Mudfish below the dam.

DAY ONE
This days fishing was hard work and in total we landed more than 20 fish. This deserved great rewards, so off to the local hustle and bustle of Bloemhof’s Steers for a slap up sit down meal. There was no time for cooking. Therefore Steers was to become our local haunt for the next four days. Fishing was our priority and not cooking.

DAY TWO
The plan was to go out on the boat and suss out the fishing grounds for good fishing spots for the upcoming light tackle boat national championships. My brothers Tim and Mike and my nephew Wayne will be representing their province at senior’s provincial A-team level. Sue Babich and my other nephew Darren will also be participating in the Ladies and Under 18's nationals at Bloemhof. We were looking for the Vet River, which flows into the dam. The dam was at 32% of its capacity, as you can imagine it was not an easy task to find the river amongst all the islands and dead end bays.

We beached the boat in an area where there were plenty of fish jumping, in what we thought was the original riverbed. Much to our surprise once we had stopped, the carp started feeding on the surface in small pockets all around us. I quickly attempted to put my nervous excitement aside and put a carp fly on. The first fly that I could find looked as though it might imitate some natural food source. This fly was made by Zingeli it was a Dragon Attack size 10, it’s a glorified woolly bugger made from peacock hurl as a body, a gold bead and some light green chenille just before the olive green marabou tail.

Terry's 1st Bloemhop Carp.

Much to my delight I caught a fish within 2 minutes of putting this fly on. I saw a school of fish swimming just below the surface. I casted my fly between them and before it hit the bottom I had a carp of about 3kg. I have to admit you should never under estimate the pulling power of these fish. “They can move at a speed” Knees trembling and fingers fumbling I tried again but to my dismay I was unable to find the school again. The clouds had blocked out the sun and the wind began to howl. This rendered my polarised glasses inefficient in these dirty waters and to add insult to injury the fish had vanished at the start of the wind blowing.

I was not ready to try bait just yet, so I went in search of some action, I looked for areas that had a high percentage of fish that were jumping. (Not good advice if you believe that jumping fish don’t bite). This led me to a shallow bank with a few rocks protruding out of the water. Whilst standing still for a few moments, attempting to spot these jumping fish I observed that the carp had taken refuge behind a sand bank out of the way of the waves created by the wind. They were just sitting there finning. My first few attempts to catch these fish were rather frustrating. I used the same fly as before with a slow retrieve. This resulted in one fish and a few bites from line swims. (You heard right line swims). Every time I struck miss the fish moved a bit further down the bank and I would have to reapproach them carefully as though I was stalking prey. Enough was enough; it was now time to get the fly box out again. This time I was going to try an imitation that originates from bait fishing. Wait for it! A mealie pip imitation! So armed with two mealie pip imitations I placed my fly in-between the schooling fish. Low and behold in 30 minutes I had 5 fish in the bag and had to look for a new spot as the schooling fish were scared off by all the commotion.

So now with an idea of what conditions to look for, I went in search of a new spot. Tim had moved the boat into an area that I was unable to wade to, and in the process he had caught a catfish on the fly of about 4kg. So feeling a bit disgruntled at being left behind, the only thing that I could do was fish and fish I did. I found a spot that had a school of about 200+ fish. They were finning between two islands, sheltered from the waves. I would cast my fly into the school and watch the tip end of my floating line for any movement. At this stage Tim was boating all his bait rods and reading the boat, so that he could search for better waters. This took the best part of 40 minutes, he was about 1km from where I was fishing. By the time he reached me I had caught the fastest 16 carp in life ranging from 2kg to 5kg. Tim then joined me on the other side of the small piece of water where he unfortunately caught nothing. I added another 7 fish to my total. Tim then piped up “its strange that the school hasn’t moved off” and as unbelievable as it may sound, I hooked yet another fish, to which all the other fish responded in a splashing departure towards deeper water. “Murphy’s law! Thanks Murphy!!”

20 minutes later we were stranded on an island with graphite rods on another island in a hellish down pour. This horrendous ordeal lasted nearly two hours, as soon as there was a break in the lightening we jumped on the boat, collected the rods and raced back to camp. At least the rain had flattened the waves otherwise our boat would not have been able to negotiate them. Back at camp we now had an excellent reason to go to Steers, spare ribs was on the menu. “Nothing like good food whilst camping!”