Hi All,

Yesterday I had an opportunity to fish Vaalkop with North Gauteng Artlure as part of a fish species diversty monitoring program in conjuction with Eco-care trust and a couple of the parastatetal governing bodies.

My plan was to target big carp and barbel (the latter being fairly elusive although we did find some new techniques that work like a bomb.

Anyways to cut a long story short......

We started cruising the shallows looking for big barbel and as we made our way along the shoreline amongst the weeds we noticed there were a fair number of carp feeding heavily in the shallows and big ones too.

It did not take long for the Carp dipping rod to come out but although we saw plenty it was hard to sneak up on them as the clarity of the warter was incredible and with weed being a handicap it was difficult to get within range to drop the leadhead in the right place.

As they say "Patience comes to those who wait" before long I noticed a fair size carp feeding in about 2 ft of water and making a real pig of himself billowing clouds of dirt being churned up in the crystal clear water almost as if she was drilling for oil. Due to the water clarity I decided to drop the leadhead some 50cm from the carp and hop it along the bottom towards the fish - this they often find hard to resist. Anyways As I was droping the leadhead down to the bottom the carp obviously saw a potential food item and inhaled the loodkoppie from 50cm away without moving - both myself and Cliffy Visagie were amazed as neither of us had ever seen this thing before - only we she was hooked did we realise what a big fish she was and after a tussel for 25mins she came to the boat.....With many high 5's and whoops of joy etc a Quick photie we blazed back to the weighstation (Fortunately we wer not very far) this little fat piggy tipped the calibrated scale at just over 22lb's bettering my PB by 2.2Lbs. We saw many more bigger carp but by this time we were celebrating landing such a beauty on a short line - so we left them for another day......

Intersiting to note that "Artlure" carp (Carp that feed in the shallows) have very thick heavy lips in comparison to deepwater carp that tend to hae more softer more delicate lips. This one was no exception to the rule with a lekker pair of tekkies on the business end....

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