Two-liter plastic bottles mysteriously moving around on the Vaal river, upside down and underneath connected with “boulyn”, a monster Large Mouth Yellowfish hooked to a rusted Van der Merwe hook.
This is the shocking picture often seen on the Vaal River at popular angling sites. A brutal technique to catch fish. More disturbing is that whoever do this, obviously haS a flawed system because the fish manages to loosen itself from the reeds. It looks as if the line broke so who knows where the actual catch took place?
How it works is that a longer line is attached to nearby reeds or trees via the bottle so the fish normally hooks itself by eating whatever is on the hook, probably a crab, and the empty bottle acts as an indicator or “dobbertjie”for easy collection. Gerrit Viljoen who witnessed this brutal technique the past weekend says that he landed the fish that was caught by the culprits with his landing net and released it immediately. Sadly he could clearly see various battle scars on the body.
Being a regular angler, Gerrit says that with no Nature Conservation officials acting to prevent this, no more Fauna and Flora, no more fishing permits available at the Post Office for the different provinces like in the past, and seemingly no regulations, implies that the Vaalriver and it’s fish population are busy dying because of this, and the constant sewerage and acid spills in the river.
