That we are in a severe drought there can be no debate. The dam levels of what has become known as SA’s premier small mouth yellow fishery are at levels not seen in decades.
Couple this with a howling North Easterly that swung to a South West and fishing this massive body of water was not for the feint hearted.
But the die hard anglers that crack the nod to the Yamaha Yellow fish Invitational would wade through worse, if they had the opportunity to sight cast to these formidable surface feeders.
Mentally bruised and battered teams assembled in a disorderly fashion following the opening festivities, but there was no lack of enthusiasm as the Sea Cats fragmented, each angler having his own theory on where to find the fish.
The dam is daunting from a size perspective and to chuck and pull in any arbitrary spot will leave you with nothing but acute sun stroke. Like most fish the inhabitants of Sterkfontein enjoy structure, so it is to the rocky outcrops that one ordinarily travels. The normal hot spots weren’t even warm, as the 8 meter vertical drop in water level presented new structure.
But find fish the lads eventually did.
Not an impressive tally by this event’s standards, but a total of 62 fish managed to succumb to the fly fisher’s temptations.
Beetles, Elk hair caddis and Hoppers accounted for many of the dry takes, with a few frustrated anglers having to resort to very small nymphs.
This is one event where it’s not about how many fish you catch. It is unashamedly about how big it is? Bragging rights are what drives this wild bunch to partycipate.
Wian Terblanche from the aptly titled Wild Guys team took top honours in this respect with a real fatty!
That the fish are still there in numbers there is no doubt, albeit a little shell shocked and not as co-operative as usual about smashing the dry fly.
A cause for concern is the lack of flow rate at the two key spawning areas, which hopefully increases shortly allowing for a productive spawn, if it’s not too late……..mother nature will decide.
The conclusion I’ve drawn from watching an array of talented anglers at work and blundering around the fringes myself is that we do evolve as anglers, until eventually you only want to throw a fly at a fish that you have seen first.
And from watching a bunch of grown men behave like boys…….fishing is all about catching fish no doubt, but it’s just between you and the fish!
As such, he is included not as a Guide in terms of the someone who can give you any indispensable tuition or direction, but to provide us with some fishing tales from the events that WildFly hosts and of course from the locations that the the WildFly team happen to be filming.
The real account from a social fisherman's perspective...
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