Engogo – Trout Lodge

Johan Geldenhuys visited Engogo a while ago , have a look at some off his picks . How’s this for a Dragonfly Nymph. This is like a Man size T-Bone for a Trout ( Mr. Wallington , you will enjoy this photo) Some of the brown trout to be caught at Engogo, note the white band on the fins, an awesome fish. All for now, i am on my way to catch some trooot at Highland Runn , see u on Monday.

Posted on August 15, 2008 Filed Under Fish, SaltWater Fishing | Leave a Comment

FlyFishers on the Square

The new Look FlyFishers Unlimited. This is a view of the PIRANNA deck , long and very “serious” conversations on FlyFishing and things will take place here. We will also have live Rugby , off course only when the Boks or the Bulls play well. Yes , it does look like a one way mirror, but this is the most technologically advanced rod building workshop in SA. Elphus and i will spend a lot off our time here. Also keep in mind we do give rod building lessons , should you want to build your own stick. The following shot is part off our extensive range of fly tying material and Murray’s pride and joy – THE TYING BENCH -. The bench can seat 4 tiers easy , and with Murray close by you will have a tying experience of note. All our contact details off course remained the same: Tel : 011 705 1190 467 2034 Fax: 705 1188 This pick is not upside down, yes the boats are in the roof. We now carry a full range off float tubes and kick boats from Classic Accessories. The BIG guy can even do river work ( down the rapids) Please feel free to come and have a cup of coffee or a cold one and experience FlyFishers as never before. Thank’s Murray , Ricko & Elphus ( below is a map with GPS point to get to us)

Posted on August 15, 2008 Filed Under Fish, Fishing, Sea Holidays | Leave a Comment

Carp Fishing – Back in Cheshire Again

It’s been a good few weeks since I last updated my blog with a live session report. There are two reasons for this, first is because I have quite a few entries written about other general carp fishing stuff that I wanted to publish and secondly because I was invited to join a publicity shy north west carp syndicate. I dithered over taking the syndicate ticket as my own lifetime isn’t long enough to fish the current waters I already have available. The syndicate was quite close to home though and it would certainly reduce my fuel bill if I started fishing there. With this in mind I took the ticket and I’ve spent the last month doing short evening sessions and the odd Saturday daytime on this new water. I’ve had a few carp from the new syndicate but I’ve been less than impressed with their size, the lakes biggies had spawned successfully and as a result, the water was overrun with commons in the 2-6lb range. After 4 weeks of these small fish I decided to give the syndicate a miss for a while, it does contain some decent fish and I will visit again at some point in the future but for now I decided to head back to one of my Cheshire carp waters for my first overnighter since I tweaked an old back injury back in June. I arrived at the lake to find only 2 anglers fishing and one of them was packing up, he’d done the night and lost a couple of fish and with other duties at home and the Edgbaston Test Match to watch he was pulling off. This was good for me, he was occupying the right hand main point swim which just happened to be one of the most productive swims on the lake. Back in February 2007 I’d bought myself a brand new aqua m3 bivvy and having looked at the weather forecast for the weekend I thought it would be best to take my m3 rather than fish under my usual stealth brolly . Rain was forecast and the extra protection from the m3 would be a big help in staying comfortable and dry. I set up slowly during the afternoon and got myself well organised. When it came to the rods I brought along a couple of my daiwa infinities as the fishing was mostly long range, my preferred tfg x series rods were nice playing rods and they cast a long way but my infinities just had that little extra bit of power and I needed as much help as I could get to reach the ‘out of bounds’ far bank. Aqua M3 Bivvy, I had some extra protection if the rain came. My two infinities I fished ‘on the chuck’, single odyssey xxx pop ups fished as single hook baits on a helicopter rig as far over to the far bank as I could cast, one rod was tight, the other about 20 yards short. The far bank was out of bounds and the fish tended to hold up here to avoid angling pressure. The third rod I fished at about 60 yards over bait. My odyssey xxx baits are rolled in 20mm size so 60-80 yards with a catapult was a relatively easy target to hit. With the baits all out I sat back to listen to the afternoons cricket, England seemed to be in a good position to win the test match but as the afternoon wore on they lost what little advantage they had as the South Africans dug in. I was still listening to the test match early evening when a delkim holding one of the ‘chuck’ rods let out a few bleeps, the monkey climber rose a few inches, then fell again. I watched and wondered what was going on when the monkey slowly started climbing again, that was enough for me, I tightened the clutch, wound down and hit it. Normally I’d expect the rod to hoop over but on this occasion it didn’t. I hit fresh air with no fish on the end. I scratched my head and wondered what had happened. A tench perhaps? Or had I been done by a carp? There was also a possibility I’d picked up a trailer, quite a few carp had been trailing line and rigs this year with quite a few anglers cracking off whilst trying to reach the fish on the out of bounds bank. I’d never know exactly what happened so after thinking about it for a while I simply checked my hook point to make sure there was no problems then put my rig out again and settled down to listen to England loose the Edgbaston test match!. This particular Cheshire carp water is known to produce in the early hours of the morning so I had high hopes of a run as it went dark, 2.30am until about 9.00am was regarded as the hot time for takes and a few fish showing at dusk gave me some confidence for the night ahead. Just after dark a carp crashed out twice at close range, the fish was just 30 yards out and far closer in than I was fishing!. Because it had crashed and not rolled I chose to ignore it. In my experience crashing fish are not feeding fish and I’ve not done well casting at carp that show this way, if the short range fish had rolled I’d have put a bait on it straight away but not this time. My decision not to cover the crashing carp may have been a costly one. I slept through take time without a sniff of a fish and when I woke up at 9.00am I was a little disappointed not to have had some action. I had a drink and a bite to eat, packed my gear and headed for home at around 10-ish. I let a few of my mates know I’d blanked and after talking to one of them who fishes the lake a lot, he was of the opinion I’d dropped a howler by not covering the crashing fish!. As only an occasional visitor to the water I accepted his opinion and next time I see a carp crash out on this venue I’ll make sure I cover it, although I still maintain that casting to carp that crash is generally unproductive. Tight Lines Mark.

