Vaal Dam Carp Fishing - The Carp Nursery School. Yellowfish & Muddies Galore!

Very Small Orange River MudfishSo myself and Gavin Erwin drove to the Vaal Dam on Friday afternoon after work. We intended to fish a different spot this time, the place was next door to Island Shores (UJ), it is actually on the property of Island Shores. We arrived there at 17h20; it was 91kms from Edenvale. The place was beautiful, besides the fact that it had been vandalized and was completely run down. This area must of had about 3kms of shoreline to choose from. We picked a spot and setup camp. We then set up our Carp rods. A few minutes later we were both onto our first fish. I landed a Smallmouth Yellowfish and Gavin got a nice little Mirror Carp. A good start. We then rowed out our Barbel lines and waited. Throughout the night, up until about 1am when we went to sleep, we continued to land juvenile fish in superb condition. We did go to this venue expecting big Carp, but we had so much fun catching the juveniles. It just shows you that these large specimens we as freshwater anglers like to target have to start off somewhere. We had a long conversation about this and about how many anglers would get angry or neglect the fact that the fish they were catching were too small. Its a shame some people think this way and take it for granted.

Gavin Erwin's 5kg barbel at UJ - Island ShoresSaturday morning I was up and quickly landed a few Mudfish. Then we were onto the fish. We were delighted to see such a healthy population of Yellowfish and juvenile Carp, as well as Mudfish. My favourite catch of the weekend was actually a Mudfish that barely covered the palm of my hand, an absolute beauty (Pictured above)! I got a very nice little Ghost Carp which still had a bit of pigment on his scales. It was lovely to be out in this natural environment with birds and insects all around us. The bank eventually got quite full during the day but many anglers left before dark. Gavin caught a beautiful Smallmouth Yellowfish and an awesome Mudfish, and we continued to catch and release the 'nursery fish' throughout the day. Then, just after we had had an awesome chicken and wors wood braai, Gavin's Barbel rod ran, FINALLY, after giving a good account of itself he was landed; a lovely +/- 5kg fish. We caught a few more fish after this and called it a night.

2 Carp on the same traceWe woke up the next morning with a target in mind before we went home: 100 fish. We started off Sunday morning on 46. We were in the zone and we were catching Yellowfish after Yellowfish with Mudfish and Carp every now and then. Gavin then had the genius idea of rather wading out and fishing light tackle in the deep water with just a normal bottom trace. We had great fun fighting the Muddies, Yellows and Carp here... Then we went back to the bank after some good fun and when our mielie bomb finally ran out we hit the 90 mark. 90 Fish in a weekend is pretty good fishing to me and all in all we were happy and had a great weekend!

Total Fish - 90
Barbel - 1
Common Carp - 24
Ghost Carp - 1
Mirror Carp - 10
Mudfish - 11
Smallmouth Yellowfish - 43

The baits that produced were: Plain Sweet Dough, Almond Mielies, Sweet Corn.
We were using a Vaal Dam mixed with Plain Supercast mielie bomb.
Dips that were tried and successful: Tjop Tjop, Banana Essence, Almond "S"