This last Sunday I got a rare opportunity (these days they seem few and far between) to get out for a day and get a line wet.
Very quickly we decided to gead up to RDW as we had heard that the water levels are a bit better now and its always a beautiful place to spend a day. Even if its a blank.
Got going a bit late and only arrived around 9:30 and set up on western side of the point of what I think is now called "sunset camp", back in the day before they got given names we called it bass bay.
My old man decided he was going to "pap gooi" and I headed out with a fly rod and a light bass outfit to look for trouble.
The dam is looking good, even if its only around 70%ish if I had to take a guess. A lot of the horrible reeds that had become overgrown have been cut back which makes it far easier to get a fly out now.
The Island that had appeared through the drought to the right of the launch is now juuust covered by water with a little bit of grass sticking out the top, so if you dont know the dam well rather be conservative when going toward the river side from the launch by boat.
Quite a lot of bass boats on the water though.
I flogged the water on the northern side of the dam for a few hours. Nothing, top water, flukes, flies, not even a nibble or any sign of cruising bass. Got back to our spot and immediately went on with 3 small very fat (for their size) bass on a 3inch BLU crayfish lure on a jig head that I thought I'd test cast to see if I'm going to get more before my next estuary trip. Seems I might buy some more, they really swim well.
Regretably I didnt have my camera with me at the time so have no pics of the bass.
Loads and loads of Kurper were all over the shallow areas, managed a couple beautiful little vleis as well.
Had a cold one and then decided to try find some tailing carp to annoy. There is a particular spot on the eastern side of that camping section where over the last couple years I have consistantly seen reeeeally big carp.
This day once again did not dissappoint.
Shoals of 5 or so big carp moving through every 30 min or so and actively feeding no more than 5m from the side. They were all super spooky though so it was a lttle of a frustrating effort. Saw the biggest freeswimming carp I have ever seen, with a mouth bigger than my fist! An absolute monster!
They all looked to be shadowed by little groups of yellowfish or mudfish which I found hugely exciting, but none the less my level of SUCK overpowered the opportunity and I wandered back to the camp with my tail between my legs.
On arriving back I was just in time to find my old man tangling with his first of 3 muddies of the day which managed to get off after a blistering run through the weeds, all of them around 35 to 40cm, fat and in great nick. Brown bread with banana dip seemed to do the trick for them.
A lekker day out all in all!
This is now where I have a question for the species gurus....
In around 25years that I have been fishing at Rust de Winter (and I had caught every species I thought existed there including papermouth and largescale yellows) we have never even seen, let alone caught any muddies, on top of that, it looked different to the muddies we have caught over the years in the Vaal and at Sterkies which have well defined humps and dainty little heads.
Body shape was much more like that of a yellow.
All revived well and swam away strongly.
Pic is below, would like to know what you think... could it a normal orange/vaal mudfish?
And before the tree huggers give me a hard time for poor handling of this fatty, bla bla bla, yes, yes, I know! Sorry, they were just a little too big to be getting good selfies with.
