They are scattered all the way down the east coast past Cape Town and into the west coast region and up into Namibia. Don’t only match the hatch with the bait you choose but also by the way you fish it and where you fish it. During the previous three years we had experienced an increase in the average weight – but without passing that magical 3kg mark. It is perfect if there is a steep drop off close by to deep water. They can be found in brackish, fresh and salt waters and can tolerate water temperatures from as low as 13° C to about 43°C. The popular movie, ”A river runs through it”, indeed presents a fine resemblance of the significance of fishing in many of our lives. We let the scale settle: it indicated more than 3kg, and when we weighed the kurper on shore, it was confirmed as 3,11kg. Redbreast kurper will bite on fly/lure from October to April. Normal coloration also includes a caudal fin with distinctive stripes, and a dorsal fin with a grey to black margin often suffused with red. We had plumbed the water’s depth and used a slip knot on the line to rest the hook just on the bottom. The young stay with their mother for 4-8 days during which time they can retreat to the safety of her mouth when a predator approaches. Remember to answer the viewer comp on Kyknet's website after the program to stand your lucky to go fishing with us. Action can be hectic under these conditions and aggressive fishing with a jerk – stop - jerk style will yield good results. Males are usually found in soft- bottomed areas that are ideal for nest construction, while females and immature fish tend to remain in areas with harder bottoms and more food. Oreochromis Mossambicus. Catching large Blues on spinners in late summer is sometimes almost better than bass fishing. I always thought they do this due to a lack of oxygen, but I have seen them do this in water with a high oxygen level. Whenever you find a shallow flat and a steep drop off you cannot go wrong throwing a Blue Kurper imitation to catch bass. The front part of the dorsal fin is the most inconvenient to handle because it has spines on it, and for this reason, like with the Red Breast, bass always hit a Blue from the front and swallows it head first. The Blue Kurper That Shocked Us All - Industrial Tilapia Fishing! A big bass likes a big meal and a Blue Kurper of over 13 cm is a proper meal. Another interesting fact is that they seem to like getting into a habit. The Blue Kurper is farmed extensively and many dams, streams, rivers and freshwater lakes serve as a home for this fish species. He is editor of two angling magazines and South Africa’s representative on the International Game Fish Association. This temperature limits its distributional range. The dams are stocked with Bass, Carp, yellow Fish, Blue Kurper and Barbel. Frits landed the first fish (he always did! Keep your eyes open, especially on windless afternoons and watch for the tell tale signs of schools of juvenile Blues moving close to the surface. Fewer fish mean more food per individual and so the average size increases. Specialising in Carp, Kurper, Barbel and bass. Luckily lots of fish were caught and some of our newer members managed to catch their first mosquito fish and blue kurper. Fishing; Kurper Spots - Please Help! The Cape kurper is an adaptable species and occurs in various habitats from rocky, faster flowing streams to more slower, heavily-vegetated waters. An aerial view of Loskop Reservoir in Mpumalanga, South Africa. Like the Red Breast they also love to enter newly flooded areas and feed on the vegetation and organisms now covered by the water. Attachment: IMG00099-20091121-1644.jpg (Downloaded 693 times) Dad took him fishing. Larger specimens are sometimes caught on crankbaits or soft plastic baits intended for bass. Familiar freshwater targets are trout, salmon, perch, chub, Bream, pike, Walleye, Blue Kurper and Bass. Now it will never happen, for Frits passed away in March, just one month before his 70th birthday. Spawning occurs when males claim a territory 15-140 cm in diameter and dig a shallow pit for a nest. Kurper rigs are not too complicated – a bunch of earthworms loaded onto a #1 long shank hook and an adjustable slip float threaded onto the line. Most bass fisherman know how a Blue Kurper looks, but have not studied them to understand their behaviour and how we need to fish imitations of them to attract the attentions of trophy bass. Fishing Lake Jozini For Tigers & Kurper – True Bushveld Fishing. Clanwilliam Dam Clanwilliam Dam is possibly the prime Smallmouth Bass fishing venue in South Africa. Here you will find information like contact details, GPS coordinates, pictures and many more information on certain locations where you can fish. The flash is not as bright but clearly visible on the bottom. Indeed we did. Loskop Dam Nature Reserve is home to Antelope, Leopard, Crocodile and Hippo. Fishing with spinner rigs is an exciting fishing technique. Most freshwater anglers go after Carp, Sharptoothed Catfish, Blue Kurper (known as Tilapia to the rest of the world), Yellowfish, as well as Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass. Kurper is a summer fish, being most active in water of above 20ºC, with the "high season" during late summer and into autumn, starting any time from late February and lasting well into April and, depending on the region, even into May. What have you caught at Bulshoek Dam? White my favourite colour to use. Juvenile Blue Kurper form schools where they feed mostly on the bottom but move to the surface on windless, warm afternoons. Having bade farewell to the competitive boat angling scene, we had been trying to land the world record for the past three years, but Loskop had steadfastly refused to deliver a fish exceeding 