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Rooiwillie

Greetings from the dark continent

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Good day everyone,

 

Just thought I'd introduce myself. I've been fly fishing for a couple of years now but ive mostly bought my flies. Living in Africa I don't always find what I need, so I decided to start tying.

I got a Peak rotary vice from one of my friends who stopped tying, not sure if its any good, but it doesn't look half bad. Over the last few months I've started buying some materials where I can, its hard finding these things as I dont live close to any major cities.

I'm planning to start tying in a month or so as soon as I get settled into my new job.

Look forward to learning alot from you guys.

 

Rooiwillie

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Welcome to the site, you can learn a ton here. What part of Africa are you from? By the way, a Peak is an outstanding vise os if yours is in good condition you will have a great tool to learn on

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Welcome to the site. Glad to see you on here ... and looking forward to hearing about your fly tying journey. Hopefully, you'll be taking pictures as you go.

What kind of fish do you go after? Where will you be fishing?

I've been to Liberia ... but nowhere else in Africa, so I'll be extremely interested.

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Welcome from Missouri, USA. Lots of people willing to help on here.

 

steve, aka spm

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Thanks agn54.

I live in northern KZN South Africa, but I'm moving to the Mpumalanga province in the near future. I'll be much closer to the larger cities then, but won't be able to fish that frequently as I live on a farm at the moment and I have quite allot of access to private waters here.

 

As for the vice, it looks brand new and everything seems to be there. Only problem is one of our cleaning ladies broke the plastic clamp of the bobbin rest that connects it to the saft of the vice whilst cleaning there. I must still check if I'll be able to stick it together again. I'm sure I'll be able to make a plan though.

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Sorry thanks to the rest of you guys as well. You all posted whilst i was busy typing the previous post.

Mike I mostly fish still freshwaters for largemouth bass, tilapia and nembwe, which is also a kind of tilapia. Then I love river fishing, nymphing, for smallmouth yellowfish. Occasionally I fish saltwater for mostly GT's, but will obviously take anything that decides to bite my fly. In Mpumalanga where I'm moving, most of the still waters only have european carp and catfish, so what aught to be a new challenge for me.

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What do you use to catch tilapia? We have several species here in Florida, imported from Africa by people who didn't know better, but they are all herbivorous.

Do you use a fly that looks like hydrilla? :-)

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Im not sure what species you guys have there, but we have 4 kinds where I live. 3 of them are omnivorous and 1 is mostly carnivorous. Had great success with the following:

White death, weightless fished slowly near the bottom using 4x tippet. Very subtile takes.

 

Olive woolly buggers, weighted.

 

Black stonefly nymphs on overcast days work quite well. I use ones with 4 short rubber legs and a small marabou tail, weighted on a floating line let it sink for a while and retrieve slowly with long strips.

 

Olive cats whiskers fished medium to fast with short strips on sunny days.

 

Adams fished slowly late afternoons on hot sunny days. I suppose any small dry fly would work.

 

Hope you come right, pound for pound they fight much harder than bass and they don't give up until you get them out of the water.

 

Keep me posted if you manage to get 1 on the hook.

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Florida has four listed species on their invasive animals list; Blue tilapia (Oreochromis aureus), Wami (O. urolepis), Mozambique tilapia (O. mossambicus), and Nile tilapia (O. niloticus). All were introduced to control aquatic vegetation, specifically water hyacinth (also an invasive introduced by a lady who was building a garden pond). All four are strictly herbivorous. I have also seen reports of spotted tilapia (T. Mariae) in south Florida, but I don't know anything about them. Reportedly (from the Univ. of Florida), two-thirds of all fish species in Florida are invasive. Even more-so with the invasive plants. There are a number of fish hatcheries for aquarium fish, and they have not been too careful in keeping them contained. I even caught a Texas cichlid once in Tampa.

 

A few bright lights, though... aquaculturalists have managed to create hybrid tilapia that are now popular in seafood markets and restaurants. Some of our central Florida lakes are overrun by the wild ones, and provide the basis for a commercial fishery using nets. I personally have eaten wild tilapia and they were excellent! The meat looked odd... slightly grey, but what a surprise when I fried them!

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The species found where I'm from are; Blue tilapia, Spotted tilapia, Red brested tilapia and Nembwe.

In our area the blue tilapia will grow the biggest, followed by the nembwe which were introduced to our area and don't get as big here as they do elsewhere in Africa.

The Nembwes are caught most often as they are ambush predators and caught in much the same way as Bass.

Of the other species, the blue tilapia is caught most often. They can be quite aggressive on the right day.

I'll post these links I found on the eating habits of the Blue, Spotted and Mozambican tilapia.

 

http://www.feral.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/TILFS3_web.pdf

 

 

http://m.myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/profiles/freshwater/nonnatives/spotted-tilapia/

 

http://m.myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/profiles/freshwater/nonnatives/blue-tilapia/

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Thanx for the attachments. The most common one I see all the time is the blue tilapia. I once caught eleven using a snatch hook, each about four pounds. Nobody to my knowledge has caught them on hook and line, but admittedly in Florida there aren't many freshwater fly fisherpersons. Wild tilapia are highly invasive here, and occupy the breeding habitats normally used by native fish such as sunfish and bass.

 

If you can post some photos of the flies you use to catch them, I'd like to give them a try. Where they exist, especially while nesting, they are clearly visible sitting on their nests. I'm assuming they won't be feeding while nesting since they are mouth breeders. But at other times of the year, they'll still be in the lake.

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Will post some pics of those flies as soon as I get home, otherwise I'll see if I can find any pics on the web tonight. You won't catch them while breeding. You can literally drop your fly I front of their noses, they'll ignore it flat. The easiest way to fish for them is definitely sight fishing. Over here they spook easily so normally you have too put in quite a stalk.

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Nobody to my knowledge has caught them on hook and line, but admittedly in Florida there aren't many freshwater fly fisherpersons.

 

Now you DO know someone who has caught a Tilapia on a fly. This one took my Panfish Attractor back in 2013.

 

 

It's the second one I've caught. The first one, a long time ago, took a top water bluegill fly.

 

They are vegetarians, but they will pick up the occasional bug.

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Nice pic Mike, how do they fight?

 

FlaFly, I have heard of people using flies of red yarn or foam to emulate the berries on Brazilian peppers (another lovely invasive!) and cast them under those trees along the banks. Apparently tilapia love eating the berries that fall into the water. I haven't tried it so can't vouch for its effectiveness though

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