CLANWILLIAM DAM BASS FISHING
The annual Clanwilliam Winter Bass Classic in the foothills of the Cederberg is for serious anglers who don’t believe in luck. Okay, maybe just a little bit…
“Everyone talks at a hundred kilometres per hour and everyone is convinced they know best. It’s a jolly affair: Tall tales and dangerouslooking doubles do the rounds…”
Afull moon shines in the cold August night above the Cederberg mountains. Hardly a leaf stirs in Clanwilliam down below, and the moonlight shimmers silver on the still, black water of Clanwilliam Dam.
At De Kelder Restaurant, not far from the dam, fishermen are talking fishing like a group of stockbrokers analysing the day’s market data. “Look at the moon… Mmm, promising,” says one. “Nope. The dam is too full. The water is too cold. But you never know,” says another.
For now, the bass are lurking in the nooks and crannies of the dam, in the shallow, muddy water that they enjoy. Tomorrow, lines will be cast and fish will be caught. Well, that’s the plan at least.
There are about 60 enthusiastic anglers gathered at De Kelder to register for the annual Clanwilliam Winter Bass Classic, which was first held in 1989. Don’t confuse the Winter Bass Classic with the Summer
Bass Classic – both tournaments are held at Clanwilliam Dam, but the winter tournament draws more experienced fishermen. Most of the participants are professionals with national colours in the sport.
I hardly know anything about fishing, but the registration process is similar to a running or cycling event except that there’s a stocked bar next to the table where you tick off your name. The participants are already dressed in the caps and shirts they’ll wear tomorrow, all bearing logos of different fishing brands: Rapalla, Bassing, Varkenelli Customs, Humminbird, Yamaha, Berkley... One guy has a tattoo of an unidentifiable fish on his forearm. Everyone talks at a hundred kilometres per hour and everyone is convinced they know best. It’s a jolly affair: Tall tales and dangerous-looking doubles do the rounds, especially when bids open for the “pole position” – the team that will go out first to lay claim to the best fishing spot on the dam. (It’s bad form to invade another angler’s territory.) The highest bid is R1 500 and the guy who wins looks chuffed.
All the teams are out on the water early the next morning, despite the previous night’s celebrations. I park at Clanwilliam Dam Resort next to a bunch of 4x4 bakkies. There’s still no wind and the sky is clear and blue. HQ for this year’s Classic is a small caravan with a few gazebos around it. The caravan has a fold-out table with a weighing scale – the first stop for participants when they touch dry land. A fish’s weight is logged on a computer under the team’s name and the results are displayed on a big screen on the back of the caravan – all in real time. It may sound simple, but it’s not. Teams have to decide whether they will enter their top catch for the biggest fish prize, or bank it for the bag prize, where the weight of your two biggest fish are combined. It’s one or the other; you can’t have the same fish in both categories. The heaviest fish wins R10 000; the bag prize is R20 000. Turns out fishing is not just about patience and discipline, but also intrigue – The Bold, the Bass and the Beautiful. The weight of the biggest fish is written in black marker on a white board on the side of the caravan. The weight of the heaviest fish caught during last year’s tournament is still visible – a hefty 3,4 kg. The heaviest bass ever caught in South Africa weighed more than 5 kg. It was caught in Theewaterskloof Dam, but many consider Clanwilliam Dam to be the best place for bass fishing in the country. “It’s still early in the game,” says Jacques Aproskie, manager of the national junior bass fishing team, when I ask whether anyone has weighed in a fish yet. It’s 9 am and most of the teams have been on the water for about two hours. There’s still two days of fishing ahead. Jacques is responsible for weighing the fish for the duration of the tournament, and ensuring that everyone sticks to the rules.
The only thing that requires more patience than fishing is watching other people fish. The boats circle the dam like sharks and every now and then a fishing rod swishes through the air, but no one has brought their catch ashore yet. Most teams are probably fishing closer to where the Olifants River flows into the dam – in the south-east. That’s according to Luke Pelser (15) from Stanford and Ethan Elinhorn (15) from Tableview, both of whom are members of the national junior fishing team. They’re lending a hand with small tasks this weekend, like putting the weighed fish in oxygen-rich water tanks to get their strength up before they’re released. All the bass caught during the tournament are returned to the dam.
