Last week I went to Arabie dam a couple of days earlier as I had a guest who has been wanting me to take him there for some time now and I was there to show him the ropes.

I went a day earlier just to ensure that I had a few spots up my sleeve so that it would make fishing a little easier on his arrival.

I found the fishing to be awesome so was really excited when he showed up on Friday. We hit the water at 05h00 - still nice and cool at this time of day as it had been blistering hot the day before.

Our start was about halfway up the dam under a nesting colony of birds here we took out the calling rod and tried to call some barbel by "Ploncing" a leadhead on the water surface under the birds - intially barbel did come but they were reluctant to feed but I did notice that blue's were coming to look at the leadhead and I suggested that he use a curly tail rig and I will Plonce slowly with the calling rod to attaract them.

I said that we should start on 6lb line as quite often Kurper are very sensative to line dia but because we were fishing in such heavy cover he would need to pull the fish out as quickly as possible or else he would get "Stuffed Up". Anyways the first few fish "Stuffed" him up Royally and each time we upgraded line dia to try and keep the fish out of the brush. Eventually we were on 12 lb bass tackle and the next bush we came to I saw decent fish come up and he put the curly tail in there and held on for dear life as this thing did it's level best to try and wrap him after a heavy tussle the fish came to the boat.

Not bad for his first "Blue Kurper" ever and even better it was on artlure...





From here we moved on to other parts of the dam and other birds and were well rewarded for our efforts wherever we went catching good barbel, makriel, carp, Blue, Red, vlei and dwarf kurper. We also caught Ghielie's, dwarf tigers, Glassies and as luck would have it he also caught a Red nose mudfish on a white powerbait (I am still jealous as I have yet to catch one).

Then came the real suprise - over the last few years my club has been catching bass at the dam not intentionally but fishing for other species so we decided that we were going to give it a try - we were working a section of the river trying to catch barbel using White chunks of silicone and buddy casting at turning fish and under trees.

Anyways we cast at a tree and my dear guest goes tight on a fish that gives him big hard power strokes - I commented that it was unlikely to be a barbel and sure as nuts a big bass erupts out of the water not a second later and he lands his PB bass of 2.1 kgs.



Anyways to cut a long story short we caught a few more bass over 1kg using bass tackle but I have seen photies of bass over the 5kg mark so I will go back there and I will encourage guests to go with a guide as you can kick butt on that dam when the time is right.

Off to Komatipoort this week with two other guests chasing bass and tigers - I hope I return with a great report....

Ryan

 

What a weekend - we caught fish till our arms ached......