Fishingbuddy

On Saturday morning, 26th of Feb we woke up very early, like before it even began to get light. This was a bit difficult considering the braai the night before, but nevertheless we were keen for a throw. With all this talk of the bass biting nicely in the horseshoe/ Nahoon system, and all the nice fish from our own experiences we were pretty positive we’d get a few nice fish today.
Arriving at the glassy, mist covered river and opening my fly boxes I realized I didn’t have any poppers, there was one that didn’t have a tail anymore (used to work pretty well), there was one with no hook point left (um.. no long line releasing today) and a couple of hideous looking things I tied up before, more like a flipper than a popper, but they don’t swim straight, twisting up my leader if I pull it too long. But if you pop it just right with a very short flick of the wrist it makes the most awesome popping sound and only moves a few centimeters, just what I needed it turned out…

A Horseshoe bass that fell to my flipper/popper…

A view of some of the bank side vegetation, perfect cover under those branches for hungry bass…

Some more Bass, caught on the same fly…

Went down to the Nahoon again last weekend for a few casts. We thought we’d try early morning just as the sun comes up, now I’m not fond of getting up early these days and would rather go for the afternoon “shift”, but made an exception for a change. Maybe the early nights are doing me good. Anyways we got there to find some nice activity going on, large schools of springer bubbling on the surface with some big flashes in between. I persisted with the popper casting it all the most likely spots and eventually pulling the popper right through the springer schools in hope that those big flashes were bass feeding. Eventually half way through a retrieve this Nice bass sipped my popper ever so gently off the surface, dived deep, came up like a torpedo and proceeded to try and bury itself in every bit of weed it could find. My 5wt strained as my buddy waited with the net, and after a few scoops of weed landed this beauty.

Fish: Large Mouth Bass
length:approx. 60 cm
fly:white flipper popper, olive marabou tail.
Tackle:5 wt, 8ft. floating line, 9 ft tapered leader, 4kg tippet.
time/date:30 Jan. 2010. early morning
weather:overcast to partly cloudy, slight breezN

Fished the Nahoon river again this morning for a few hours, but this time further up near Tilty Hill, and managed this fish on a brown dragon pattern. The fishing was hard, well for me anyways. My buddy Chris was nailing them on rapalas. The wind was catching the valley at different angles, one minute from the front, then the back, left and right making casting a bit hairy at times. You had to drop your flies right next to the rocks on the opposite side of the river, takes occured within seconds of the fly landing, I missed a few takes before landing this one. Besides this though spending time on the river and catching bass on light fly tackle was worth it.

fish: Large Mouth Bass
length/weight:30 cm
rod:4/5 wt
line:floating
leader:9ft tapered, 3 kg tippet
location: upper Nahoon.
time:early morning.

The bass below was one of a few that fell to rapala:

Went and had a few casts last night for the first time in a while, down in the fresh side of the nahoon. I rigged up my fly rod while my buddy Chris casted out a plastic worm. After numerous fly changes and my trusty black popper not delivering the goods, and chris’s plastics not delivering either he decided to rig up his fly rod. Not long and he was into this springer or freshwater mullet on a red and black bead head wooly bugger.

Fish: Freshwater Mullet/Springer
caught by: Chris Coomber on 11/12/2009
venue: Nahoon fresh
time: early evening, approx 18h 30.
weather: partly cloudy becoming cloudy and light drizzle. Light breeze (direction?)
rod: loomis & franklin 4/5 wt
line: WF fast sink
fly: black bead head wooly bugger with red tail.
leader setup 9 ft tapered, 4 kg tippet.
release notes: fish succesfully released.

Went and caught my first bass for the season in the Horseshoe on friday morning. Managed to hook a 30 cm on my 3rd cast, on a small, black hard bodied popper. A popper is always my first choice in fly, and if that doesnt work will gradually work my way deeper with sub-surface flies and then switching to a sinking line till I start catching.
I probably spent about an hour fishing before having to leave for work. At least one Bass was willing. Once I find my camera pc cable I’ll put up a pic.
Over the course of the weekend I tied a couple of gurglers (flippers) and tried to test them out earlier this evening but no luck.
The water in the river seems to be quite clear, the only disturbing thing is the amount of thick, slimy weed above the weir at Dorch. More than half the water surface is covered in the stuff. Hopefully with a bit of rain and water movement it starts disappearing.

Ok, so I decided I would install a new website (fishingbuddy) on my server, as you’ve probably seen. The Software required it be installed in root so I had to move everything around. East London Fly Fishing has since been out of wack and I’m completely stumped as to how to fix it.. As you’ve probably seen with theme Images not showing, but even more so in the backend. Lets forget about me losing all admin priviliges. So I’ve decided to start over. Installed ELFF under Wpmu the same way you can create your own blog under fishingbuddy. If you have signed up to fishingbuddy you should see the create a blog tab, up in the tabs at the top of the screen.
All the old posts will be back soon, well some anyway.. And I might edit them. To the East London guys I would like all fly caught catches from East London to appear on this blog as well as being under your profile in FishingBuddy.
With the summer season coming soon we’ll get a lot more fishing done in the East London Estuaries and, fingers crossed, some nice catches.