After a cold, wet and windy fourth leg of the Lowveld Bass Trail at Driekoppies Dam this past weekend, Angling & Outdoor World took the spoils.

Despite these conditions, all participating teams were able to get fish into their live well, with the three teams that had withdrawn on Friday being the only ones to score no points.
Anglers quickly realised the tactics that worked during prefishing would not work on competition day. By doing so, Angling & Outdoor World’s Etienne and Felicity Carey crept up on the leaders, Wade Lottering and Waldo Greeff of Bass Wizzard, with only about one point separating the two teams.

This came after they had won the fourth leg with a bag of 5,35 kilograms. In second place were Thermocline’s William Myers and reserve Frank Gottschalk with a bag of 5,32 kilograms. Myers managed to land the biggest fish with a weight almost as heavy as Bass Hawgs’ bag of 4,85 kilograms.

With the season halfway, Bass Wizzard still lead the proceedings with 888 grams after four competitions. The next event will be at Kwena Dam.

From the winning team
We had no problem catching our five-fish limit, but they were dinks and we had to try something else to get bigger fish. We decided to fish deeper water between five and six metres, and slowed down our fishing which produced good results. With two fish of one kilogram each and two of about 700 gram each, we needed one kicker. Etienne saw a bigger fish on his electronics live scope and quickly dropped a fluke on a drop-shot rig and he was on with a nice fish. After a couple of nervous dives and headshakes, we landed the fish and were very chuffed. We honestly did not think that we would have a chance to win and were happy thinking and hoping we would perhaps be in the top 10 and make a solid 10 points for the day, which would keep us in the top five on the yearly log. We weighed our fish and our bag weighed 5,35 kilograms – we heard that William had a huge fish of 3,43 kilograms and Team Bass Hawgs had a fish of 3,11 kilograms (the second biggest of the day), so we thought we had zero chance. While congratulating William after the competition, we compared bag weights and realised we had won.

From the runners-up
We focused on fish situated in the river section for the majority of the day. We targeted fish that were taking cover in the thick brush during the frontal conditions, while still rotating between feeding grounds of these river fish. Fish were mainly situated in debris build-up locations in anything from three to eight feet water near the main river current flow. Spinnerbaits and surface lures produced quality bites with the biggest fish of the day being caught in four feet of water on a Texas-rigged creature bait.

From Team Bass Hawgs – Tyron Human/Justin Higgo
Fishing conditions were tough. Thirteen kilometre-per-hour winds and some light rain made for some tricky fishing. Despite the cold weather we managed to catch our five-fish bag limit before lunch. We managed to land our biggest fish for the day and second biggest fish overall. We hoped we would place top 10 with the 3,1 kilograms, but to our surprise we secured third out of 36 boats in total in only our second year competing. All in all, it was a good day’s fishing; the event was a success.