Pure Fishing not only brings tackle to the anglers of Southern Africa, but they have ambassadors who put the equipment through its phases to ensure that only the best equipment is put on the market. Now what better place is there to take a few of your bass ambassadors to then Letsibogo at this stage of the game? This is also the way Pure Fishing says thanks to their ambassadors that put in the time and effort, by rewarding them with trips like these.
This trip took some decent planning and a lot of home work was done by the team that was put together, the Team Consisted of James Roberts, Hennie Naude, Dexter Grewcock, Stephen Williams and Francois Pretorius. Our host was Ig Cordier from Wildsky Adventures who organized our accommodation and boats to fish from.
We left for Botswana on the 29 July 2015 for a full weeks fishing and believe me when I tell you that the road to Botswana goes by in no time when you have a bunch of good guys in one vehicle making the best of the eight hour journey to Letsibogo. We were loaded and ready to take on the promise of new PB’s all around. On arrival we unpacked and started sorting out the tackle and setting up so that we could get at least 2 hours fishing in before sunset. As luck had it a cold front set in and the water temperature went from 19 degrees to 16 degrees meaning absolutely no bites on the first day. As you can think this put the teams motivation right down, because traveling this far and hitting bad wheatear and conditions makes any fishermen’s knees buckle.
By day three the wheatear started stabilizing but the water temperature staid the same, a slight breeze came up and we started fishing very hard, covering as much water as possible in search of the areas that held the fish. Francois and James paired up on a boat on the third day and worked as much of the structure in and around the “ Koppies “ close to the dam wall side, after about 3 hours out on the water Francois hit into what felt like a snag at first but when the snag started fighting back we knew that this was a big fish, after pulling it out from the snags and into the open water with the new Berkley Iron Silk 20lb on the Abu Garcia Veritas II rod and Abu Garcia Orra SX reel. After landing the fish it weighed in at 4.68kg and Francois’s new PB. While Francois was still releasing his catch James made a cast and hooked in to what would be the biggest fish for our trip a giant of 5kg and also James’s new PB. On the same day Dexter managed to land his PB of 4.34kg.
Day 4 ended up being another very difficult day of fishing as a very strong wind was blowing and the fish moved from the areas where we located them the previous few days, we were forced to move upwards and into the river inflows on the last day, this was to be the best day of fishing of the whole trip, were we landed fish after fish in the 3kg+ range, what an absolute pleasure this was, on this day Stephen and Hennie both Managed to land fish over 4,5kg each putting smiles on the whole teams faces. The fish did not want anything to do with plastic baits on this trip, which Letsibogo is actually known for, they were all suspending and the magic lure was the Sebile flat shad in Gold Shiner and the Sebile Cranckster in Gold Shiner, all the fish were caught on these lures.
This was a trip of a lifetime and the journey back home was a pleasant one with lots of stories and photos to share with our friends and family, and of course PB’s all-around just like we prayed for on our way to Letsi………