Posted on August 10, 2008 Filed Under Fish, Fishing, Fishing Report | Leave a Comment

Murloc Angling and Rural Pursuits

Whilst running an errant in Aghalee I thought I would check out Murloc fishery. The fishery is situated within spitting distance of my old house so I was very curious about the setup. It is a newly constructed pond of about five acres and it only opened at the start of July. As I hadn’t a rod with me I was just going to have a nosy and bug the owner/manager if I could find him. I immediately bumped into Fred the boss man who was out enjoying a pipe and his randy dog Fly. Whilst chatting away to Fred and trying to avoid the amorous advances of his dog(who incidentally is an excellent fisher, check the photos in the lodge) I was able to experience the quality of the fishing. The beautiful clear lake was alive with activity, there were many anglers fighting with sturdy looking fish and even more rising on the lake. The fish stocked have a minimum size of 2lb and there are a number of doubles. All in all I was extremely impressed with the setup. The lodge looked very comfortable and the staff were really friendly and helpful. Hopefully i can make up some excuse to be out in that neck of the woods again soon, but next time I’ll definitely have some kit with me. Murloc Fishery is situated halfway down the Old Church Lane which is just off the Soldierstown Road in Aghalee. You can contact the fishery on 07843632197

Posted on August 4, 2008 Filed Under Fish, Fishing, Fishing Diary | Leave a Comment

