of the matter is; the resort has a lot to upgrade before it would become one of my favourite fishing spots, especially at those resort prices.

Best of luck to the guys and gals in the 2010 Freshwater Bank Angling SAs as this venue is very unpredictable from one day to the next. Fishing in itself is very unpredictable, but when things change so much from one day to the next, it obviously makes it even more so challenging. Hard work and dedication should see you through. Don’t expect tons of fish, but work hard, and you will be awarded.

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Ok so let’s continue with the report! Arriving in Potch my uncle informed us that we should rather fish the private side of the dam as we would be wasting our time on the other banks available. Always the wise men we are we took the advise provided by the local (AKA, my uncle) and agreed to make use of his contacts, he fished the area alot and it would have been stupid to close this ‘book of knowledge’!! With interest we continued to discuss strategies and tactics until we realized that it’s 1:00am and that we had only 4 hours left for sleeping!

5:00am: What a beautiful day, everything is ready and packed and the sun is shining (I knew Wheather SA wouldn’t be spot on!). Ready and excited to try out this new dam we start the 10 to 15 minute drive. BLINK,BLINK,BLINK 6 minutes into the drive the petrol light comes on, this doesn’t bother me to much as we should still have enough petrol to get back to town. So with ‘bad thing two’ avoided for the moment we arrive at a closed gate, surely this is the norm. But it’s not, there is already one car waiting and a bunch of others behind us. Two hours later we had to accept that bad thing two’ just happened!!

Klipdrift dam - Closed gate

Klipdrift dam - Waiting

We decided it’s best not to waste our time on the other sides and decided to try Boskop dam instead. So a bit dissapointed we turned around and headed back to town. As they say, if it doesn’t rain it pours and this is exactly what happened as we arrived in town!!! (Bad thing three just happened!). Looking at the skies and feeling a sharp pain in my chest we filled Gina up with petrol and drove back home.

All hope wasn’t lost though and we kept ourselves busy building rigs. Boskop dam was just around the corner and as soon as the rain stopped we would be in the car and on our way! (Guess Wheather SA was right after all).

Willem keeping himself busy

So the Klipdrift trip didn’t work out 100% as was expected but we did eventually managed to pay a visit to Boskop dam. But this is a whole new adventure on it’s own and I will tell you all about it in our next report, so keep an eye out!!!!!!