And so it began. At the end of September 2019 I asked Henning whether he ever considered doing competitions at Vosrite. He posted on social media to see if there was any interest and two days later we established Vosrite Fishing Angling Club. And here we are after many hours of planning and preparation the first competition kicked off on 25 January 2020.
Unfortunately two of our members had to cancel a few days before the competition due to work commitments and we “sourced” two visitors to join us in the Extreme Angler team. Our first competing anglers were: Henning Vosloo, Johan Fourie, Shane McAuliff, Leandra & Cobus Mouton, Thys Wilken, Mariette Bodenstein (visitor) and Bennie Smith (visitor). R1500 was up for grabs this weekend: Most Points R300, Heaviest big mouth R200, Heaviest 3+ specie R300 and Mystery pool was for heaviest muddie R700.
We were super excited even though the weather predicted rain for most of the weekend. All of us were at the Manapools campsite Friday night ready to meet our new angling friends and we braaid in the rain getting to know each other better.
Saturday morning at five the camp slowly woke up and we got ready for action. It started raining again and it was a bit chilli for this time of the year. At seven the lines were casted in and it was on! The very first Vosrite Angling completion started. Today we will catch our first catch for Vosrite. Today we set the first records. Today the first winners for Vosrite are determined. Today is here.
Much to our surprise and completely un-predicted by most weather apps it stopped raining shortly after eight and about an hour later the clouds started clearing. I started our Potjie early for late lunch.
Most of us had a similar game plan: go shallow with one rod and target Muddies and Yellow and the other rod target the carp in the deeper water.
Shane caught the first yellow, but unlucky for him it was just under size. Mariette caught the first Vosrite fish that counted as points and it was a catfish weighing 250g. We could see very quickly that we will need to work for the fish today, they were quiet and the shallow rods did not deliver the first while so we started changing game plans and most of us went deeper.
Thys kicked of with a muddie of 2.09kg setting the bar for mystery pool. Things started happening for some of us but most struggled to get the fish on the bite. Later that day Henning caught a competing muddie, but alas he was short my 3g at 2.06kg. Thys kept the heaviest muddie for this weekend.
Thys and I started doing a bit better and Henning also caught a few. The other anglers was not deterred. In true club vision we shared with each other what is working for us and they tried endlessly to get the fish on the hooks. This determination was awesome to see and I can already see: we are going to be an great team competing this year… and hopefully many more years. Everyone stayed positive and worked hard.
Leandra, sitting on the far left caught very small yellows. Cobus helped her and started rowing in for her to target catfish as most fish coming out was catfish and they were on the other side of the river. She ended up with two catfish weighing 4.63kg and 3.4kg. Most other competitors also started getting a few catfish.
Thys, Bennie and Henning each got a carp and Thys also managed to get the only big mouth yellow (that was size) of 440g.
We ate some potjie at about 17:00. Henning had to excuse himself from the competition and most of us carried on fishing until 11:00. We were all tired and went to bed.
The next morning it was time to calculate the results! In total we caught 30 fish weighing 70.53kg. Here are the winners for most points:
3rd Place: Henning – 4 fish, 11.39kg and 141.75 points
2nd place: Johan – 9 fish, 18.97kg and 184.85 points
1st place: Thys – 7 fish, 15.88kg and 228.6 points
Thys also managed to win all three other prizes for the weekend. Well done Thys! He started doing homework days before the competition and watching Loutjie Louwies episodes at Vosrite and it paid off for him! Thys: You are our first Vosrite winner and you did it in style taking all the prizes! Congratulations. You’ve set the pace and now we are here to chase you buddy 🙂
What worked for us?
3rd place Henning: Tutti Frutti + Spitfire, SWG float at bottom with dough and top SWG float, Carp. Tjop Tjop + Mystic Spice, SWG float at bottom and dough, lost the fish. Loodewyk + Tokkilossie with dough on the hooksr, muddie. Raptor + Jinx. SWG floats on hooks, Yellow fish.
2nd place Johan: “Four hours into the competition not getting a bite I had to change my game plan. I almost never fish with worms so I thought: Well now might be the time. I took the new LLSS Why not floats, pushed it through the hook onto the line then hooked a spring worm. I then set the float on top of the worm on the hook’s eye and casting in about 80m or more . For a while I thought I used Spitfire and Krismis, only to find out later I mistakenly took the Tokkelossie bottle instead of the the Krismis, so much to my surprise Tokkelossie and Spitfire worked the best for me. I only managed to catch catfish, but hey, at least I got a few.”
1st place Thys: “I caught muddies on DKW floats with SWD and Tokkelossie + Loodewyk between 40 to 50m. I caught my carp with SWDand sweetcorn backing, with Sweetcorn + Spitfire on the bol between 80 and 90m. I got a catfish on a slug and hemp seed oil at about 80m, and another on oozing garlic floats and dough, with Garlic + Raptor on the bol.”
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved in making our first competition a success and I’m looking forward to many more. Thank you Liezel for taking most of our pics and recording most catches on the weigh in records.
The competition stats
Our biggest catches for the weekend
Extreme Anglers yearly points
The next Vosrite competition will be held by the Kingfisher team shortly, and we will place another blog about how that weekend transpired. Good luck & tight lines team Kingfisher. Break our records so we have something to break and chase next competition!
