NEXT LEVEL BASSING: Tactics For Rising Cold Water Levels

WORDS: Guy Paulet IMAGES: Supplied

The chance of winning a boat at a bass fishing competition draws many fisherman whenever such a comp is presented. One such comp was the Amatola Bass Classic at Wriggleswade Dam several years ago that serves as an illustration for this article. The grand prize for the heaviest fish caught over the two-day event was a Bass Maverick S boat complete with Mercury motor and Motorguide trolling motor. I had fished this event multiple times and it was one of my favourite tournaments, having had the privilege of sharing the big fish prize twice before (with the late Olaf Weyl), but this particular year I teamed up with John Rhodes at very short notice and we made the long drive to Wriggleswade, planning our strategy for the weekend as we went along.

We had heard that the water level at Wriggleswade had risen by over two meters the previous week which meant that the playing field should be level, as all those lucky enough to have practiced for the event were likely to have had their plans messed up!

We had to base our strategy on a number of factors. Fast rising water levels that can have a variety of effects on where fish will situate themselves, based on season and position within the dam. Commonly, fish during the spawning period will move into the shallow, flooded vegetation as the water rises but during autumn and winter, fish tend to remain in the same areas as they were living in. A large number of environmental conditions can complicate this over-simplified approach with water clarity and temperature playing a big role as well so locating the fish can be a real challenge. Those fish that do decide to move into new structure are often scattered and hard to pattern.

When it comes to team fishing strategy there are a couple of things to remember:

 Firstly, target big fish: In big-fish tournaments; with two anglers on board and a three-fish bag limit (as is the case at the Amatola Classic), there is not a lot of point in fishing for fish to fill your bag unless you have a real chance of doing well (this will only become apparent after the first day or after conversations with other anglers on the water to find out how everyone is doing!). If you are fishing for a big bite and doing it well, your bag will fill with the right fish. Fishing a junior fluke might get you a lot of bites but you are most likely to catch bigger fish on bigger baits. Reaction baits such as buzzbaits, swimjigs, spinnerbaits and fast falling, heavy pitching baits are a good way to get a bigger bite;

Secondly, target a different depth to your team mate. There is always a chance that a bigger fish is sitting a bit deeper, or a bit farther back in the structure than the majority of fish. It can be really hard to watch you team mate slaying fish while you persist with something different but unless he is catching the “right sized” fish, you don’t want to be using an identical bait. There is always room to refine the pattern and so keep looking for something better.

Other considerations when planning for a tournament include:

• Find warmer water. You would be surprised at how water temperature can vary around a dam. Wind direction, sunrise angle and water colour all play a role in warming some sections of the dam faster than others and these differences can be key;

• Look for deep water access. At this time of year fish like to have deep water nearby and you can find these areas easily with your electronics or by looking on a contour map of the dam.

Wriggleswade’s  prolific weed beds are usually a great place to target but they were sitting under a few feet of water and it was difficult to determine the edge of the weed line. With this in mind, we decided to fish on deeper banks with some rock present. The recent influx of dirty water into the dam also helped us to decide to start in the main dam where the water was a bit cleaner. We quickly got our bag in this area but it didn’t feel like we would catch a large fish and so we decided to move to areas with more stained water that might be warmer than the main lake. After travelling up the main river we noticed that the water was too far back in the newly flooded areas for us to target the kind of structure we were looking for. Knowing that the smaller tributary was much narrower, we headed into the dirty water looking for areas of thick flooded vegetation that had some depth to it.

 By pitching into deeper flooded vegetation we were able to work out what to look for and focus our effort on. The average size of the fish were good enough to keep us confident that we were not wasting our time and that a big bite could come at any time. A number of boats passed through our area but we could see that they were on a slightly different pattern and were confident to spend the rest of our tournament in the same area.

Our bag weight was good enough to finish in 1st Place overall but we just weren’t able to connect with a big enough fish to contest the main big fish prize of the boat. This went to our good friend from the Western Cape, Tom Steward, who managed to catch a fish of 2.075Kg. In a show of true sportsmanship, Tom passed the boat on to his fishing partner and nephew, Scott Buckley!

Primary baits and tackle used by John and myself included a Black Fighting Frog using 20lb Gamma and 1/2oz sinker pitched into thick vegetation, and a 4” Secret Frog on 60lb braid on flats adjacent to deep water.

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