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Inanda Dam - 28 Oct 2017
Falling Dam Levels and Tough Fishing -
Decided to take a timeout for a few hours and headed to the Ol' Dragon yesterday, but as I snaked down the winding 600m descent to the dam, I could not believe my eyes to see how low the dam is. I find it amazing how we could have had such horrific floods just a few kilometers from the dam, and yet the dam received nothing from that, so sad. None of the slipways are usable, but thank goodness there is still the 'sandy launch' in Tillapia Bay, but that is not going to last long as we are only a few meters from the vertical drop.
Having not fished for some time, and not being one for bank bashing, to my own detriment I confess, I decided on a 30-35ft depth range trolling a DD22 and a DLN as I wanted to cover a lot of water quickly looking for bass I could also target with drop shot. As the water level is down 27ft, I was now looking at the 57-62ft contours on my chart, boy oh boy was it quiet. A DD22 typically trolls at a depth of 27ft on 30Lb PowerPro at 160ft behind the boat at a speed between 5-6kph, and the DLN around 17ft. With a light dash of WD40 you can squeeze an extra couple of feet out of these lures depth wise. Other than the lonely arch seen below, this is about as exciting as this depth range got, with not even a chase. A chase can be seen on the rod tip as the pressure is released slightly when a fish is following the lure closely. These fish can be triggered into a bight by quickly speeding up, or giving the rod a quick jerk if it is not in the rod holder.
Next step was the 20ft range back along the same area, so I kept the DLN and changed the DD22 for a Bomber F.F Fingerling which runs at around 13ft with some WD40. Within minutes I passed over an old path with a shallow channel* feeding into what used to be a 'bait hotspot' back when it had water, there they were, two fish at 22ft, still a few feet below my DLN, but I was sure they would come after it, and they did. Unfortunately not big fish at around 3lb, but I was happy to get a bite and land my first fish for the day.
* - The chart shows the Mosaic on the left and the Sediment on the right.
After that, it went quiet again, so I went a little shallower until I came across this strange showing with an arch right on top it, and bang, the shallower crank was on and as I was reeling in, the DLN also started to click on the ratchet. This was an undersized fish and thus quickly went to the DLN, there was no fight so I was pretty sure it was not a fish, and there it was, weeds on the crank. So that solved the mystery of what that showing was, but what was strange is that it was quite deep for the water quality, and so sparse, just this one little clump in the middle of nowhere.
Now I was on to something, 20ft and patches of oxygen type weed. Within minutes I found another two small patches of it near little humps, with fish on it resulting in a double up, both fish were just size, but it was fun anyway. Then another bigger patch of weed with a lot of fish around it, time to drop shot!
Rolling up on the spot with Elite12Ti, HDS9 Gen3 and drop shot rig in hand ...
The spot turned out to be great fun, dropping into them for about half an hour, but all fish were undersized, unfortunately. All of a sudden it just went dead, as if a switch was flipped ...
While circling around the area looking for these fish, I found the reason why the 'bite-sized' fish had disappeared ...
I immediately dropped my finesse bait down on him, but he was not interested. If I was trolling past with a DLN at that time it might have been a different story, or someone with better fishing skills than myself might have got into this dog.
Conclusion -
As much as I would like to give my charts credit for every success, this is just not possible, and I have to keep reminding myself that charts are just one tool, a very good tool, but still only one tool out of many.
The star yesterday was good sonar, the DownScan was the main contributor showing the weeds clearly. It also helped when I got my DLN snagged in them to help identify exactly what it was.
All in all, I had good fun yesterday, and look forward to the next time I get a chance to go fishing.
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