Micro tenkara fly fishing for endangered redfin minnows on the Eerste River

[@ShragaMiFishingForTheSoul]

Great XUL session my friend. I'm also using XUl tackle for tiny/micro fish. It's more difficult to catch those micro fish then regular size fish. Love it

[@SeanMillsFishing]

@@ShragaMiFishingForTheSoul Thank you so much. Shalom.

[@zeph6439]

We seriously need to stand together as anglers with some kind of conscience and get rid of the smallmouth and largemouth bass and trout in the rivers.

[@SeanMillsFishing]

I hear you but a lot more complicated than you might think. Also trout are not a problem for redfins, smallmouth bass are. There was literally a 17inch trout swimming amongst the redfins. The Krom river is full of redfins and trout and they have co existed for years. Wherever there are smallmouth bass, the redfins disappear.

[@zeph6439]

@@SeanMillsFishing I know it's a complicated issue, Sean, and it's one which needs resolving whichever way we choose to look at it. Any bass freak like myself knows they eat everything in the water they can possibly fit into their mouths. My experience has taught me though that trout, especially larger trout, don't miss any opportunity to grab minnows either. I once operated a commercial fish farm, and cookie cutter trout (rainbows which I hatched from eggs) gobbled up any canary kurper they could get (I had a pond full of them too - in those days I decided to use them as food for the bass and trout on the farm), and they were raised on a mix of pellets and worms (I had a worm farm too lol). Canaries of up to palm size were taken by the 0.3-05 kg stockies. Browns are notorious for eating their own fingerlings and the larger ones are actively piscivorous. I found over the years that the larger rainbows too, stand out from the crowd when they become cannibals in the hatchery and grow on ponds. So though the rainbow you saw passed up a free meal while you were there, chances are he came back for a quick takeaway later on. Coming from a childhood on the shores of Lake Ontario in Canada where I was raised with a rod in my hand and then having lived in SA for most of my life and fishing for bass on a strictly catch and release basis for quite a few years now, I had to make a hard decision when faced with the brutal reality of what bass, carp and trout are doing to biodiversity in the region. So now I am a strict catch and keep angler instead, and I urge all fellow anglers to follow suit - if everyone removed a few alien invader species each season, the problem would be greatly resolved. People just don't seem to get it - if we all turn a blind eye to imbalances caused by human agencies, especially when it comes to freshwater resources and again, biodiversity, which these fish destroy - they never belonged in the waterways of this country - then we can only blame ourselves at the inevitable result. Anyway thank you for bringing the redfins into the limelight - the fact they are still around means they deserve it.