We went down to Inanda Dam and launched at around 06h30 for a quick morning session of Bass fishing and fished until 09h30. There was virtually no wind and the water was like glass, the water was crystal clear and the surface temperature varied between 24-25 deg. C. It was a beautiful warm summer's morning. I have not been down to Inanda in a while and really enjoyed it.
I wanted to test out the new Z-Man paddle tail lures and started fishing them weightless on the top near the edges by the cliffs and cactus point, whilst the other guys cast out senkos and flukes. There was no topwater action and after a while decided to head for deeper waters and was on my way to the S bends when I noticed a thermocline on the flats about 1.5m (5ft) above the bottom in 7m (23ft) of water. This was a good observation as when the first line went down with a brush hog we got a fish on immediately as the line went down. Then the second line went down with a curtail worm and exactly the same thing happened. These 2 fish were around 1Kg (2.2lbs) each. Things went quiet after that as we went to deeper water by known structure points and so I decided to go back to fish the suspended fish in the thermocline on the flats.
I was still determined to get a fish on my new paddle tail which I now had rigged with a weighted trigger hook. Immediately when we got back to the thermocline the curly tail worm produced another fish of around 1kg (2.2lbs). I still had nothing on my Z-Man paddle tail and then made a statement that if the paddle tail line goes tight it will be a big one, I continued to pull the lure slowly along the bottom at an even retrieve when the line went tight, I hit and then some line started peeling of and the rod got a serious bend. Eventually I managed to get the fish to the boat and could see it was a big one, but when the fish saw the boat it headed back down peeling more line of the reel.
I got the fish back to the boat and it was a fine 2.72Kg (6lb) specimen, which really made me feel good and I yelped a loud victory squeal. The Z-Man paddle tail used was a 5" Swimmerz in blue with a pearl belly and red protruding eyes.
In the short 3 hour session we had managed to land 4 fish, of which 1 was a little Pig, all in the thermocline. This just proves that when you are looking for deeper structure you must not ignore thermoclines as they are also structure in their own right. I have observed bait fish whilst diving and the thermocline can be a solid wall to them as they cannot go through the temperature change and so they get trapped there and the predator fish use this to their advantage.
