For years Hartbeespoort dam has been un fishable due to the over growth of Hyacinth. This is the reason why it has been difficult to fish for years.
Hartbeespoort dam is the dam that has been forgotten about because it's over growth of Hyacinth. The coverage has made the dam impossible to launch a bass boat due to the launches closing up and use not being able to put the boat back on the trailer.
This forgotten dam has been quiet for years up untill just recently where it has been discovered to only have 1% hyacinth coverage. This means it's open for business and use bass fishermen can now enjoy Hartbeespoort dam for what it really can offer.
RTHFishing sent me a message telling me that Hartbeespoort dam is fishing really well and that the bass are that you catch are kg1 on average. This sparked my interest since I haven't had a day in winter where I caught multiple bass over kg1. So RTHFishing and myself decided we would take the hour drive to the forgotten dam.
Since it is winter, bass fishing is mostly slow and the bass are never really in the mood to eat anything during the course of the day. As we all know as bass anglers this is the season where you fishing slow and try and keep your lure in the water as long as possible. For me this a difficult task since I like to fish really fast and cover as much water as possible to get as many bass in the boat.
Hartbeespoort dam didn't set up to fish fast as I like it. So i really slowed down my presentation and took my time to retrieve the lure back to the boat. Fishing slow in winter is a key element to your success in catching more bass.
For RTHFishing and myself this meant fishing texas rigs, drop shot's, free rigs and even weightless plastics. All these styles of fishing had to be retrieved slow so that you could annoy the bass long enough so they would bite.
Hartbeespoort dam wasn't as fired up as it had been a week or two before but I still managed to catch 4 largemouth bass. One of those bass I caught was kg2,15 and it was caught on a Berkley Maxscent Flat Nose Jerk Shad. I fished the flat nose jerk shad as a weightless texas and this was a great way to get those bass to bite.
I'm really happy that Hartbeespoort dam is open for bass fishing again. This dam is really close to Johannesburg and it is a great way to get your bass fishing in for the day.