Dullstroom Town Dam + Laverpa – Mpumalanga
01/06/2018 – 04/06/2018


1: Weather

The weather during this trip was slightly warmer than what I expected. The days were bright and sunny reaching to about 20 degrees and the nights were rather cold. There was a good covering of frost on the cars and furniture outside in the mornings.

2: Venue and Accommodation
I honestly did not expect much from the accommodation for this trip as we purposely tried to do this trip as cheap as possible (We actually had to as we are all rather broke). So for R1000 per night for a unit sleeping 4 people we did not expect much. Feedback from people who stayed at the Town Dam previously (couple of years ago) was also not great, but hey we went to fish not be pampered. So we were all pleasantly surprised with what we got. The accommodation was well thought out and put together and is actually rather spacious. You walk in to the living room, second bedroom (2 single beds), dining room and open plan kitchen and although this is all one big room, it is not crowded at all. We had ample space for all the kit and bags and crates. There is a nice fireplace in the one corner and an outside braai area with a large table and benches outside as well. Separate bathroom with a toilet, shower and bath and then a second bedroom with cupboards and double bed and a chair. The kitchen has all the basics you would need, although ours missed a frying pan J
The only issue I see here is that for any prolonged stay you are going to have an issue with the fridge and freezer as it is a bar fridge. So if you need to cater for a longer stay you are not going to have space to keep everything cold and outside of ice trays don’t expect to keep anything frozen. I do however believe that if you ask the caretakers they will make a plan with a bigger fridge.
The accommodation is not luxurious by any means, but it is definitely not the worst I have stayed in. In fact I would happily take the wife and kids to stay there as well. The grounds are clean and as well maintained as the season allows it to be and the horses and other animals come round to say hello often. So actually a pleasant stay. I would recommend taking large coffee mugs if you like coffee as much as we do, as the cups and mugs were a bit small J
3 Fishing:

We fished the top dam only and did not spend any time on the bottom dam. The water was very clear and really in great condition. The surface temperature was around 13 degrees. There was lots of activity at evening rise and the fish are large. I would recommend float tube or some boat at least for this, although people did catch fish from the banks, there is limited areas to do this. The fishing was a bit slow, but that was due to us taking a long time to find out where and at what depth they were. So the Friday evening one was taken on a dry fly around the 2kg mark. Stuffed full of eggs. And then we caught another 3 during the day on Saturday deep and on nymphs and bloodworms. Orange and Red seemed to be the colour to use. All of these were between 1.5 and 2kg with the water temperatures around the 13 degree mark. Bright and sunny with a light breeze. I am more than happy to recommend the town dams to be fished. Well at least the top dam as I do not know the state or condition of the bottom dam. The fish are healthy and strong. The only annoying thing here was that at the last jetty there was a pump installed which we could not figure out why, and this thing makes the most annoying sound throughout the day. It also happened to be the area where the evening activity is high.
We then fished Laverpa (Mavungana day waters) on the Sunday and this I will also happily recommend, especially if you like sight fishing. The water is exceptionally clear and fish can be spotted from far. The middle and bottom dams are very accessible, it is only the top dam that has about 50% which taken up with growth preventing it from being fished. No float tubes here, and I am not sure if they allow wading at all. We forgot to ask. Generally they want you to fetch the keys around 17:00 the day before you booked and return it 17:00 on the day you fished, but we got the key around 13:00 the day before, and they called me around 16:30 on the day and said I could return it the following morning, which I really appreciated cause 17:00 I am still fishing hard for the evening rise. We only caught 2 fish around the 2kg mark and absolute stunning condition. We did not however fish very hard, as a tummy bug got the better of one of us and we stopped for a few hours during the day. The wind was a real challenge however, and with the location of the Laverpa waters, I suspect there will always be wind of some kind blowing there. I am not against that at all, but the Sunday we fished it, it was a bit stronger than a slight breeze. The other thing to keep in mind is that there really is nothing there other than a wooden hut which is about to blow over. So you might want to pack some food and drinks. There is also no ablutions, so just keep that in mind as well.
I think all of us would be more than happy to pay to go fish there again.
All in all it was another nice fishing trip and although we did not catch loads of fish, we all agreed that sometimes a hard day of fishing is really not that bad, it gives us something to work on to fine tune and add some more skill and understanding.
Happy fishing.