It was the second consecutive event held at high altitude. The intent was to have Nooitgedacht Dam scheduled as early as possible in the season before the winter weather sets in on the Highveld, but as every other Nooitgedacht event in recent years, the weather took a turn for the worse in the week leading up to the event, with a lot of rain, wind and even hail on the Friday before the event.

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This surely put a damper on expectations from the anglers, with some having pulled out at the last minute and only 42 teams arriving on the morning of registrations.

Nevertheless, expectations for the teams that attended were high, as they got a lucky break and the weather played along.

The morning started out clear with only a slight wind and relatively pleasant weather for the remainder of the day. The fish were also biting, with an abundance of small fish being caught by all 41 teams that managed a limit on the day.

With water levels dropping in the prior weeks and cold rain flowing into all inlets, the fishing was very unpredictable.
As blast off took place on time, anglers quickly raced off to the shallow areas in search of the winning fish, but many realised that even getting one decent fish bigger than 500 grams on the day will secure gold come prize-giving.

A few teams on the day were fortunate, with one big fish that solidified their bags. Three fish on the day were weighed in at over 1,5 kilograms. Needless to say, these three teams were among the top three.

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On the day, 209 fish were weighed in with a total weight of only 68,86kg and an average per fish weight of 0,329 kg.
New to the LBT for 2019, Geraan Dewet and Gideon Tolken, fishing for team Eco Rubber Lowveld, took first place with a bag weighed in at 2,95 kg which included the second largest fish weighed in on the day at 1,685 kg.

They found success in throwing a KVD 1.5 squarebill in sexy shad colour around the shallow rock cover, enticing the slightly better quality fish.

Second-placed team AWOL of Nico and Melissa Combrink filled their limit early in the morning with a sensation jerk bait and followed it up with a Strike king football head jig matched with a speed craw trailer and concentrated their efforts on small flat rocks on points located near deep water.

They also managed to weigh the biggest fish of the day at 1,695 kg, beating team Eco Rubber Lowveld by a mere 10 grams.

Finishing in third place was team SDH Fishing, Johnny Uys and Deon van Zyl, with a bag weight of 2,64 kg who employed a host of tactics and lures which included dark-coloured speed craws and junior flukes, Spro crankbaits in sexy shad colour and a Berkley creature hog, also in dark colour.