Wilgedraai, Vaaldam, 8-9 January 2015

My friend Ettienne, his godson Jean and me left Pretoria around 05:30am on the Thursday morning, arriving at Wilgedraai around 08:30am. Started fishing around 09:00am. We sat on the left side on stand 1 and 2 in the 'sloep'. Gave Jean first option to choose a spot. Then Ettienne and me also chose our spots and started fishing.

Nice clean bank.

Did not take long for the fish to bite. Got my first few carp on Juana flavoured floaties. First few fish had nice size, but as the sun got higher, the fish became small. Between the three of us we caught small grasscarp, carp and Jean caught a small muddy. Flavours that got fish was pinksweets, chocolate, onion, duiwelsdrek and perdeby.

Nice Mirror Carp caught by Ettienne.

Late in the afternoon we put out two rods for targeting catfish. Both rods were rigged with grascarp heads. We started pitching the tent and were getting things ready for the braai. My barbel rod got a bite and I started fightinh the fish. After about 5min I landed a barbel of 3.4kg.

Safely released

Got the barbel rod ready again and this time rigged the whole body that was left over from the grascarp. Casted the line back in and left it for the next catfish to bite.In the meantime we were finishing up with the tent etc. At around 20:00 things was quiet. Jean was sleeping and Ettienne said he was thinking of going to bed when I noticed the barbel rod had another bite. This time I gave Ettienne a chance and he grabbed the rod and started fighting the fish. This time around though, the fish was definately not 3kg, but much bigger as Ettienne realised when the fish was standing it's ground quite firmly. As the reel is loaded with 30lbs line it should not be a problem to land the fish. It is just a matter of time. About 5minutes into the fight and 10m down the bank I suddenly see the rod pitch down to the water as the fish turns around. We just hear this loud snap and then we realize the line broke! We both a dumb struck as we check the rod and line for any reason for the failure. I check the reel and realize at some stage Ettienne accidentilly tightened the spool a bit too much so there was no fighting drag to allow the fish to take line again. I don't want to speculate about the size of the fish, but it must have been huge to break 30lbs mainline. Needless to say, after this Ettienne wasn't tired anymore and we were getting catching till past midnight. During the evening we got carp up to 3.2kg.

Next day we started early and it wasn't long before we all got some nice fish for the morning.

Jean caught a few nice carp:

All in all we had a great sleep-over at Wilgedraai. We must have caught 40-50 fish in one day. One of the best Vaaldam trips I ever had! Thanks Ettienne and Jean!