Part of the dam at De Voetpadkloof

Following our visit to Kolobe it became clear that I had much to learn about bass fishing. In my previous post Bass fishing, journey from beginner to pro I made some lure choices that seemed logical at the time but that was far from ideal for the conditions we were fishing. Fortunately for me and Willem, we gathered some valuable information from our trip to Kolobe and I were on my way to De Voetpadkloof to take advantage of my newly found knowledge. At Kolobe Andrew gave us quite a few tips on how to go about fishing for bass at a new venue. Let’s have a quick overview of the conditions I faced:

1. The water was a brownish color, but still clear enough to see to the bottom of the dam close to the side of the bank.

The coulour of the water at De Voetpadkloof

The dark blue junebug used

Unlike carp angling where we prefer to use the smaller hooks to ensure great bait presentation and good hook-ups, the best results are achieved with big number 4 or 5 worm hooks when fishing for bass. According to some of the experts, red hooks are most effective because of it’s visibility, or rather lack thereof. Apparently bass is incapable of seeing red. My inner pessimist questions the prior statement and brings up the age old question, myth or truth? I wasn’t prepared to take any chances, so I took the statement with a pinch of salt and bought myself 2 packets of red hooks.

2. The water temperature was cool to cold.

The cold water conditions at De Voetpadkloof

When the water is cold, try fishing the shallower spots, the bass usually prefer the warmer water early morning and late afternoon.

3. Quite a few anglers were fishing various spots around the dam.

Try fishing the spots not frequented by other people. Taking my chances with the one or two leopards prowling around , most of my bass were caught at a small secluded section of bank at the opposite side of the dam.

My fishing spot at De Voetpadkloof

Taking into consideration all the above mentioned conditions I were hooked into my first bass within the first few casts.

My first bass

The bass at De Voetpadkloof is in great condition and even the smaller ones gave me a good fight on the lighter tackle.

Another beautiful De Voetpadkloof bass

Unfortunately I also lost one or two good looking fish on the jump. Let me explain, bass will often jump out of the water once hooked and although this causes majour excitement and a preview of what is at the end of your line, they sometimes succeed in getting rid of hook, line and sinker!

Putting my new skills to the test

Most of the bass were caught between 4:00 PM and 6:00PM, with the occational exception of course.

Night time fishing at De Voetpadkloof

As mentioned in Bass fishing, journey from beginner to pro, I’m a beginner bass angler myself and these posts are written to aid my fellow amateur anglers in mastering the art of bass fishing without being overwhelmed by the enormous amount of information they are bombarded with.

The bug have bitten

So lets have a quick overview:

1. Have a look at the visiblity of the water. Use dark colored lures for dark colored water and visa versa.
2. Use red number 4 or 5 worm hooks.
3. Test the temperature of the water. Opt for the shallower fishing spots in cool to cold water.
4. Avoid fishing spots that is frequented by other people.

PLEASE REMEMBER that the above mentioned points are just some guidelines and that bass as any other fish species can be unpredictable.

My last bass for the weekend

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Kolobe Bush Retreat

Kolobe is situated in Modimolle (previously known as Nylstroom), on the Rietspruit river. The resort is excellent for bass fishing and signs of a healthy echo system is evident.

We set up camp on the Friday evening. It was just a day or two after full moon and the weather was pleasant. The sky was clear and there was almost no wind. After we had a cup of instant soup we were ready for a short “power nap” before we were to catch the big ones.

At half past 4 I woke up. Andre must have heard me shift the mattress in my tent and no later I heard him say : “OK lets start building those rigs”. It was only after we had the water boiling for a cup of coffee that we realized how early it actually was. Non the less we started building a few rigs for the big carp. Apart from bass the dam also holds some carp, including ghost carp and dwarf carp as well as barbel.

Preparing our rigs

Before dawn our lines were in. Since we fished for the bigger carp and had bait to match (tigernuts and boilies) there was no need to change our lines throughout day so we spent the rest of our day doing some bass fishing.

Bass fishing from the bank

I caught a few bass in my life, as you might have see on previous posts, but probably mostly by luck, rather than knowledge or technique.

We tried many different kinds of spinner and top water baits which only produced some knocks. It was only later the afternoon after meeting a friend of Nico and professional bass angler, Andrew, that we started pulling them out. Andrew himself caught the first one.

Andrew with the first catch for the day

By following Andrew’s advise I managed to pull out 4 hand sized bass. Andrew had a few more catches, including a larger bass as well as a crab who found the bait interesting or perhaps enticing.

