Veterans brings Biermans Vaaldam to life

Report by: Werner Lubbe

The Veterans is still a relatively new division for older (or shall I say more mature) anglers of 60 years and older – proving once again that fishing keeps you young!

In the A Division fished at Biermans, Vaaldam, the Central-Gauteng team did extremely well to end in second place overall; they also delivered the Victor Ludorum, 3rd Individual, Most Fish and the Heaviest Bag. On day three they made up 23 points, but still required 2 more points to take the gold from the well-deserving winners, Gauteng-North. The extremely successful championship tournament was fished in good spirit and ended on a high note.

2019 Veteran Champion Gordon Muir

Champion Gordon Muir says he fished a very simple plan, not changing from the training days right through to the last day. The principle was to strike the balance between sizeable fish and quantity. He realized that the fish were moving so each day he fished the borders of the area they were roaming in. To keep the interest of the feeding fish, he changed between dark red (Lootie) and fluoro (FX) as one of the callers on the ball. He believes in the principle of a sacrificial system, hence fishes 10lb mainline with 7lb hooklengths, in order to only lose a hook when getting stuck.

The rest of the plan was standard and summarised as follows:
Distance: 55 & 85m
Trace: Sliding Rietvlei, 30cm with 11cm, 7lb XX hooklengths and #1 hooks and a M1 or 1.5 weight.
Hookbaits: Vampire Float with Sweet White Dough, Single Worm with or without SWD, and a single plain yellow float.
Groundbait: Boulyn
Dip combos: 1 – Yellow Activator, FX and Banjo; 2 – Perdeby, Legend and FX or Lootie.

The third place individual Dirk Lourens also shared his plan:

Dirk decided to fish the inside nucleus of the roaming area, only spreading his two rods by a mere 5 meters. He made his groundbait in the morning before leaving and used some chick-chick in his feed. He started off with a smaller hook, in the mornings but changed at around 10:00 in anticipation of the bigger muddies that came in. He maintained a high workrate and persisted by changing every 8 minutes if he did not get a bite. He had his full quota of yellowfish everyday, and just worked through them when they came in. Maintaining enough groundbait introduction, the carp and muddies drove them away.

His plan is summarized as follows:
Distance: 60 & 65m
Trace: Sliding Rietvlei, 36cm (so that top hook can be slightly further away) with 11cm, 7lb green XX hooklengths and #8 & 9 Ryoichi hooks and a M0 weight.
Hookbaits: White Vampire Float and a single Yellow Float, softly flavoured with Juana. (He sprays a bit of Juana on a piece of cardboard and inserts it into the container, to keep the flavour soft)
Groundbait: Boulyn, with some chick-chick (5:2)
Dip combos: 1 – Devils Fork & Perdeby; 2 – Duiwelsdrek & Petite Janine Perdeby.