RASSPL Nationals In The Eastern Cape
So, Aimee and I decided to head down to the Eastern Cape earlier than
previously planned, so we had a bit of down time and leisure fishing
before the RASSPL Nationals were set to start. We left on Saturday
afternoon at about 4pm. The drive took us 12 hours due to lots of rain
and the many stop and go’s on the route. There were quite a few dead
animals on the road that must have been run over by the trucks on the
road. There was a dead Aardwolf on the side of the road, it was quite
sad as these animals are very rare and hardly ever seen. After we woke
up a few hours after we arrived, we had a look at the conditions for
possible fishing, and they were shocking… Gale force winds and on and
off heavy spells of rain, so it was set to be a relaxing day.
The next morning around about 7.30am I headed down to the
Kariega
River bridge with my
fly fishing setup. After throwing a salty bugger
for a while hoping for anything to latch on to it, I decide to put on a Clouser Minnow that a friend had given to me, 3rd cast and I was on, it
went screaming off as it hit the Clouser and after 3 strong runs I
finally brought it in, my first
Garrick, and on fly, I was so happy and
pumping with adrenaline. I removed the fly, the Garrick ate it quite
deep, and then revived and released the gentleman of the sea. I finally
can appreciate why they are called that, despites its small size. There
is a lot of structure around and he fought me on top of the water and
even moved away from the bridge structure. What a feeling!
The next day was beautiful and Aimee and I were off to the rocks, the water was very murky and had lots of colour, there was a lot of white water and weed present, so I expected fish to be around. After fishing Bats cave and the Rocking Horse, as well as fishing all the gullies in between. Not a touch. Was very disappointed.
Myself
and Steven are flying the
Ultimate Angling flag high, we are the only 2 members representing
Gauteng, so it will be a tough ask to place anywhere near the top. Today
we fished from Kleinemonde to Fish River and a lot of interesting things
happened. Steve and myself were up at 5am and had our
lines
in just after start time at 6.30am. We were fishing Roman
Bay, about 4kms from the Kleinemonde access
point. It started off well, the fish were on the bite and I got a 27cm
Blacktail
and my first
Brusher (27cm) besides the many
Klipfish caught in-between (8 I
think) Steve managed to get 3
Lesser
Sandsharks and a
Spotted Gully Shark and I got a 76cm Lesser. We both dropped some
very big fish unfortunately. We heard Boland got a 7kg
White
Steenbras and some
Poenskop and we saw a monster Blacktail and a decent and a small
Raggie come out as well.
Today was a shocker in terms of weather and fishing. We started
walking just before 5 to Three Sisters, the rain was pouring, a gale was
blowing and it was freezing. the rain and cold disappeared at around
about 10am, then was pleasant until 12h30 when the wind blew even
stronger and it got colder, was a tough day and more than half the
anglers blanked completely. I managed a nice
Zebra, 2
good size
Twotone Fingerfin and
Barbel and Klipfish. Notable fish that
came out today that I heard of were a 2kg Zebra, 7.4kg White Steenbras
and a 45kg Kob
which was safely released. Tomorrow is D-Day and we will be fishing at
Kasouga, hope the fishing treats us well
tomorrow!
Final day finished. Was a great experience and a lot was learned by
myself and Steven. We set off early and walked
left to a spot we have called
the
triangle (aka Ship Rock), because the water rushes out in a
triangular formation. We had a lot of bites and on offs and got some
small Steenbras, Barbel and Zebra. Aimee
joined us today, she isn't part of the comp, but she got a beautiful
Zebra and a 41cm White Steenbras.
