Unorthodox Spots Others Often Overlook

Ditch the regular swims and venture off the beaten path for some of the best fishing you've ever had.

- Adam Swanepoel

While fishing the winter season of 2013 I found myself blanking for 7 consecutive sessions, and needless to say my confidence as well as morale was through the floor and the dreadful confusion of why I was not catching anything except a cold started to set in.

I scratched my head for hours on end spending all my university lectures wondering what on earth it is that I was doing wrong. After many hours of contemplating the problem, I came to the conclusion that I needed to find out what everyone else on the lake was doing which would get me hooking into atleast some fish, no matter the size.So that particular weekend I spent my whole Saturday speaking to the other anglers trying to “fish” out what they were doing that I wasn’t.I spoke to a couple of anglers and came to the surprising conclusion that although they were hooking into fish and getting at least some on the mat, their results were not really amazing - all landing fish under the 20 pound mark. I knew that the lake had 20lb and heavier fish in it, based on a couple of photos I had spotted on the Internet, but could not figure out why these fish where not being caught.

This information operation placed me in a state of ultimate confusion - I was now thinking about why I was blanking so much as well as not knowing why the bigger fish were not being caught.