We were joined by Anthea Piater and a group of her clients on the first hosted group into the Diamond River Camp. This week we watched a transformation in the system over a period of to days- the water was at the lowest point we had seen it on the first day and the guests had to do a bit of searching to find where the fish had congregated. Anthea was the first on the scoreboard with some nice Largies from the first beat, with the Rob, Jurgens, Gideon and Fred all off the mark on the first afternoon with some beautiful Smallmouth.

The conditions started to turn with dark banks of clouds building over the west, looking threatening and bringing some cool air. The rain arrived on the Thursday and absolutely poured down overnight, into Friday and all of Friday night. The camp and roads were turned into snotty mud and we managed to get the vehicles out onto some high ground to get above some particularly bad clay.

The guys in camp didn’t even blink an eye, the fishing was good, the food delicious and the company was great! The rain meant that they had to adapt their fishing styles. The runs that were gentle trickles over the rocks were now serious torrents that needed respect and caution. This sparked the Largemouth and Smallmouth into a feeding frenzy! On the Saturday morning there were 22 Largemouth caught and enough Smallies to lose count! We topped off the trip with a beautiful 12lb Largemouth caught by Jurgens on the drift after some serious casting at structure.

All in all, we caught 32 Largemouth and over 100 Smallmouth in some tough conditions. It was a great week, and we learned a ton about how the river and fish react to the rain and high water.it also tested our camp setup, which held to the wind and rain just fine!