Stuart Blesovsky (above) with a beautiful tiger caught in Pongolapoort Dam and (below) with the 4.9kg tiger that took second place at the 2009 Tigerfish Bonanza.
NETTING Once the fish is subdued and is close to the boat we are in a position to net it. Netting is the one area where we often witness fish being lost. We see the net man wildly thrashing the water making failed attempts to get the fish into the net while the angler tries to force the fish into the net. Before you know it the hooks fall out and the tiger escapes, leaving an extremely frustrated angler. We keep the net out of the water until the angler has presented the fish leaning on one side and on the surface. With a nice fluid motion the net man comes under the fish with the net and scoops it out the water. After you’ve netted the fish remove the hooks, weigh the fish — making sure not to damage the gill plates, take one or two photos and place the tiger gently back into the water. If necessary revive it by putting the boat in gear, holding the fish upright in the water with its head facing forward and allow the water to run over its gills. Wait until she’s fully recovered — often indicated by a swish of the tail — and let her go. TACKLE Our preferred setup is to use light sticks and coffee grinders with a bait-running facility loaded with 8- to 10 lb monofilament (we like orange mono) attached directly to the trace with no leader.
quiet and the morning purple patch is finished or if our chosen fishing spot is clustered with boats and is noisy, then we try to find a quiet spot, often in the middle of the main dam. There we’ll fish with bait on floats positioned at various depths and sards on the bottom. While on anchor we make sure that we chum consistently. We run a dry boat — well for the morning session anyway — because we’re serious about landing decent fish and we find that we lose the edge when consuming alcohol in the hot sun. 62 • SKI-BOAT January/February 2016
TRACE SET UP Our trace consists of no 3 wire between the hooks and about 15cm of no 1 wire from the hooks to a no 6 power swivel or smaller. Our hooks of choice are two no 8 red Owner trebles — one through the bait’s nose and the other just in front of the caudal fin. These are extremely sharp and fairly durable, but you’ll still have to discard and replace them regularly. We attach a 1/8th oz. barrel sinker to the mainline, and more recently we’ve used a drop shot 1/8 head with two trebles attached. The dam has been extremely low this past season and a lot of activity has been on Rapalas, sardines and fillets. As I mentioned earlier, a variety of methods work for catching tigers and this is perfectly illustrated when we look at the baits and lures which caught the top four fish — all over 4.5kg — at the 2015 Tigerfish Bonanza at Jozini. The first placed fish was caught on a live tilapia, the second on a sardine, the third on a Jap mac fillet and the fourth on a Rapala. The Effzett spinner has always been a successful lure at Jozini, and although it mainly produces smaller fish of 2-3kg in the dam, it has landed some monsters on the upper Zambezi.