Carp Fishing – Red Letter Days Pt4

For those of you who know your history the 6th September 1997 might just ring a bell?. It was the day Princess Diana was laid to rest. At the time, the TV and Radio was a nightmare, it seemed that the media were doing their level best to depress anyone and everyone!. I’m not a big fan of the royals and although what happened was a tragedy, it had little or no bearing on my life and I’d had enough of the continuous misery being churned out by our media on a daily basis. There was only one thing to do on the day of Princess Di’s funeral and that was get up early and go carp fishing, at least on the bank I was free from having this event rammed down my throat!. I was up a couple of hours before first light making a flask and some sandwiches for the day ahead, I was fishing Capesthorne Hall at the time, I knew it was an hours drive to the lake and I wanted to be there before dawn. The drive to the lake was a little shorter than usual, the roads at that time of the morning are always quiet and with no Sunday drivers to get stuck behind I knocked a good 10 minutes off my usual journey time. My plan was to fish the first part of the day on what is now one of the most talked about carp waters in the north west, capesthorne top pool, back in 1997 there was no night fishing allowed and the water was a shadow of the venue it is today. The top pool did have a tendency to produce fish from first light onwards until mid morning back then and the second part of my plan was to move onto capesthorne main lake during the afternoon as the main lake was a known late afternoon/evening carp water. Capesthorne Top Pool Circa 1996 I’ve always been a short session carp angler and being days only the capesthorne waters were ideal for me, my fishing gear was stripped out to the minimum and this made the walk across the field to the top pool quite bearable, I walked through the small gate and dropped my gear in the boathouse peg so I could have a look around, it was starting to crack light and with nobody around I had the lake to myself, all I needed was a fish to roll and give me a clue and I could drop onto the area and be in with a chance of catching. I was using tiger nuts at the time and these were fished on the D-rig that I finally published last week. The D-rig has been a nice little string to my bow for many years and during the mid to late 90′s it was the darling of capesthorne, those spooky capes carp didn’t seem to have an answer to the D-rig and it constantly tripped the carp up time and time again. Right on cue a carp head and shouldered beyond the main pads to the right of the boat house so I grabbed my gear and moved down a couple of pegs and into the bay (peg 12). I cast a couple of single tiger nut D-rigs to were the carp had rolled and sat back to see what happened. I didn’t have to wait long, just 5 minutes after casting in the right hand rod pulled down and signalled a run. I was on it straight away, the fish took a bit of line but once it got bogged down in the weed the fight changed and the fish became quite subdued. I slowly pumped the carp and the accompanying weed back towards the net, apart from a nervous moment close in when the fish tried to make the branches of a fallen tree, I had no problems and I slipped the net under my prize after a fight that lasted about 5 minutes. I peeled back the landing net mesh to find a nice common and on closer inspection I realised it was ‘the’ common, crinkle tail, a fish that is now quite famous and a target of every capesthorne top pool angler these days. Old crinkle tail looked in good shape and I thought I was looking down at my first ever 20lb common!. I weighed the old boy and the scales gave me 19lb 12oz, not quite my first 20lb common but still a pb common none the less. I did a few self takes and returned crinkle tail to the water, back in 1997 self takes were allowed and its only recently they’ve been banned on sotas waters. Capesthorne Top Pool Crinkle Tail at 19lb 12oz on 06/09/1997 I’d had a quick result, it was 7.30am when I’d caught crinkle tail and I fished on through dawn and through the morning with no further action. I had hoped to bank another fish having got crinkle at the start of my session but it wasn’t to be and early in the afternoon I gathered my gear together and moved onto the main lake for the rest of the day. Capesthorne main lake was fishing quite hard and being Saturday afternoon I was up against it, I stood on the bridge looking for carp and wondering what to do, this was a position I’ve been in many times before and after spending an hour looking round I decided to drop onto the famous ornamental eagle peg in the garden pool. I knew from hours of watching capesthorne carp that they would move up from the shallows late afternoon and that I might stand a chance in the eagle. I knew the swim and I knew the margins in front of it were a prime area for carp moving through in the evenings. I fished a few benches to the left of the eagle so as not to disturb the area, I dropped both D rigs in the margins and sat back to watch the water, if I saw fish move elsewhere I could always move on them if necessary, otherwise I was sitting and waiting for the carp to come to me. I was enjoying the day and with no radio on I was still free from the historical event that was unfolding in the real world. It was 6.50pm when my attention was caught by a single bleep from one of my delkims . I looked at the rods just as the left hand rod flew off. A carp had picked up one of my margin fished baits in front of the eagle and bolted for open water!. The fight was a cracker with no weed to get stuck in and the carp made several determined runs in a fruitless attempt to evade my landing net. The runs became shorter until eventually I slipped the net under a nice mirror, it wasn’t one of the bigger main lake fish and the scales revealed a weight of 15lb 8oz. Although it wasn’t a biggie, it was the first fish that had been out for a few days and its capture put the icing on the cake of a good days fishing for me. 15lb 8oz Mirror from Capesthorne Main Lake 06/09/1997 A new pb common from the top pool and a nice mirror from the main lake later on was a great result and I was rightfully pleased with the day I’d just had, in fact I may have been the only person who was grinning from ear to ear on that famous day!. Tight Lines Mark.

Posted on August 3, 2008 Filed Under Fish, Fishing, Fishing Diary, Fishing Report | Leave a Comment