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Zimbabwe Winter Fishing

Zim man

By Zim man
in Saltwater

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Zim man Newbie

Zim man

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Hi All

I thought I would share some pics and stories of my fishing trips that I did in June last year when I visited my folks in Zimbabwe.

June is dead of winter in Zimbabwe and the night time temp frequently drops to 0 degrees. The days are more forgiving going up to around 20-25 degrees. My brother, my old man and I went to fish a mate’s farm dam which was about 30 minutes down the road. It was pretty cold when we got to the dam, but at least it was calm with hardly any wind.

This is a picture of the dam when you arrive at it. It stretches for about 1km.

Image: [img size=(01-500)]http://www.searingtackle.com.au/AFO/banksdam.jpg

The owner is fishing mad and when the dam is low he places new structures everywhere for when the dam fills up again. His wife is crazy about birds, so he also has a lot of structures made around his dam to encourage ducks and geese and fish eagles to live there.

We launched the boat and started fishing. Our expectations were not that high because the water was dropping very quickly and the water was exceptionally cold. We were fishing for largemouth bass. They were introduced into Zimbabwe and South Africa in the 1890's and have spread to most rivers and dams. I started to throw a lipless crankbait, we were using Berkley frenzies and strike king red eye shads. Within 5 minutes I had caught my first fish, a bass of about 2kg. the next 5 hours we caught between 20 and 30 fish each, most average 1.5kgs with a few peaking at 2.5kg. The dams larger fish were decimated when a pack of otters moved in a few years ago and ate his larger fish. The farmer has a small game farm around his dam and some ostriches came down to feed on the weed in the shallows. I caught a bass from a cast I made to one of the ostriches.

Image: [img size=(01-500)]http://www.searingtackle.com.au/AFO/ostrich.jpg

Here is a pic of my brother and old man with some of the bass we caught. All the fish were released at the end of the day.

Image: [img size=(01-500)]http://www.searingtackle.com.au/AFO/4bass.jpg

Here is a pic of another bass that my brother got on frenzy. By the way I recommend changing the frenzy hooks as they tend to bend easily.

Image: [img size=(01-500)]http://www.searingtackle.com.au/AFO/mikebass.jpg

A week later we went to fish another dam about 150 km away. This dam is not fished too often due to the troubles in Zimbabwe. This dam called biri has bass in it as well but unlike other dams that I usually fish, the bass do not rule this dam. Tiger-fish are the dominant species and it was common to catch bass with chunks of flesh missing on it or with half a tail. The teeth of the tiger fish and their speed make short work of most fish. We lost numerous large tigerfish and caught mainly smaller ones. They were not interested in lures that had leaders and we ended losing about 15 spinnerbaits. Here is a pic of a smaller tigerfish

Image: [img size=(01-500)]http://www.searingtackle.com.au/AFO/tigerfish.jpg

The dam also has a large population of crocodiles that show no fear of people. This one was about 11 feet long. It was in an area that people are known to have died from croc attacks

Image: [img size=(01-500)]http://www.searingtackle.com.au/AFO/croc.jpg

We got to within 3 metres of him before he calmly went into the water. We caught tigerfish, bass and another fish called a Robbie or nembwe. It is a type of predatory bream that is often caught while bass fishing.

Image: [img size=(01-500)]http://www.searingtackle.com.au/AFO/mikerobbie.jpg

We caught the fish on hardbody in about 3 metres of water or less, as well as on spinnerbaits. With the opportunity to catch tigerfish , we put away the soft plastics and used spinnerbaits and hardbodies to cover more water quicker.

I ended up fishing about 3 times a week during my 4 week visit and luckily I managed to catch decent fish everytime. These 6 pound bass where caught on soft plastics. I got both within 5 minutes of each other and it gave me a 5 fish limit weighing, 18 pounds and pushed me into second place at a local competition.

Image: [img size=(01-500)]http://www.searingtackle.com.au/AFO/basssablepark.jpg

What i learnt from that trip is that i spend too much time taking photos of others peoples fish !! Next report will hopefully have bigger tiger fish in it.

For those who dont know, I am originally from Zimbabwe and I now run Searing Tackle, a new firm that imports Strike King Lures into Australia.

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Angus Rookie

Angus

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Your fish you call Nembwe are what we call Tilapia or Mozambique mouth brooders. As in the Tilapia Cull advertised on the front page.

Aweomse report mate cheers.

I fished a fair bit when i was working in South Africa (in winter as well so I can empathise), but the dams i got to fish were not the home of Large Mouth Bass and only one had tiger fish.

The majority of fish caught where bait fished "bream" (tilapia). Still great fun though. And didnt the workers on the reserve appreciate a big feed of fish brought back for them.

Thanks again for the report mate. Looking forward to putting you onto some Australian Bass.

Angus

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Angus Rookie

Angus

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Nice pics Jayson.

That second picture is the Tiger Fish picture doing the rounds as "Worlds Largest Piranah" hahaha.

Man that thing must have fought. I would love to know how it was caught. I dare say not by convstional methods cosidering a 30cm speciment is enough to give you a serious work out!

Angus

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Zim man Newbie

Zim man

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that second tiger fish is a goliath tiger fish found in the congo. they up to 200 pounds, and have been known to attack small kids playing in the water. They are huge.

We get a seperate sub species. I had a magazine with a an article on how to catch it and it talked about wrapping up a whole bream (1kg) in wire trace ( the african villagers use the cable for changing gears from racing bikes) and hooks and using braid line tied to a barge with a balloon as a float. It was an outrageuos way of fishing.

The nembwe is not the mozambique bream. The only mouth brooders were the mozambique bream and another one called a macracur. The mozambique bream which is known as tilapia in oz is failry agressive and we used small spinners with earthworms for them. The nembwe was an extremely agrresive predator, like a magrove jack but smaller and green. the whole tilapia species is huge. in zimbabwe we had about 10 types of bream. Most of the aquarium tilapias are derived from species of bream from malawai and they have a huge variety of bream. I put them into a tank i once had and they ate all my angel fish etc. i was not amused

thanks for all the comments.

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Zim man Newbie

Zim man

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I would not mind having the skull of the giant tiger fish in an entertainment area. it would be a cool talking piece, probably keep theives away as well.

Hey DEC, whereabouts in zim are you from, the place is so small we are bound to know someone who knows somone who knows us.

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