Antonio Rex

22-24 january 2016

Vaal river- weltervrede holiday resort

Weather: slight drizzle with partly sun

On Friday the 22 january 2015 we arrived at a holiday resort on the vaal river, it has all you can ask for including a spa. I could only really fish on the Friday because on Saturday something had changed in the river, it had filled up by more than half a metre and there was reeds and big particles floating along all day and there was a strong current, the strongest I have ever seen in the vaal river. This made it very difficult to put your lines in because if it wasn’t the big particles that caught your line it was the current that took your line all the way to the right. if that hadn’t happened I would have been able to fish all through the weekend.

The Friday after we arrived we set up camp and I decided to start fishing. I only casted my lines in around 6pm that day. On my first cast I put the one in at 100m and the other one at 80m, people there asked me why am I casting to the other side of the river and I told them that something magic is coming. My right line was in about 15 minutes and I got my first run. I landed my first fish and I was glad because it was a decent sized barbel. I re casted and within 10 minutes another barbel had taken my line. I then decided to go up and have supper because it was laate so I casted my line in again and while I was helping with the braai my line ran again, but this time it got stuck so I lost the fish, that was a big lesson that I learnt, never leave your lines in if you aren’t there.

There was a young boy fishing with us and he came to me and said “Antonio what are you using?” so I told him exactly what I was using and I offered him some and before you knew it he had a fish. He is now hooked onto fishing and also onto the escape floatiesfrom magic baits, he even made his father drive to town to go and look for some so he could also say that he was using magic baits and that he owns a little magic baits aswell. He has only gotten into fishing, this being the fitst trip that he has actually fished on. We went to bed on Friday around ten but Saturday there was a surprise : no fishing……. The combo I used worked for me aswell as my friend and that boy.

I only used one combo that weekend.

A rietvlei trace with the top hook removed was the trace I used. On the hook I put two escape floaties with vrm dough as a backing and on the bol I put Xpresso and VRM and this seemed to be the trick there for the barbel.

 Overall I could only fish the Friday, but it was such a joy to help other people and to point them in the magic direction.                                                                                                                                                                            By: Antonio Rex