Just back from a long weekend in Transkei. We had four days of fishing on a lovely unspoilt estuary. I am sorry but I cannot give the name of the river here, as I promised our hosts to keep it secret. The thing is that there are a lot of good, productive estuaries in Transkei, which will provide great light tackle fishing.
The drive down is always pretty, but you have to be wide awake, and aware of erratic drivers and animals on the roads.
I was pretty excited to do this trip, as Yamaha had just given me a lovely aluminium boat and motor to try out on the river. It is a Quintrex Explorer 390 (made in Australia), with a 20hp 4 stroke Yamaha motor on the back. I had got a salt water trolling motor (Minn Kota Riptide) to mount on the transom, and felt that I had the ideal craft for exploring the estuary, and sneaking quietly around the fishy areas.
Anyhow, it was really great to arrive and see the water. The estuary looked good, and we had chosen our time well. We arrived on Thursday 8/3, which was on spring tide. This meant that we would have good tides for the rest of our stay, with a high tide in the early morning and evening, and a low in the middle of the day. Perfect, for light tackle lure and fly fishing.
My Mate Cliff was with me, and he decided he was going to fish hard with the fly, while I was itching to get some of my lures into the water.
We had our wives with us, so there was no fishing the first afternoon. We spent our time getting the camp properly sorted out, then rigged our tackle and started a braai fire, amped for the next morning. We were up at 5am, in the dark and loaded our gear onto the boat and headed up the river. The boat travelled beautifully, and the fourstroke motor was lovely and quiet. We headed for the upper reaches of the river as the tide was high. Cliff was first into a fish on a Flipper Fly, he landed a big eye kingfish after a nice fight on his fly tackle.
Soon after that he got a really good sized perch on the same fly. I was starting to wonder if I was going to just be the gillie and fish netter on this trip....
Shortly after that I got onto the scoreboard with a small Bigeye Kingfish, which ate a clear Zara Puppy, which I was twitching slowly near some overhanging trees. Those little kingies in the estuaries put up a good fight on light tackle. I was using 8lb braid, with 15lb fluorocarbon leader, so it was good fun!
The electric motor really made it so much easier to position the boat, especially when making casts into structure, looking for river snapper. It was also great for going in quietly and retrieving lures on the occasions that we overcast and got stuck in the trees. We found that casts had to be pinpoint accurate. The fish, especially perch and snapper were holding very hard to the rocks, and lures had to virtually land right against the edge. It wasn't long before I got my first snapper for the trip.
That fish made me very stoked, for even though it wasn't a monster, River Snapper are great fish to catch. They are very challenging, and any size snapper on 8lb tackle is an achievement. About a half hour later I landed another one. This one was bigger and gave me an even harder time, trying to sew me up in a submerged tree, but I got him out in the end.
There was excellent snapper structure, with rock ledges coming down into the water, and overhanging bushes, hanging over the water. This type of fishing takes a lot of patience, but the rewards are great.
Over the four days that we had to fish this estuary we caught 11 different species of fish between us. This is pretty good going. Many of the fish were not particularly big, but when being caught on light tackle they all put up a good fight and can be very challenging. One of my highlights was catching a springer (skipjack) in the early morning upriver on a Rapala X-Rap Walk. This fish hit the lure with such a ferocious smash, and gave a spectacular fight, jumping from the water about five times during the fight.
I also got a nice river gurnard on the dropshot.
I also got a Garrick
Quite an unusual, and not very welcome catch was an electric ray on dropshot. I had to use rubber handled pliers to get it off the hook without touching it. It ate a slowly worked dropshot, which I was bouncing along the bottom near the river mouth.
Here you can see the electric motor mounted on the transome, next to the main motor. This is a really great set up for estuary fishing. I find the aluminium boats to be lighter than fibreglass ones, and can handle the knocks of fishing in shallow water around the rocks better.
I was very stoked to get a perch on a new system I was trying, with a small single assist hook, instead of two trebles on a Rapala Shad Rap. This lure was deadly...
MY Wife Pam came out with me the one afternoon and I rigged her up with a light dropshot outfit. She landed the biggest fish of the trip within ten minutes, a lovely kob of around 10kg's. I was really proud of her (yes, and a little bit jealous!)
My most unusual catch of the trip, was a bonefish, caught on a dropshot fished slowly near the bottom. I had seen bonefish before in Transkei estuaries, but it is unusual. To catch one on a dropshot was amazing. It gave a really good fight, taking line on fast runs. I was wading in almost waist deep water and had no landing net, so battled to land it. I kept grabbing it and tring to turn it over onto its back, as we do in Seychelles, but it would kick free each time. Anyway, I didn't get a pic, as it got away while I was trying to walk with it to the boat, but here is a pic of me trying to land it...
The rain really came down on our second last day, and the river got pretty dirty, but we had already experienced so much, and had such a good trip. It was nice to spend a bit of time with the girls as well. It just shows that there is potential in our country to do some great light tackle fishing without having to break the bank.
