Bass Digest/April, 2014
Your PB - what dam, when, what time of day, lure? Tell us the story.
Tzaneen Dam. Caught it in a Tournament, 3.329kg. I sight fished it as well, using a finesse worm on drop-shot rig, on a baitcaster reel.10lb fluoro line.
Do you own (or have you ever fished from) a float tube, Dinghy, pontoon boat?
I have a kayak, which I had before my first boat. I used it once on Bronkies, and then I decided to use it on Rust de Winter. That was until a croc came up next to me that was almost the length of my kayak. I quickly got out and never used it on Rusties again!!!
Do you use your fish finder to find spots to fish? Do you just know where to look for the fish? How do you go about choosing your fishing spots?
Anyone can go down a bank and cover water, and catch fish. My Lowrance HDS7 fishfinder is so important to me, I really use it a lot. I’m not even sure how many waypoints I have on my finder, but I must have thousands.
I like focussing on the details. When I fish a new dam, depending on how big the dam is, I will spend a few days just scanning it – not all at once of course, maybe over a few trips. I also use Google Earth maps, etc., and then I would mark various places on my maps and finder.
Like Rusties, I must have over 200 waypoints. You won’t even think there are offshore rock piles in here, but there are. There are also humps, drop-offs, trees under the water and laydowns. A lot of people don’t take the time to look properly.
When practising for tournaments, I would mark a waypoint for every fish I catch, and then number that fish I would then go back and take screenshots of the waypoint to see whether it’s a hump or a drop off or whatever, and then I rename that waypoint as well as the waypoint and give it the same name, so that in 2 years’ time you can go back and you can say “Oh, rocky drop or hump or trees or whatever number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 up to 60. That way you can focus on the details - what depth, time of year, which depth the tree was in and which way the tree was lying. Use that history to your advantage.
The date and time of each waypoint is automatically saved, so now you also have history of where exactly you caught your fish at what time of the year, at what depth, and you can see what structure they were holding to.
I have over 100 waypoints marked of laydowns on the Vaal River.
I would rather do that, than go 2km down a bank in the “hope” that I catch a suspending fish or a roaming fish or something.
It seems like you are very meticulous and disciplined in your ways.
I'm a firm believer that you do everything to the best of your abilities. Give 100% to your studies. Give your best at work and for family. Do your best at fishing. No half measures.