Ethan and Luke are as passionate about dams as surfers are about waves. They know the fishing waters around their home towns intimately, and when they visit each other they like to trade secrets. The older fishermen
aren’t as generous.
You need specialised gear to fish for bass. A fishing rod, yes, but also a boat, a trailer, and a vehicle that can tow the trailer and the boat. Some people will say that all you need is a hook, bait and a little luck, but that’s like saying you can run the Comrades in flip-flops. It’s possible, of course, but you won’t get the result you’re after.
Hayden Poulter from Knysna, a participant in this year’s event and a semi-professional angler, says like any sport, it’s up to you to decide how much you’re willing to spend on equipment. Hayden and his teammate Brendan Gravenor from Gauteng are fishing from a Thunderbird boat with a 200-horsepower V-Max engine – it looks like a Formula 1 racing car without wheels. Their team is called Spro Outdoors 360, and they use Falcon fishing rods and fluorocarbon line. Most of their gear comes from the
US or Japan.
Luck is a swear word to a professional angler. It usually takes about five years to earn your national colours for bass fishing, and during that time you have to consistently rank among the best in the country. “Anyone can catch a fish once, but it takes talent to do so consistently over five years,” says Jacques, the manager of the junior national team.
“Our laaities are doing well – there are some juniors that are giving the older guys a run for their money.”
Bass fishing is more cat-and-mouse than other types of fishing because you use a lure. “You have to outwit the fish,” says Jacques. “Sometimes a lure will hang in the water for 10 minutes and the fish will only look at it. That’s when you start to stress.”
According to Hayden it all comes down to experience and skill, but he doesn’t disregard luck, which sometimes makes you a winner. “You have to make the right choices, fish in the best spots, and not lose an important fish on the line,” he says. “The top five anglers at the tournaments are usually the same guys each time.”
The fishing conditions are tough today – the first day of the tournament – judging by the jokes and complaints flying through the air. “You know what they say, ‘One is better than none’,” I hear one guy grumble. “We should’ve gone straight to our normal spot…” and “We should have stuck to golf!”
Rian Aproskie, Jacques’s teenage son, is releasing the bass in the tanks. He calls me over to take a photo of a fish before he lets it go. “This could be the winner,” he says. It does look slightly bigger than the others in the tank… He lets the muddy fish slip from his hands like a bar of soap in a dirty bath. The bass looks at us for a second, then sinks away. They seem pretty chilled – the only time they kick up a fuss is when they’re being weighed. The fish caught today are small in size and number, but it’s still early in the competition, as Jacques said. Most of the participants head to De Kelder to talk about the day’s catch, or lack thereof, but I’m tired and my skin and eyes are red. I wasn’t even on the water! On the way home, I pass a gazebo where the anglers stand with arms crossed, looking at the day’s results on the big screen. Journey blares from the speakers: “Do-o-o-n’t stop believin’!”
Everyone is having a hard time this weekend: The Old Boys, Swarries, the Dopskiet team, Team Vega Sandveld Aartappels… As semi-pro Hayden said, when one team struggles, everyone struggles, and the best team will win in the end.
The second day of the tournament can be summed up in one word: disappointing. There are moments of intrigue when the teams have to decide which category to enter their biggest fish into, but like organiser Vincent de Boer says later at the prize-giving ceremony: “It was one of the most difficult days I’ve ever experienced on the water. Luckily it’s still fun to ride around in the boat.”
The biggest fish weighs in at 2,4 kg, and the R10K prize goes to Rowan Timmer and Greg Schluep from Team Varkenelli. The bag prize – a combined weight of 5,2 kg and R20K – goes to Hayden and Brendan from Spro Outdoors 360. “We were lucky to catch one big fish early on the first day,” says Hayden, and I smile about his use of the word “lucky”.
“It’s not difficult to fish for eight or ten hours per day,” he says when I ask how he keeps busy on the water when the fish aren’t biting. “You just move to another spot and make a plan.”
Luck, patience, discipline, disappointment, determination… It’s all part of the bigger game of life. Hayden knows: If you wait patiently, there will be many more fish to catch.
For more information about the tournament, search for “Clanwilliam Winter Bass Classic” on Facebook. The date for this year’s tournament hasn’t been confirmed, but it will probably take place in August. To enter, visit weighmasters.net – it costs R1 800 per team.