Vaal Dam Carp Fishing - The Carp Nursery School. Yellowfish & Muddies Galore!
So myself and Gavin Erwin drove to the Vaal Dam on Friday afternoon
after work. We intended to fish a different spot this time, the place
was next door to
Island Shores (UJ), it is actually on the
property of Island Shores. We arrived there at 17h20;
it was 91kms from Edenvale. The place was beautiful, besides the
fact that it had been vandalized and was completely run down. This area
must of had about 3kms of shoreline to choose from. We picked a spot and
setup camp. We then set up our Carp rods. A few minutes later we were
both onto our first fish. I landed a
Smallmouth Yellowfish and Gavin got a nice little
Mirror Carp.
A good start. We then rowed out our
Barbel
lines
and waited. Throughout the night, up until
about 1am when we went to sleep, we continued to land juvenile fish in
superb condition. We did go to this venue expecting big Carp,
but we had so much fun catching the juveniles. It just shows you that
these large specimens we as freshwater anglers like to target have to
start off somewhere. We had a long conversation about this and about how
many anglers would get angry or neglect the fact that the fish they were
catching were too small. Its a shame some people think this way and take
it for granted.
Saturday morning I was up and quickly landed a few Mudfish. Then we
were onto the fish. We were delighted to see such a healthy population
of Yellowfish and juvenile
Carp, as well as
Mudfish. My favourite catch
of the weekend was actually a Mudfish that barely covered the palm of my
hand, an absolute beauty (Pictured above)! I got a very nice little Ghost Carp which
still had a bit of pigment on his scales. It was lovely to be out in
this natural environment with birds and insects
all around us. The bank
eventually got quite full during the day but many anglers left before
dark. Gavin caught a beautiful Smallmouth Yellowfish and an awesome
Mudfish, and we continued to catch and release the 'nursery fish'
throughout the day. Then, just after we had had an awesome chicken and wors wood braai,
Gavin's Barbel rod ran, FINALLY, after giving a good
account of itself he was landed; a lovely +/- 5kg fish. We caught a few
more fish after this and called it a night.
We woke up the next morning with a target in mind before we went
home: 100 fish. We started off Sunday morning on 46. We were in the zone
and we were catching Yellowfish after Yellowfish with Mudfish and Carp every
now and then. Gavin then had the genius idea of rather wading out and
fishing light tackle in the deep water with just a normal bottom trace.
We had great fun fighting the Muddies, Yellows and Carp here... Then we
went back to the bank after some good fun and when our mielie bomb
finally ran out we hit the 90 mark. 90 Fish in a weekend is pretty good
fishing to me and all in all we were happy and had a great weekend!
Total Fish - 90
Barbel - 1
Common Carp - 24
Ghost Carp - 1
Mirror Carp - 10
Mudfish - 11
Smallmouth Yellowfish - 43
The
baits that produced were: Plain Sweet Dough, Almond Mielies,
Sweet Corn.
We were using a Vaal Dam mixed with Plain Supercast
mielie bomb.
Dips that were tried and successful: Tjop Tjop, Banana Essence, Almond "S"
