Tigers on the Komati river

[Korrie]

Good idea.
I will speak to him and see what he can put together.

Hi Grant
Post a link to your dad's spot

[Grant111]

Hi Grant
Post a link to your dad's spot

www.riverhilllodge.co.za

And I'll try dig up some photos. I don't really take photos and the ones I have were unfortunately on my old phone that some kind gentleman decided was more to his liking..

Think my wife has some on a backup somewhere. There are two I can think of. The one I need to get is of my mate Craig with a 8.5kg. Great photo. Mine is taken from a distance so it's pretty crap.

[Korrie]

From the website it looks like a great spot.
Now twist your old man's arm for a special introductory deal for the fellow fly fishers from Flytalk.

[Bryan]

Are you asking me? or Grant.

The email to me did not specify the numbers, just "we had good fun, with lots of tigers, these where the biggest"

Actually asking Mario. I suspect they found a few tigers in Driekoppies...

[sybie99]

Ill be fishing with Craig on 3 October, will report back, not sure if Ill fly fish or conventional, just want to catch fish so whatever Craig says works best

[Korrie]

Now that sounds lekke :-)
And then I can share with you the fish population stats of the Driekoppies Dam our students did two weeks ago...

Share with all of us, it will make interesting reading.

[Korrie]

Now that sounds lekke :-)
And then I can share with you the fish population stats of the Driekoppies Dam our students did two weeks ago...

Nou is dit nog Driekoppies dam, nog so 3 jaar dan is dit Philemon Malhangu Water Resevoir.

[redhumpy]

Nou is dit nog Driekoppies dam, nog so 3 jaar dan is dit Philemon Malhangu Water Resevoir.

Nog so oor 'n jaar is dit tweekoppies dam

[Shamwari]

Nog so oor 'n jaar is dit tweekoppies dam

of Tweekoppies Pan weens Water Shedding

[Grant111]

Hi Gents

Report from my long weekend in Komatipoort.

Let me start by saying that the river was the lowest I've seen it in 10 years and due to this lack of flow it's also the cleanest I've ever seen.
If I had my nymphing set up with me, I could have sighted fished to 3Kg plus muddies in 1-2 meters of water!!! Was like fishing a Cape stream.

So due to this clear water my fly fishing was a blank. I tried a few times, got a few chasers but nothing committed to the fly. Think the clear water was the factor and they could see this was not a proper bait fish and bailed out at the last moment.

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The rest of what happened over the weekend was pretty interesting. (And difficult to believe for 2 days fishing)

Friday we went to a place I've never fished before as the water was so low we could get to pools not possible when the river is flowing normally.

Nothing on fly, but chicken hearts on the bottom immediately prompted some action.
3 barbel and 1 small tiger landed.

My wife was the casue of all the action this day and a n errant cast meant she had to retrieve over a rock and here bait got smashed…....... by a 1m crocodile (Pic Below)!!
Now we thought he was hooked, as when I tried to pull the line free he seemed to keep raising his leg so I think the line was just wrapped around his leg. He then seemed to search for the chicken heart and picked it up. I was now really concerned as I didn’t want to hook him and at some point he opened his mouth and I managed to coax the bait free. You have never seen such an annoyed little crocodile in your life. His body language was that of a pissed off teenager moping around the house. It was truly very funny.

Little Croc.jpg

An hour later my wife landed a small barbell but she had to bring him back past this moping crocodile. Needless to say the crocodile grabbed the barbel while it came past. So not only did she have a barbel on the line but a grumpy crocodile as well. Needless to say there was much excitement and shouting but she managed to wrestle the barbel out of the crocodiles clutches. We did land the barbell but he had a nasty gash on his side from said grumpy croc (Pic below). Must say we felt pretty sorry for this little barbel as he was also missing a piece of his tail from a previous attack.

Barbel Croc Damage.jpg

Anyway excitement over and the guy fishing with us Vaughn, decided that as we only landed 1 small tiger and were being pestered by other small nibblers on the bait that he would throw out another line. As the only rod left was his small live bait rod and this is a 5 foot kiddies rod that comes with 3 different top sections. (my 3 year old has one of these rods to catch Tilapia in the pond.

As you guessed it, what happens............ zzziiiiiiiiiiiiinnggg, real screaming.
Attempted strike....... (but no power in the rod to set the hook).
Huge 5-6 KG tiger launches itself out of the water on the attempted strike and is lost!!
Ain't that just Murphy's law.

Saturday started late morning and Craig, Vaughn and I tried a pool about 200m down from the lodge. Again only really accessible due to the very low water level.
On route to the pool we disturbed a monster croc of at least 4.5metres and he headed into the pool above us. Big frights by all, including 3 fisherman and 1 monster croc.
As that water was so clean you could actually see him lying still under the water and he had a big gash on his right side. We presume this is from another croc as nothing else could have caused that sort of damage. But believe me when I say he was large, so just a warning to those who go down. Fish at least 2m from any water’s edge and especially if there’s a steep drop off.
Moving onto the next pool we spotted some big Tigers cruising around and it looked like such a great spot. We resorted to live bait as to not disturb the pool as fly fishing was no possible due to the tight conditions.

Two live baits and 5 minutes later…… Smash Smash, live bait gone but no hookup. (Either my bad luck or bad form but probably more my bad form)
We unfortunately had to make a quick exit as a mother Hippo and he calf had entered the water below us, she must have seen us and was not very impressed with our choice of fishing spot and decided to come have a closer look. So a quick exit and wide berth to a lower pool about 100m below her and her calf.
Here I had a quick go on Fly as there was a nice shelf jutting out so I could cast into deeper water. Had a few chases by small Tigers but still nothing committed.

Anyway we resorted back to the live bait as the deep channel in front of the shelf looked like a great spot.
10 minutes later and Vaughn made up for his earlier rookie mistake of trying to use his little pop gun rod in a gun fight.
He had a nice size bream on a big float that just disappeared and line just running. He waited a bit then struck, 5 minutes or so later and the result is pictured below.
We didn’t have a working scale and my digital scale was left in my bag on the rocks as we had to move down a bit to land her but we estimate her to be around the 6kg mark (Pic below).

IMG_20150926_135359_1.jpg

The reason for moving down was that we needed to land her in a safe spot, as a croc had heard the commotion and came to have a little look see. (like I said before on this thread, this is a very dangerous place to fish). We didn't come across any Elephant this time as there's usually a herd in the area but we did spot a few lion spoor in the sand. So again it's not for the fainthearted but that's part of the charm.

So that really sums the weekend up. Nothing on fly but I attest that to the water clarity and not my lack of fly fishing skill.

So just in case you want to know where the premiere Tiger venue in SA is, see some of the pics sent to my father by previous guests.
Excuse some of the pics, as some fish are not treated in the nicest of ways but this is unfortunately out of our control. Please don’t handle Tiger fish like some of these pics.

I also took a pic of the Tiger mounted in the bar (Not the real fish in case anyone is wondering). For scale I can put my fist in it's mouth and I have big hands. You'll also notice that the mould was of a Zambezi Tiger, so it's fatter. The actual tiger was much longer but they didn't have a mold long enough. The actual fish is displayed in the pic below and was 10.2Kg and 107cm long.

Tiger 10.2kgs caouth in the Komati River 2009 190.jpg

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And now for some other monsters from the Komati river.

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Komati River - big Tiger.jpg

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tiger march 15 003.jpg