Much buildup around the chosen venue and time of year made for interesting expectations, with many anglers knowing to expect tough fishing.
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Up and down weather during January and falling water levels contributed to difficult pre-fishing by the anglers and many reported no success on visits to the venue.
Anglers were, however, pleased to experience ideal fishing weather and even a light rain shower here and there before the sun made its presence known at midday.
Despite the low expectations from the venue, 47 teams arrived at Inyaka. Registration and entries were handled with precision and all boats were in the water well before the scheduled skippers’ briefing, with the fishing kicking off at 06:00.
It was not long after the blast off that teams encountered the real battle, namely fending off the millions of small bass in search of quality fish. Many teams found this to be a blessing in the morning being able to limit fairly quickly, but soon thereafter realised that getting anything of notable size would be a real grind.
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A total of 202 fish were weighed in, with a total weight of 59,67 kilograms and an average per fish weight of only 0,295 kilograms. Only 36 of the 47 teams managed to weigh in a limit, and, as it could have been predicted, not one team blanked.
On a day of very small bag weights being weighed in, defending ATOY champions team Thermocline (Herman Geldenhuys and William Myers) produced a quality bag of 5,89 kilograms to clinch the win.
They focused on main lake points and found better keepers on points with very deep water nearby and points which are close to the main river channel.
Jerkbaits and Chatterbaits produced their keepers.
Geldenhuys also weighed in the biggest fish, a beast of a bucket mouth pulling the scale to 4,305 kilograms. This was the largest fish many have ever seen to come out of Inyaka. It was caught on a Zara Spook during late morning.
Team Extreme Fishing Tackle (Charl Carey and Hannes van Wyk) were second with a very respectable bag of 3,405 kilograms followed by team Rapala (Kobus van Niekerk and Francois Bester).
The second leg of the 2019 tour shall be hosted at Vygeboom Dam on March 2.
