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