Sunday morning was the much anticipated NFFC club day and I climbed out of bed at 5am. Nick met me at Plantations at 5:30am and we were soon joined by Hans who had requested to fish with us at Pump Dam. Hans was kind enough to offer to drive so we climbed into his Fortuna and headed for the Drakensberg eager to catch some fish.
Things however got off to a rocky start. The first mistake was me realising I’d left my R70 drinks at home and needed to stop off at yet another garage to purchase more. This however was soon forgotten when we can to a complete standstill on the N3. We’re still not exactly sure what happened but, from the looks of things, a truck had possibly jack-knifed and the road was completely blocked.
The policed seemed to care little and had not bothered to divert traffic off the highway. Thankfully we were close to an onramp and managed to weave through a few trucks and headed up the onramp to continue our journey on the back roads.
By this stage the rain was pouring down and the weather service were kind enough to tell us it would only get worse. Thankfully it eased off a little and we kitted up at a beautiful Pump Dam in just a minor drizzle.
Once on the water Nick and Hans headed for the dam wall while I elected to fish the inlet. Things were quiet with no sign of fish on the surface and I wondered if Nick and Hans were having more luck in the deeper water? And then, just as I started kicking towards the wall, I got into a small 12″ rainbow trout.
With the pressure of blanking off I continued fishing my way to Nick and Hans who had unfortunately not landed anything. There was however some surface action around so we continued fishing until we realised that none of us had eaten breakfast.
We snacked on boerewors rolls while we watched twenty or so cormorants fly overhead eyeing out our tasty fish. We then headed back onto the water for a second session which was sadly very unproductive with no fish coming out. At around 11am Nick and I headed for the bank where we chilled in the moment of sun and chatted to a few of the other committee members who’d popped around to see how things were going.
Hans continued to fish the water hard right up to 12pm when we needed to head over to Boomy for the lunch. Sadly his hard work was not rewarded so we left the dam with just the one fish between the three of us.
Upon arriving at Boomy and chatting to the other 20 fishermen who’d taken part in the day we soon found out that only two fish had come out the entire morning. Clearly the one fish that we’d landed was a blessing in disguise.
We chilled under a tree (nestled around a cooler box) drinking beer as the heavens opened and doused us almighty rain accompanied by lightning. Most of the members called it a day and headed for home while a few of us die-hards opened a bottle of Old Brown Sherry and shared a single goblet, enjoying the ensuing chaos around us.
Eventually, with the OBS finished, we decided enough was enough and packed it in. On route home we stopped off at Wildfly where we grabbed a few odds and ends. The weather amazingly passed and the sun once again popped out, but we were already on route home and so we continued the journey.
It had been a fantastic morning and I thoroughly enjoyed fishing a new water. Although only the one fish came out it looked like it had a lot of potential and is definitely worth another visit. It’s sad that the weather cut our member’s days short, but the turnout was good and hopefully we’ll put together another event soon.
