Albert Falls rewarding bass anglers

Carp

Most of our dams saw very few serious anglers over the last week, with the exception of the die hards and the eager. With plenty of holiday anglers around, there have still been a few good reports sent through. Inanda Dam saw the least of the lot with small fish taking up the bulk of the anglers' time. Very few of the anglers at the dam were using specimen tackle which meant the average fish was smaller than other dams such as Shongweni, which produced some excellent catches during the week and over the weekend. The weather played its part and anglers managed to stay relatively warm throughout. Tiger nuts and larger boilies worked well for most anglers. For those who fished conventional tackle, the smaller fish were fairly close in and seemed to enjoy bun spice and anything flavoured similar to pink sweets. Albert Falls is always busy at this stage of the year and has many anglers fishing not only at the slipways, but also at the Ntuli camp sites and Bon Accord. Many of these anglers are conventional anglers and are after the slightly smaller, yet more abundant carp. A few anglers will be spending a week at a time at water’s edge, strategically placing particle by particle into the feeding zone which by end of the week is crawling with fish and almost every cast is a carp in the net. Often two or more rods are used, which furthermore improves the chances of getting good numbers of fish. This method is time consuming but is deadly at Albert Falls in particular, mainly off Pelican Bay point where fish have been coming out on a regular basis over the last month. Other dams such as Nagle and Hazelmere have not seen much action over the last week, with Hazelmere in particular fishing slow with very little water and accessible fishing spots.

Bass

The main talk around town is Albert Falls when it comes to bass. Albert Falls has continued to produce good quality fish over the last week and has gradually become a favourite of many anglers. Fishing slowly on the deeper drop-offs with deep diving crank baits, Senkos and Jigs is definitely the technique to stick by, and has produced many of the good quality fish which have come out in the recent weeks. Two fish to note over last week's run include a fish of 5.2kg and on of 4.7kg. Both fish taken on a large paddletail swim bait off a drop-off in 3m of water. Inanda has seen far less good fishing recently, but is still on the board with a few fish over 2kg coming out during the week and an even better specimen of 3.4kg over the weekend. These fish have all been taken from Taxi Bay fishing heavy tungsten being pitched into offshore reed beds. Crank baits have also worked extremely well in these areas, but often get snagged on the reeds which is a common occurrence in this particular type of soft reeds. Heavy line should be used to assist with the removal of the lures, failing this, a lure retriever should be used. These lure retrievers can be purchased at most tackle stores. Shongweni dam has seen quite a few attempts from shoreline bass anglers, but very few results. Kick-boat anglers willing to get their legs cold have hooked into a few fish late in the afternoon in the shallower water.  Surprisingly, top water baits such as frogs have still been the go-to baits for this time of day.

Big fishing competition for physically challenged anglers at Durban Naval Base on 1 August 2015 - Call 031 701 7444 for more details.

(File Photo: Gallo Images)

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