News From the Garden Route

[Pierre]

Hi Anton

Thanks for your reports, good to hear whats happening up there. This will come in handy when the road trip happens. All interested can we start planning ?

Cheers

[KevinC]

Hi there Anton

Thanks allot for the pm and your comments above. I thrashed the Keurbooms on the Saturday without any success and then went home to watch Aus v Eng thinking that I could fish a good session on the Sunday- only to be greeted with the mother of all cold fronts the next morning. Casting a fly is good for the soul in any event.

Thanks again for the information though- next time I'll have something to work with.

[anton]

Good Morning Guys

I fished the Touw River in Wilderness on Sunday and Monday in the late afternoon. Some really good action from the boardwalk on Sunday. We caught 8 leeries betweeen 2 of us. Biggest fish 500mm fork length putting it around the 2 kg mark. I went yesterday again to see if there were still a few fish there. Had three follows. Fish really did not commit at all. They just had a look a then drifted off the popper whereas on Sunday they would keep coming until they got it. Still trying to figure out why. The water was equally clear both days. On sunday the wind blew west and on Monday it blew south east. A small front came through with the west on Sunday so this may have affected the fish for Monday. Really just looking for excuses to make myself feel better after poor outing.

The Touw is a good river as it receives very little pressure at this time of year and with the mouth closed for a while the fish that are in there can congregate towards the mouth as the fresh water pushes from up river. The only problem is that there are not many areas where one can cast a fly as the banks are guarded by reeds for the most part. i have not tried it yet but my guess is that this river provides a perfect opportunity for anyone with a float tube. Water is generally quite shallow and no need to worry about any of our friends with teeth. You will have better access to the deeper spots that are likely to hold fish.

Good Luck
Anton

[anton]

I have been doing quite a bit of plugging lately from a fishing ski in the estuaries around here and have landed plenty of leeries. Most fish juveniles with fork length below 450mm but a good number of fish between 550 - 650mm and then some really good fish over 850 fork length. Most of these fish have come out of the Knysna Lagoon. It seems that the Goukama and Touw rivers are fairly quite with the Sedgefield laagoon fishing well. I have heard thatthere have been good numbers of fishlanded there.This estuary is one that is extremely underated as many very good fish come out of it each year. Especially the body of water above the railway bridge.

I have a friend who may be testing the Gouritz out this weekend so I hope to be able to report on some activity there. This is not an area that I am at all familiar with but I hear some good reports of fish there. It will be interesting to see the results that he has this weekend.

Good luck to all that are fishing.

Anton

[BuzzLiteBeer]

Thanks for the update. Hope to be in the area from the 25th to the 30th November.

[anton]

Hello Mate

Give me call when you are in the area. I am going to try and fish a few more of the estuaries in the next few weeks so may have some reasonable news on other areas worth a try. Weekends on the Knysna lagoon becoming quite busy especially when the weather is good. Need to find some slightly more secluded places. Have heard that folks getting good numbers of fish in Sedgefield lagoon at the moment. Cannot comment on the quality of them as I have not caught any there myself this season.

[Yellowfever]

I'm down there from the 18th maybe we can join up. Please send me a mail with contact details. Also looking to fish the Gouritz for yellows!


carl.yellowfever@gmail.com
http://yellowsonfly.blogspot.com/

[anton]

Good Evenng Gents

Went on a a bit of a rekkie this weekend end and all that I can say isF#%&*.
I tied to fish a small inland lake in this area called Island Lake. I have heard reports of monster leeries that have been caught there in the past, it was me and my fishing ski to see what this place had to offer. The report is that it is a wonderful piece of water theat has amazing diversity, just not on a perfect Sunday morning. The lake looks like a donut with and island in the middle and every mullet and his dog were there racing boats. There were evening a few deep sea boats with 2 motors operating. Not to mention that the fishing was poor and the trip left me wanting to blow boats out of the water.

The reports are that there are really big leeries in there. Fish of 12-18kg are fairly frequent. I had one small follow from a fish around 5kg the whole day. The amazing thing about the lake is that you can catch leerie, grunter, cob, mullet, kurper, bass all in the same body of water. i paddled into the grass beds a bit and saw huge kurper on their beds. I saw a few bass but only deep into a shallow corner. To me it is incredible that fresh water and saltwater fish can co-exist like that. On a peaceful workday I am sure that you could have some mind blowing fishing there. It would need some work as the feeling that I have of the lake is that the fish would feed at certain times of the day. My theory behing this may or may not hold water, but here goes. The lake is not at all tidal so the fish there are not influeced at all by stage of the tide. My feeling is that there would need to be another trigger for them to start feeding and my guess would be amount of light entering the water. This being determined by the angle of the suns rays on the water. I think that one would catch fish there at the times of the day when sun is low.

This is just a guess and it would be interesting to hear what your opinion may be on this 'conspiracy theory'.

In summary: The lake has HUGE potential due to the diversity of fish and the size of the specimens. My experience was poor and a mistake to be learned from.

[Pierre]

Good Evenng Gents

Went on a a bit of a rekkie this weekend end and all that I can say isF#%&*.
I tied to fish a small inland lake in this area called Island Lake. I have heard reports of monster leeries that have been caught there in the past, it was me and my fishing ski to see what this place had to offer. The report is that it is a wonderful piece of water theat has amazing diversity, just not on a perfect Sunday morning. The lake looks like a donut with and island in the middle and every mullet and his dog were there racing boats. There were evening a few deep sea boats with 2 motors operating. Not to mention that the fishing was poor and the trip left me wanting to blow boats out of the water.

The reports are that there are really big leeries in there. Fish of 12-18kg are fairly frequent. I had one small follow from a fish around 5kg the whole day. The amazing thing about the lake is that you can catch leerie, grunter, cob, mullet, kurper, bass all in the same body of water. i paddled into the grass beds a bit and saw huge kurper on their beds. I saw a few bass but only deep into a shallow corner. To me it is incredible that fresh water and saltwater fish can co-exist like that. On a peaceful workday I am sure that you could have some mind blowing fishing there. It would need some work as the feeling that I have of the lake is that the fish would feed at certain times of the day. My theory behing this may or may not hold water, but here goes. The lake is not at all tidal so the fish there are not influeced at all by stage of the tide. My feeling is that there would need to be another trigger for them to start feeding and my guess would be amount of light entering the water. This being determined by the angle of the suns rays on the water. I think that one would catch fish there at the times of the day when sun is low.

This is just a guess and it would be interesting to hear what your opinion may be on this 'conspiracy theory'.

In summary: The lake has HUGE potential due to the diversity of fish and the size of the specimens. My experience was poor and a mistake to be learned from.

My best guess would be at first light. Sandvlei operates the same. You have Leeries, mullet and freshwater species in the same system. The estuary is not tidal. The Leeries are big 60cm plus. 100cm specimens have been landed by guys on this forum. The trick is to be there at first light, but this only offers a small window period, when the sun hits the water the leeries are gone and disappear into deeper water.

Is this in wilderness ?

[Yellowfever]

Pierre,

This means that I have to be up at Owls fart then, which is earlier than sparrow's!? Sheit I'm on holiday.....

Do you think the same will apply to the evenings i.e. when the sun is off the water? Sedgefield is closed at the mouth so no tide. I once hooked into something BIG after sunset - it was chasing 20-25cm mullet! Most of the fishing will be there as it's close to the house and kids during the day time (6 weight and small poppers;-)