GALLERY: Local bass boys are SA’s best

The eight anglers, five of whom are from Tzaneen (Vanmelle Nel, Justy Varkevisser, Cornel van Schalkwyk, Rainer Stolz and Reed Eastman) and three of whom are from Phalaborwa (Lourens Matthysen, Dave Matthysen and Andy Kyriacoudes), raised the trophy with pride after a tough three days of fishing.

The team of eight were a force to be reckoned with, with three of the members currently ranking first, third and sixth in the country.

It is the first time in history that the floating trophy will have the word, ‘Limpopo’ inscribed on it. The local team last won in 1990 and the words inscribed were then, ‘Far North’.

In addition to the inter-provincial title, team mates Lourens Matthysen and Justy Varkevisser took home an award for the heaviest bag of the tournament. The event saw 96 anglers from 48 teams compete in the three-day competition.

Four teams of two anglers were selected from the provinces; Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Free State, North West, Western Province and Eastern Province.

The teams were then further made up of four regions from the Natal province; Zululand, Natal Coastals, Midlands and Northern Natal, as well as an invitational team named SABAA TT.

Each year, the different provinces take it in turns to host the event. The responsibility, and honour, fell on Limpopo’s shoulders at quite late notice as both Natal and the Eastern Cape were unable to host the tournament due to low water levels in their dams.

Read: Letaba Bassmasters award their members

With the late notice, the Letaba Bassmasters were under pressure to get the Jetty 3 area clean before the event. Upon arrival at the jetty to inspect the area and do some logistical planning, the team realised the area was in a dire state.

Broken bottles and strewn rubbish scattered the dam’s shoreline and the team realised a huge clean-up operation was imperative if they were going to host the inter-provincials.

The team set to it and even brought in a bulldozer to fix the roads and bolster the edges of the slipway. All costs of the clean-up efforts were covered by the Letaba Bassmasters. In the lead up to the tournament, a ‘no fishing’ temporary restriction was put on the dam for three weeks prior to the event. On Monday last week, the teams set to the water as a practice round. Tuesday saw an electronics day, whereby the teams were allowed to scan the waters with electronic GPS devices to look for fishing ‘hotspots’ but were not allowed to physically catch any fish.

Wednesday was the first day of the competition, with the 48 teams being split into three groups, leaving in intervals of every 30 minutes, starting at 06:45 in the morning. At the end of the day, the boats returned in the same order, also at thirty minute intervals between the two groups. On Thursday and Friday the groups then swapped around so as to make it fair across the three days.

Throughout the day, the teams fished for their top five largest bass. The target species being Northern Large-mouthed bass. The minimum length of bass that they were allowed to bring to the weigh station was 30cm.
Upon coming into weigh their top five fish at the end of the day, the fisherman were given the opportunity to measure any suspect fish before weigh-in and if they fell short, the fish could be re-released into the dam without it negatively affecting the score of the team.

If, however, a fish under size was weighed and the weigh master noticed the violation, the team would have points deducted from them. All fish were then released back into the dam.

Therefore over the three day competition, each team were able to bring in their top 15 fish. This amounted to close to 600 fish being weighed with a total mortality of only 30 fish which is testament to the care given by the anglers and revival techniques applied at the weigh station.

At the end of the three days, all the fish weights and scores were collated and the Limpopo guys brought home the title. Letaba Bassmasters would like to extend a big thank you to weigh-master, Wessel du Toit.

Ian Houston was the guest speaker during the prize-giving ceremony on Friday evening and delivered a powerful motivational speech. During the course of the evening, the SABAA team recognised the arrangements and attention to detail that the Limpopo hosting team put into delivering the tournament and noted that the Limpopo team have set the bar very high for those hosting the next inter-provincial tournament.

The organising team, spearheaded by Wayne Kurten as the Tournament Director, received a standing ovation from the 96 anglers and guests.