In search of fishing waters

Its been a quiet couple of weeks with only a few fishing trips. We tried a new spot called Toteng which is a village 60km from Maun in the direction of Ghanzi, but without any luck. Fish activity was plentyfull, but they did not seem very interested in anything we presented them with. Local fisherman had no problem catching them with earthworms as bait, but that kind off defeats the purpose of trying your luck at artlure.

Local fisherman catching with earthworm

The river at Toteng

We caught a few barbel around the 5 kg mark and must admit that my new Nexave rod paired with Abu baitcaster has some serious pulling power. Would like to get these tested on some proper tigers in the Chobe or Okavango some time. Ive been doing alot of reading on targeting the bigger barbel, and will soon start using bigger baits like bream heads and so forth to see if I can break the 10Kg mark. Will first need to find some deeper water though. Also keen on picking up some loodkoppies to try and target them on artificials.

My new combo

A 5 kg specimen from Samedupi

Trying to upload a video so will post the link here as soon as its done. Nothing spectacular but great fun.

Samedupi fishing 09-09-2015 A night with hippo's

So to prevent people from getting irritated with me posting everyday's fishing on my facebook page I decided to start a blog. I mean everyday  living in Maun Botswana is special and spectacular to say the least. For now we are still limited to fish around town, but I'm hoping that soon I'll be able to post some fishing pictures from somewhere in the Delta.

Last night we decided to go fish for some bream again, and afterwards we would ''Braai'' some fish. Preperations started early in the afternoon with some bream we caught earlier in the week, and we also packed some rods for barbel as it gets dark.

The fish preperation...

Some preperation

 Some spice, onions,salt and lemon juice.

After preparation we left for Samedupi around 4pm, and the plan was to try and fish for some Bream till dark and then move to the old bridge where we could target Barbel in the dark without worrying getting mauled by hippo. On arrival it was quite humid and the fishing started slow, and after missing three takes I changed to a lead head that would imitate a fly that was used with quite a lot of success the previous day by one of my colleges. 

The lure

The action didn't really improve and eventually I changed to a surface flasher before I got hit another three times, this time landing one of the fish at least.

Third time lucky

We didn't stay around much longer as we wanted to set everything up on the old bridge before it got too dark. We carried the stuff to the bridge watching a beautiful African sunset as the last light of the day was disappearing. It was as always nothing short of spectacular and one truly feels the heartbeat of the African bush spending time out of town. Carel randomly casted a Rapala deeprunner red/orange in colour and within 2 seconds he was vas!!!! We soon knew this was a good fish and this was the first bream of 1kg we got since i've been here.

Fire sky

Carel with a beautifull Thin Face Large Mouth Bream

The rest of the night was quiet fishing wise, but we spent some awesome time with 5 hippo having a bit of an argument. Lots of vocalising sent a couple of chills down the spine, but we knew we were unreachable on the bridge. One bull came quite close at one stage and we managed to get some nice photo's while having a nice bream braai under African skies....

A small portable braai is a must!!

The end product

Getting watched closely by one of the Samedupi dominant bulls