Pongola Game Reserve Fishing Report

December 2009

General

If it’s not the rain then it’s the sun, and hell has it been hot. We experienced a week of forty plus and personally I hope it’s the last of it. The water temperature shot up to 29 degrees in the afternoon and did it slow the fishing up for a while. The wind also played a bit of havoc but we have used it to our advantage by drifting a lot. 

I did a lot of fishing this month, and most of my success came from drifting using fillet. Be that sardine, bream or tiger fish. I had most success drifting over the Hydrilla beds in water between 1 and 6 meters. No weight was used and if the drift was slow used a cork to suspend the fillet.

The strikes were ferocious and the tigers hit them as soon as you tended to go over little islands of weeds. I haven’t had the tigers taking the bait so nicely for a while. The stronger the wind the better. Anyway can’t give too many secrets away, but definitely an exciting way of fishing when bottom fishing slow or you can’t find anchor. 

Otherwise the conventional bottom fishing also proved successful as normal with some nice fish coming out. The runs were not as long as normal, so it was almost strike as they took. Changing tactics seemed to produce fish for me and my client’s everyday. 

On the fly side of things we did not have too many clients. Tarryn and Cliff Rochester, return clients, had a great morning, with Tarryn landing and releasing a 6 kg tiger. We also had a couple of other groups who did exceptionally well and a couple of fish up to 3, 5 kg came out. The mainly colors seemed to be black/red, black/grey and purple had its fair amount of success too. 

Water clarity it still a bit of a problem, but some good fish up to 3 kg’s came out towards the bridge. There is not a lot of action in this stretch yet, bit with a bit of chumming and a lot of patience it has shown they still feed in the dirty water. We are targeting the shallow water in the river (2m).  

Anyway that’s all for now, I am hoping for a great fishing year this year. Remember the April/May feeding frenzy is coming up, so make your bookings now. 

We would also like to say good bye to Maxwell, after many years of service. He is moving on to the coastal waters and we wish him all the best for the future. Tight Lines Max. 
 

Captain Chris