Brief accounts of day trips we had during 2018. Typically to places that are less than 2 hours drive from our home in Centurion.
06 November – Riverside Lodge
Friends of ours recently went fishing at Riverside Lodge near Loskop Dam, Groblersdal. They left their rods out to go have dinner and when they returned this is what they saw.
A Mozambique spitting cobra decided their rods would make a great vantage point. Not exactly what you want to see late at night. The owners were called and the snake was safely relocated.
Have any of you ever seen this before?
06 October – Bronkhorstspruit dam
So we visited Bronkhorstspruit Dam over the weekend and decided to have a little competition where I would be fishing exclusively with a ned rig (links below) and Linky basically fished with any kind of fluke she wanted. Despite it being a tough day for bass (only 8) the competition turned out being a lot of fun, and something we’ll be repeating in future.
We ended up spending the night at a place called Dam Adventure and Relax which is inside the Kungwini estate but the house itself isn’t near the water. However it’s perfect for a relaxing overnight stay after a long day’s fishing. We highly recommend it.
We also made a quick video of the bass challenge, have a look…
Here’s some info on the ned rig for those interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9AQJxtj2Uc&t=282s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pebRYVzf-xw&t=430s
02 October – Rietvlei dam
Another less than awesome week at Rietvlei but they do seem more active.. I caught two and again enjoyed a spectacular sunset. Please excuse the photos, it’s hard not to try and be a bit artsy when you are faced with such beauty 
18 September – Rietvlei dam
The bass are still a bit shy at Rietvlei. I got two but they definitely haven’t quite awoken from their winter slumber just yet. To be fair the water probably hasn’t warmed up enough and the fact that the chalets are off-limits hasn’t helped either. But we’ll keep trying…
It’s always a nice outing though, especially after a tough day at work 🙂
05 September – Rietvlei dam
We had another average session at Rietvlei Dam on Wednesday night. Again I caught only 1 decent bass and nothing else. We also saw a hippo again chomping away at some grass at the island spot.
So the fishing wasn’t spectacular, but at least the sunset was.
30 August – Rietvlei Dam
Our first session of the bass season at Rietvlei Dam was quite eventful. I caught one nice bass near the island spot, but otherwise it was very quiet, not even another nibble.
Then we spotted a hippo cruising around (near island) so we decided to move along. We then saw a second larger hippo in the “sloep”. We’ve never seen them there before, it’s quite unusual, something is definitely different this year. Suffice to say we won’t be wading at Rietvlei for a while 🙂
15 April – Willow Waters – Muldersdrift
Second time we’ve been to this place but this time we had the carp gear as well, previously we only tried for bass. Caught many small carp and kurper in the main dam, nothing over 500g though, there were large schools of blue kurper everywhere.
We only spent 10min trying for bass at the upper dams and caught one medium sized one. Unfortunately at this point a storm picked up and we left abruptly.
It’s in the Cradle of Humankind area next to the cycle route. Overnight camping is available but no other accommodation options yet. Nice place, worth a try at R50 pppd.
