On my way to the Lake Jozini (Pongolapoort Dam) slipway whilst driving through the reserve area I cam across a bunch of Giraffes and a herd of Wildebeest, I then met my guests at the slipway at around 14h00, and it was a blistering hot afternoon. We then launched the boat and proceeded along the Pongola river section up to the train bridge. On the way we saw a huge crocodile walking on the bank towards the water, and we stopped and watched him for a few minutes; I think he is the one called the "Jozini monster".
There was a stiff NE breeze blowing and the water surface temperature was averaging around 23 deg. C. We then moved further down river from the bridge to cleaner water and started casting flukes on drop shot jig heads towards the weed beds without success, and we then received a warning from the hippos to move away which we did with no arguments and started fishing on the point of the first bend and still no success. And so I decided that we need to fish in deeper water and went to the opposite side of the point by the cliffs where we got our first Tiger fish on a pink fluke fished with a ¼ ounce jig head and a 2/0 hook.
We continued down river along this section and managed to get a few more Tiger Fish all between 1.0Kg (2.2lbs) and 1.4Kg (3lbs). As the sun started setting the wind slowed down a bit and we had a golden hour where we got several smaller Tiger Fish, at about 18h30 on of the guys reels started to scream and a huge Tiger Fish estimated at around 5Kg (11lbs) leaped out of the water and even turned the boat around as it headed towards a tree standing in the water and wrapped up around the tree. I manoeuvred the boat on the sneaker to the other side of the tree to try and get this fish landed but sadly the line rubbed against the tree for too long and parted. All our fish were released.
We were staying at Tamboti Ridge, a lovely Bed & Breakfast which also has a self catering facility and is set in beautiful gardens on a farm not far from Jozini.