3kg. The Mozambique Tilapia, commonly referred to as the Blue Kurper or just the “Blue”, is one of South Africa's most common inland freshwater fish species. Digestion of the plankton is started by grinding the food between two pharyngeal plates. Then his bass. After this time it is better to target big kurper on worms. Blue Kurper are omnivorous and feed mainly on algae and phytoplankton, but also take some zooplankton, small insects and their larvae, shrimps, earthworms and aquatic macrophytes. Crimp a splitshot +/- … If the bass are not that aggressive, or the crankbait bite stops, switch to a heavy Texas rigged soft plastic imitation and bounce it down the edge of the drop off and on the bottom in the deeper water. The Vlei and Redbreast have bands while the Blues have the 3 dots, which makes it easy to tell them apart. On a cool but cloudless early autumn day in March 2003, I was on a boat with the legendary kurper boat angler Frits Beumer, way up in one of the inlets of Mpumalanga’s famous recreational fishing water, Loskop Dam. In this episode of This is Africa Outdoors we go after monster Mozambique Tilapia also known as bream or kurpers in South Africa. Their food source includes plankton, aquatic invertebrates and decomposing organic matter. A Blue Kurper feeding on the bottom turns its body and displays its sides and dots and stands on its head. My float had hardly hit the surface when the line pulled tight and put a serious bend in the rod, and a few minutes later Frits did the honours, netting a kurper that had us momentarily tongue-tied. We were experiencing a red-letter day – one of those that anglers the world over dream about – and stopped counting when I boated fish number 45. The Blue Kurper (Bloukurper in Afrikaans) can live in fast flowing rivers, stillwater dams and in saltwater, making it one of the more widespread and common of the South African fly fishing target species. The Mozambique Tilapia or Blue Kurper can be easily identified, it has medium to large sized scales and the caudal fin has a straight edge. Blue Kurper,also known as: Mozambique Tilapia, Blue Tilapia, Blou Kurper. The Blue Kurper has a deep, elongated, laterally compressed body and a bluntly pointed snout with a slightly oblique mouth that extends past the outer margins of the eye. A very good example of this is the sunken jetty at Hartbeespoort Dam. Blue Kurper are found in depths ranging from 1 - 12m and very often feed on a flat close to a steep drop off to deep water. Once this process is complete the male chases that female away and begins displaying for another. Float tubes and waders welcome and only barbless hooks should be used. Schools of juvenile Blues can often be seen on concrete slipways and jetties where they feed on the bottom. A definite big bass method is to find schools of Blues around standing timber and brush and fish your imitation with a jerking action through the structure and letting it bounce off the structure. A baitfish will stand still and then move with a short darting action, or swim around in a school or quickly take cover. They are considered filter feeders because they can literally filter plankton out of the water. Results 1 to 19 of 19 Thread: ... people come back with bags full of kurper. In most dams they actively start breeding at around 14 cm and this means that when we imitate them, we are not really going to focus on their spawning behaviour. SABASS Magazine is available at tackle shops, Spar, Pick ‘n Pay, C.N.A., Exclusive Books and Builders Warehouse, © Copyright SA Bass Magazine | All Rights Reserved | E&OE | an umsiko design, © Copyright SA Bass Magazine | All Rights Reserved | E&OE | an, Post Spawn - The dull that follows the fun, Two Fool-proof Strategies for the Pre-spawn, Going Sonar Pt.3 - Transducer Installation & Setup. David Thys Louw At the end of this period the young form massive schools in shallow water while the female returns to the adult school to find another mate. Well my luck was about to change. 5. Injured fish will be charged at R100 p/kg. Martin’s surprise kurper catch. Blue Kurper anglers see them as a nuisance and this species is probably responsible for more missed strikes by bass anglers than any other specie as they aggressively attack plastic lures, but their mouths are too small, in most cases, to become impaled on a bass hook. This is important as we want to imitate the juveniles that will relate to hard bottom areas. Everyone was surprised when the fishing was relatively good as most of the farm dams were pea soup green and smelled bad. HGOA at 17:30 watchNet 144. Regrettably, Loskop’s blue kurpers are now under dire threat from pansteatitis (yellow fat disease), a physiological condition believed to be caused by pollution, in which the body fat becomes inflamed and solidifies to such an extent that it curtails the fish’s mobility so severely that it cannot move or feed and eventually dies. Remember – a smaller bass is not very fussy, but if you want to trigger a big bite consistently, do everything you can to put the odds in your favour. Contact Field Sports writers on 083 235 4775 or [email protected]. Bass often herd schools of blues into bays where they aggressively feed on them. Looking for new spots to fish or just looking for some helpful info on a certain dam. Larger specimens are sometimes caught on crankbaits or soft plastic baits intended for bass. The highly effective kurper tactic of fishing worms beneath a sliding float on the drift; just cannot be done while fishing bottom rigs for carp and mudfish at anchor. The Blue Kurper, well known as the Mozambique Tilapia, has always been close to the top of my list as a target freshwater fish species, but up until this day in March 2012, I had not caught a "size" fish. Our