The recent rain was always going to cause a challenging first leg of this year’s Lowveld Bass Trail at Vygeboom Dam on February 6.

Indeed, anglers were ill-prepared for the inflow of muddy water, causing less than one feet of visibility. This not only diminished the likelihood of sight-fishing, but also made it harder for bass to spot baits.

With an abundance of flooded vegetation, teams ran to fish popular banks with little to no results. Out of the 40 teams that attended, only five managed a bag limit of five fish. The biggest fish was caught by Morné Strauss of team Salmo Lew’s that tipped the scale at 2,9 kilograms.
The average fish weight was a mere 0,67 kilograms and the total weight for fish caught was
46,118 kilograms.

The odds were in favour of Subaru Nelspruit’s Danie Stassen and Brian Wilkinson, who managed to pull off a 3,96-kilogram bag, hooking the third biggest fish at 2,55 kilograms.

They were fortunate enough to be the second boat to launch. It was a challenging start as anglers were welcomed by intermittent rainfall. Stassen caught the first fish at 07:30.

“It was only a 100-gram fish, but we were happy to get the monkey off our back. We battled for another two hours before Brian caught the beautiful 2,55 kilogrammer. It is then when we realised we had a good to chance to win. From there on we tried everything we could think of, but our next fish only came in six hours later.

“We were about to call it a day and head back to weigh in when we decided to see if we could maybe catch one more. In the last 20 minutes before weigh-in we managed to catch another two. With 10 minutes to spare we were fortunate enough to catch number five,” the team said, adding that their strategy was mainly to fish a winter pattern by slowing down and downsizing lures.

The team that came second, Bass Wizzard, started off close to the river section and realised that with the amount of debris in the water they had to make a decision and change their game plan.

“We decided to go up to the canal close to the dam wall, but it was occupied and we made a decision to bank bash. Soon we saw bass breaking the surface in impossible-to-cast locations inside the reeds. We started to look for open pockets and managed to get fish on Bellows Gill in the Electric Shad colour and Zoom Sexy Shad fluke.”

Salmo Lew’s, that came third, started in the river section and used a Salmo 5,5 Rattling Hornet to search for fish.
“We had a bite, but lost it. We decided to try soft baits like Senkos and Fox Rage Slick shad paddle tails, and manage to catch three decent fish.”

The next event is at Kwena Dam on March 6.

Top 10 teams
1. Subaru Nelspruit (Danie Stassen/Brian Wilkinson)
2. Bass Wizzard (Wade Lottering/Waldo Greeff)
3. Salmo Lew’s (Morné Strauss and Jaco Strauss)
4. Angling & Outdoor World (Ettienne Carrey/Felicity Carrey)
5. Bass Fever (Flip Maritz/JP Maritz)
6. Black Shaddow (Adriaan Bam/Rion Miljo)
7. DST Lowveld (Charl Carrey/Hannes van Wyk)
8. Fish ON (Ian van Rooyen/Lanita van Rooyen)
9. Lac Syngenta (Leonard Starfield-Wade/Ruan Lange)
10. Thermocline Dst (Herman Geldenhuys/William Meyers).