Monday morning and Bradley Baatjes and myself where headed
for Grabouw and a private lake full of hard fighting largemouth bass and
rainbow trout. A tough life I know, but someone has to do it...
We arrived at the lake about an hour and a half later due to traffic. We first had breakfast and coffee and then unpacked our float tubes and other tackle. The weather looked good with little wind and partly cloudy conditions. The water was peat stained but clear enough to see about a meter down or more. Perfect.
I rigged up my 5 weight TFO Jim Teeny rod with a 6 weight Airlfo Ridge floating fly line and sinking leader. (The sinking leader is made up of 2 meters of the back end of a DI 7 fast sinking fly line. I make a loop in each end and then loop it onto the end of my fly line. This really gets the flies down deep and still gives me excellent feel over what is happening down bellow. ) My tippet is ,25mm Maxima 8 pound Ultra Green line. I had spotted some bass in the corner of the lake and attached a # 6 yellow frizz fry onto the tippet. The bass are not interested but I spot a nice trout appearing out of the murk after my fly and just miss it as it half engulfs the fly right at my feet.
I then took to the water in my Xplorer kick boat. I first tied on an orange fritz on top dropper and a black fritz on the point. It took a while to connect with the first fish, a nice bass at the far end of the lake in the shallows. There where sparse submerged weed beds all around. Perfect bass habitat. An erratic retrieve through the weed beds resulted in several more bass engulfing the fly. One thing that I highly recommend is to off set the hook point on your flies. You can see the effectiveness of this simple act in my latest DVD "The ultimate guide to starting fly fishing". My hook up rate has more than doubled since I have started doing this and I loose far less fish too.
It turned out to be a very exciting and interesting day. I landed 19 bass up to about 1.5kg and 3 trout. 90% of the bass and trout fell for orange flies. Mostly fritz flies or clouser minnows. Bradley caught more trout than me but less bass and most of his fish also fell for orange flies. I tried many other colour combinations along with the orange fly but they just kept hammering the orange time and time again. Very interesting. I often find that colour is far more important than size or type of fly. I caught on zonkers, fritzs, clouser minnows, egg leeches, woolly buggers, all in Orange. The most weedless fly of the day was the good old bend back clouser minnow. I also landed two very nice trout on the pattern. I tie it on a size 6 long shank hook. I always de-barb my hooks. De-barbed hooks are much better for the catch and release fishing that we do and if you happen to hook yourself, much easier to take out...
The bird life was amazing with jackal buzzards, fish eagle, grey heron, black shouldered kites and pied kingfishers being highlights for me.
The last time that we fished this lake we caught well on black flies with blue flash and the Cats whiskas, which is a fluorescent yellow and white fly. The water was much colder and clearer then.
I am releasing my 20 000 word E-book called "Fly fishing for bass and bluegill in South Africa" very soon. This amazing E-book has many of the flies and tactics used on the day in it. Watch the website for more details or like my page http://www.facebook.com/SeanMillsFlyFishing
We arrived at the lake about an hour and a half later due to traffic. We first had breakfast and coffee and then unpacked our float tubes and other tackle. The weather looked good with little wind and partly cloudy conditions. The water was peat stained but clear enough to see about a meter down or more. Perfect.
I rigged up my 5 weight TFO Jim Teeny rod with a 6 weight Airlfo Ridge floating fly line and sinking leader. (The sinking leader is made up of 2 meters of the back end of a DI 7 fast sinking fly line. I make a loop in each end and then loop it onto the end of my fly line. This really gets the flies down deep and still gives me excellent feel over what is happening down bellow. ) My tippet is ,25mm Maxima 8 pound Ultra Green line. I had spotted some bass in the corner of the lake and attached a # 6 yellow frizz fry onto the tippet. The bass are not interested but I spot a nice trout appearing out of the murk after my fly and just miss it as it half engulfs the fly right at my feet.
I then took to the water in my Xplorer kick boat. I first tied on an orange fritz on top dropper and a black fritz on the point. It took a while to connect with the first fish, a nice bass at the far end of the lake in the shallows. There where sparse submerged weed beds all around. Perfect bass habitat. An erratic retrieve through the weed beds resulted in several more bass engulfing the fly. One thing that I highly recommend is to off set the hook point on your flies. You can see the effectiveness of this simple act in my latest DVD "The ultimate guide to starting fly fishing". My hook up rate has more than doubled since I have started doing this and I loose far less fish too.
It turned out to be a very exciting and interesting day. I landed 19 bass up to about 1.5kg and 3 trout. 90% of the bass and trout fell for orange flies. Mostly fritz flies or clouser minnows. Bradley caught more trout than me but less bass and most of his fish also fell for orange flies. I tried many other colour combinations along with the orange fly but they just kept hammering the orange time and time again. Very interesting. I often find that colour is far more important than size or type of fly. I caught on zonkers, fritzs, clouser minnows, egg leeches, woolly buggers, all in Orange. The most weedless fly of the day was the good old bend back clouser minnow. I also landed two very nice trout on the pattern. I tie it on a size 6 long shank hook. I always de-barb my hooks. De-barbed hooks are much better for the catch and release fishing that we do and if you happen to hook yourself, much easier to take out...
The bird life was amazing with jackal buzzards, fish eagle, grey heron, black shouldered kites and pied kingfishers being highlights for me.
The last time that we fished this lake we caught well on black flies with blue flash and the Cats whiskas, which is a fluorescent yellow and white fly. The water was much colder and clearer then.
I am releasing my 20 000 word E-book called "Fly fishing for bass and bluegill in South Africa" very soon. This amazing E-book has many of the flies and tactics used on the day in it. Watch the website for more details or like my page http://www.facebook.com/SeanMillsFlyFishing
Gotta love fly fishing for bass.
As always, the bird life was a highlight of my day on the water.
A nice 20 inch trout caught on an orange bend back clouser minnow.
A jumping bsss is the reward for getting it right.
Towards the end of the day, I ditched the kick boat and stalked some fish from the shore.
An orange bend back clouser minnow was too much for many bass on the day.
Really amazing blog!!! I enjoyed the complete article? enormous written.
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