objective, apart from enjoying a good day’s fishing, was nothing less than to establish a new world record for blue kurper, arguably the most well-known member of the Oreochromis genus. Moderated by: Enigma, Emperor: New Topic: Reply: Printer Friendly: Blue Kurper on fly: Rate Topic . Bass Lodge is truly a bank angler’s paradise. They favour shallow bays with a hardish bottom (the juveniles) where plant cover exists. A bass that sees the combinations of these triggers bouncing on the bottom, or flashing near the surface, or close to vegetation or standing timber, or moving quickly down a drop-off will react aggressively. Eugene Kruger is a freelance angling journalist and leisure fishing consultant. Best Fishing Spots. They are often responsible for aggressive bass action as schools of bass feed on schools of Blue Kurper. Blue Kurper on fly. Frits hung a keep net over the side, and into it went the fish that we would keep for the table – one in every 10, the rest being released. This article is aimed at providing a deeper insight into the Blue Kurper as a bass prey fish specie. He then displays in front of the female school convincing a female to follow him back to the nest. The young can grow as fast as 25-61 mm per month and they usually reach 16-18 cm in 3-5 years. 4. Hi Dirk, usually the first few months after winter are better for catching blue kurper on lure/fly (September/October/November and sometimes even in December). Having bade farewell to the competitive boat angling scene, we had been trying to land the world record for the past three years, but Loskop had steadfastly refused to deliver a fish exceeding 3kg. “Get the scale, quickly!” he said, sounding quite hoarse with excitement. The Blue Kurper is a beautiful fish that rarely grows to more than 3 kilograms in South African waters, although the South African record for this fish is 3,64kg and the IGFA World record is 3,11kg, both caught at Loskop Dam, which is widely regarded as one of the best places in South Africa to fish for trophy size Blue Kurper. Fine dining and tractor game drives on a Free State farm, The allure of Barkly East’s famous fly-fishing streams, Seven retailers identified for ginger, garlic price gouging, Growing garlic: a golden opportunity for SA farmers, Vegetable farmer’s strategy for synching production with demand, Making lucerne hay while maximising soil health, Broiler producer uses her position to uplift others, African farmers test-drive CASE IH combines, Biofuel production could help revive SA sugar industry, Handling the risks posed by Eskom’s load-shedding, Using allelopathy in a weed management strategy. The average length of blue kurper that was caught ranged from 15 … I specifically remember one afternoon watching a 2 kg bass swim sideways in a few centimetres of water over the slab chasing these Blues. They have a strange habit of lying just under the surface with their mouths sticking out. The three, well established dams are fountain fed with crystal clear water and stocked with Florida Largemouth Bass, Black Bass, Blue Kurper and Vlei Kurper (Tilapia) which forms a major part of the bass’s diet. Whatever the reason is, they are the only kurper specie that does this and makes it easy for us to identify them from a distance. If you find them fish close to the surface and try and find some sort of structure you can bounce the lure off. With this method, when a fish takes the bait, the movement of the hook moves the float, warning that a kurper is at work down below. The sizes of baitfish that we try and imitate as a bass prey fish is however not sexually mature yet. When it stops feeding it moves to the next spot and does the same. The Blue Kurper does not tolerate temperatures below 10°C. If the fish ingests the bait and moves off with it, the float is dragged under. The maximum size of the Blue Kurper tends to vary based on its geographical location, but specimens of over 4kg have been caught in South Africa. The Blue has certain markings (the white, yellow belly, the blue/ grey back and the 3 distinctive spots) that act as a trigger for bass. Author Post . Additionally, the rivers and streams of the country are chock-full of Rainbow and Brown Trout – the fishing … This is a pic of a Blue Kurper I caught in a small dam near Brits. The value of experience National and IGFA angling records are over 3 kg and plenty around that size have been caught on bait, lure and fly in South Africa. A little piece of heaven situated between Klersdorp and Wolmaranstad (about 40km either way). Blue Kurper will migrate to deeper water as cold temperatures set in, but will often move into the shallows on a warm winter’s afternoon to soak up the sun. Blue Kurper can be easily caught using earthworm, or with a small curly tail grub or a small spinner. A friend once caught 80+ nice big ones in a day. Whenever you find a sheltered bay, hard bottom, rocks or any man-made structure, you can be sure their will be Blues around. The species is also present in the Vaal Dam, the Vaal Barrage and downstream from Bloemhof Dam. Please note we are mainly a bass fishing facility however we do stock all the other spieces too. They can be found from the northern part of Mozambique all the way to the Bushman's River system in the Eastern Cape. Scientific Name. We had started our day at about 3.30am. I was targeting bass, but this gave me a fight that was, weight for weight, better than any bass I have caught. The blue kurper, aka Mozambique tilapia or Oreochromis mossambicus as the scientists know it is a fairly large, deep-bodied, mouthbrooding and very robust cichlid that thrives in southern African waters. Dwarf kurper: small and medium Sada curlies on size 16 - 22 hooks. 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