I decided to fish the MJ Pro Mania which Thys Greyvenstein was hosting at Leeuplaas, Vaal Dam. I recently had the pleasure of fishing the Super Cast Classic there so I had a general idea of how I would prepare and take on the weekends event.
On arrival, I was pleased to see the big names in the industry all taking part. Schalk van Breda, our host Thys Greyvenstein, Alan Groves, Philip van Wyk and Ryno van Gastel, all sponsored by Super Cast and all highly ranked within the national Pro Mania results. Having the pleasure to fish against top quality anglers is a motivating factor itself and it pushes a person to really prepare yourself mentally on the day, whilst still having fun of course!
Whilst unpacking and setting up, I noticed nice fish turning deep and this secured my decision to fish a 115m clip and a 120m clip. This paid off as by sticking with these distances throughout the day, I created a nice feeding spot and therefore my bite tempo increased gradually whereby the last hour I was catching fish every 10 minutes.
I played around with different combinations I always fish with until I found the ones which worked best, that being Super Casts Paint and Kiana and Sniper and Perdeby, both with Super Cast Banjo oozers and a sweet white dough backing. The Sniper/Perdeby combination produced better for me over the course of the day and I then decided to use this combination on both rods for the last hour (perhaps if I had done this sooner I may have caught more, but, lesson learnt). In this sport under a competitive setting you really need to think on your feet, and as an example, I noticed by applying less dip in the afternoon this increased my bite tempo. I’m not an angler who enjoys fishing little dip, but in this case I had to adapt and it seemed to have paid off. Some advice for an aspiring angler – if things are going slow or difficult on the day, play around with your bait presentation, push the hook baits in the bomb, leave them hanging loose, put a lot of dip, put a little dip, always keep trying something new up until the fish start reacting positively, then stick to it. By making a small change, I managed to secure a win in my zone with 36 fish for 20.87kg’s, and with that result I secured a 2nd place overall for the day.
I would just like to thank my sponsors Sensation and Super Cast for the amazing quality equipment and product they supply us with. The rods an dips are really of top quality and from the results, we can see why! Well done to all of the other Super Cast anglers who also took 3rd, 4th and 5th place overall in the competition.
Regards,
Martin Delport
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