10 lb Smallmouth Yellowfish!

The pleasure of catching a 10 lb. smallmouth yellowfish eluded me for a long time. On my first outing to the Vaal River this year, I was fishing on my own and within my first couple of casts below a shallow riffle which ran into a slow deeper section of the river, I was rewarded with a small yellowfish and even smaller mudfish – maybe 3 inches in length. 

 Seeing small fish is always pleasing as it creates that assurance that our rivers are still producing next generations of fish. While pondering on this, my nymphs stopped dead in their tracks and slowly moved a foot or two to the right away from me. I immediately knew this was a big fish, which, by the look of it, was not even aware that a small size 16 nymph has been lodged in its upper lip. 

Large mudfish tend to do this when hooked and to start the fight I normally give the rod another flick in the opposite direction just to let the beast know that the games must begin. As I carefully administered this flick with the rod, the water in front of me exploded and this BIG yellow raced down stream. It took my fly line and almost all of my backing before I managed to stop it. From there it was smooth sailing as I was playing the fish in deeper open water with not too many obstacles. I managed to land the fish – it weighed 10, 1 lbs. A friend joined me and took a couple of photos before releasing the fish.

 Perfect start to a new year of fly fishing!