Following Andrew's advice I caught a few of these

Baby largemouth bass

This is not a fish?

Andre got his camera into the water but it miraculously survived and we are able to have a post with pictures. Andre’s wife, Michelle joined us. They made a lekker potjie so we had food for the rest of the weekend.

Potjiekos

All and all this was a great weekend. Unfortunately we were unable to catch any carp but we learned a lot about bass fishing. We found Kolobe to be a great destination not just because of its fishing possibilities but also because of the tranquility of the bushveld. Each camping site has enough space so the atmosphere is different than what you’d have at some of the larger dams.

Keep an eye on our site as we will soon be giving you the chance to win a break away to Kolobe Bush Retreat. Information on how you could become one of our lucky winners will follow in our next few posts.

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What equipment do I need?

As a begginer you do not need a boat, the most expensive rods and reels or a fast number of lures. First make sure that you really like this facet of fishing. As a carp angler I’m sure I would love art lure fishing, but different people have different interests! So start off with one of those old light weight fishing rods that is probaly lying around the house somewhere. If you do not have a small rod lying around, borrow one from a friend or buy one of those cheapies. A begginer bass combo (rod and reel) can cost anything from R300.00 to R1000.00, but if you are prepared to start of with the absolute basics, you can get a light weight combo for R100.00 to R200.00.

When it comes to lures, start off with the tried and tested. Rapala is a well known brand in South Africa with a proven track record. Lures can be expensive and one or two is often all you need. To be honest, as a beginner myself, I chose two lures on nothing else but instinct and a bit of common sense. The first lure I chose is a white Bronzeye pop frog by SPRO.

The white Bronzeye Pop frog

The following is said about this lure on the back of the box: ” The Dean Rojas signature series Bronzeye pop frog was designed to attract bass out of the thickest cover with its loud popping sound…”. I chose this lure for a variey of reasons. It’s bright, it makes a loud popping sound, the hooks fit the bait perfectly and it floats. Because this lure float, it is ideal to use at fishing spots with alot of structure causing snags and tangles. According to the loads of information I went through, this kind of lure is especially effective early in the morning, fishing near features such as water lillies. The second lure now part of my arsenal, is the Rapal Shadrap.

The Rapala Shadrap

This was a choice based purely on the look of the lure. There is really not much to say about Rapala, almost every article book or other piece of information available on bass fishing make mention of Rapala.

Where to fish

It is clear that the majority bass anglers prever the smaller private dams. These dams are often human made with great structures providing the perfect habitat for breeding monster bass.

As they say, practice makes perfect, and hopefully the more I practice the luckier I will get!

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Dirk Taljaardt is one of these people that is making a difference in the life of a youngster. Most of us can relate with starting with the absolute bare minimum. As adolescents we rely on our parents, grandparents or other people for the things we own. The boy Dirk is helping (I only know him as Joggie) is a commited little angler but like most children in South Africa is not fortunate enough to own his own fishing equipment. Dirk sponsored two purglass fishing rods and rod stands. So all Joggie need now is two Magnum 101 fishing reels and some fishing line!

If there is anyone willing to sponsor Joggie contact Will&Dre by sending an email to readers@willndre.co.za or by clicking here.

Joggie at Buffelspoort Dam

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Mark Peter Ducker with a beautiful Vaal river carp

Quite often people post a few photo’s via our facebook group. We do however want to keep all out loyal readers informed and will from time to time post some of these photos here in order to show the fish caught at the various venues. You can join our facebook group by searching for Will & Dre’s Fishing Reports and clicking on the join group link.

If you want to send us some photo’s of your own, email the photo’s to readers@willndre.co.za or post them via our facebook group. Remember to provide us with information (where possible of course) such as your name , the type of fish , the weight of the fish , the bait used , the name of the venue , the GPS coordinates or exact fishing spot , the month of the year and if the fish was released.

Thank you Wynand du Plooy for submitting the following photo’s of your trip to the Vaal river. Unfortunately I do not have any information on the baits used, the conditions or the time of year.

Wynand du Plooy and his friends with some nice Vaal river carp

Wimpie Esterhuizen with a beautiful Vaal river specimen

Another Vaal river carp

Wynand du Plooy

Danie Estrerhuizen with his Vaal river carp

Fishing for carp in the Vaalriver at it's best

A Vaal river Muddie

One of the smaller Vaal river carps

Wynand du Plooy with his personal best

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My Fake Crocks

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The Hartebeespoort dam water quality

It is probably important to know that this dam was once a clean well preserved tourist destination. Now? Now it’s only a tourist destination, a green, money generating, polluted tourist destination. As rightfully said by my brother-in-law, only a scratch-and-sniff patch can truely provide our readers with the full effect, because it is not only the green colour but also the ‘wonderful’ smell completing the Hartebeespoort-dam-effect as we know it today.

Driving towards the famous tunnel, the traffic gave me a chance to get out of the car and walk around the bank.

Driving towards the famous tunnel

Notice the empty beer bottle in the photo below.

Pollution at Hartebeespoort dam

Despite all the bad reports on Hartebeespoort dam I still have a desperate longing to at least try fishing the various venues and we probably will. Recent reports in ‘The Tight Lines’ gave positive reviews on resorts such as De Rust and it might be worth while spending a few hours fishing these venues.

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Arriving at the resort I quickly handled the necessary admin and went looking for the bank were we were supposed to fish. This was our first trip to Loskop dam and to be honest we were not exactly sure what to expect, non the less the excitement was building! Following the signs, we quickly experienced a familiar feeling when arriving at a closed gate.

Waiting infront of the closed gate

Driving through the gate I was looking for some kind of grass bank, sadly there was none, it was just… a tar road???? Surely this couldn’t be the bank!

The bank at Loskop dam

We walked over to our neighbour and he too had an expression of disbelief on his face. For a few minutes we stood, weighing up our options. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the neighbour walking restlessly up and down the tar road, finally comming towards us with a map of the resort. He introduced himself as Chris and asked if we can keep his fishing spot while he drive around the resort looking for a better bank, so we exchanged numbers and he assured us that he will give us a call as soon as he find a better spot. 10 minutes later the phone rang and we were off to claim a part of the spot Chris found.

The new spot Chris found

I felt much better paying the R200.00 for the competitions as we started preparing our rods and I could see that everyone was in a much better mood.

As we were targeting Kurper, we decided to try something we read about a while back, to mix Boeliebeef and Pronutro into our mielie bomb.

Mielie Bomb mixed with Boeliebeef and Pronutro

The Boeliebeef provides something meaty for the Kurpers while the Pronutro is an excellent binding material.

The mielie bomb

The day started of slowly and Chris caught the first of a number of smaller fish on some earth worms. Willem caught a few smallmouth yellows of his own while I teached some boys the fine art of casting.

The first small mouth yellow caught by Chris

Willem's first fish

Unfortunately as with our previous trip I blanked and had too keep myself busy with other ‘recreational’ activities.

Keeping myself busy with other recreational activities

Chris and his wife kept pulling out fish every 10 to 20 minutes and even though we all used the same bait and fished at the same distance, none of us could keep up with their tempo. I guess it’s true what a wise man once said: ‘location…location…location’.

Chris with descent size Kurper

Overall the competition was a great success with some great prizes.

Some of the prizes

A loskop Dam Blue Kurper

In my personal opinion Loskop dam is not a bank anglers venue and should be fished from a boat as most good fishing spots can not be reached from the bank.

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Hi Guys,

Firstly, sorry for the late report, but after such a fantastic weekend of Fishing  then getting back to work and with having such an over load of work to finish, I just did not get the time….

So I was supposed to leave early  on Saturday 20/03/10. We had everything packed and ready to go. Unfortunately things did not go according to plan and due to some delays, instead of leaving at 7:00 we only left at 12:00…

Raaswater Dam

None the less, finally, after a 2 hour drive we finally reached our destination. Within a few minutes, after helping the wife unpacking, I shoot of to the Jetti, which I booked only for the Saturday. Within 5 mins had my first catch.

Raaswater Barbel

Throughout Saturday we caught +/- 15 fish but all relatively small. Mostly yellows. Two babel for Saturday. After a lovely braai we called it a night at around 12:30 pm… Even my little nephew and niece caught. They arrived at about 4:00 pm

Another Raaswater Barbel

Finally after a good night’s sleep we got up at about 5:00 and by around 11:00 we had already caught over 40 fish, the majority being yellow ones, weighing about 3.5kg.

A nice carp

The rest were all about a kilo and under. Due to it being such a successful weekend, we hardly got the time to take pics of all the fish caught.

Another carp

Just as I thought the weekend could not get any better, we landed a +/- 7kg babel. Unfortunately the picture does not do any justice, but it put up a good fight!

This barbel put up a great fight

Unfortunately Monday was a quiet day and we only had a few bites but we did not manage to land anything….

All in all it was an excellent trip!

Tight Lines

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An impressive South African specimen

Once a South African record

Another big shark

A tiger shark