We were recently invited to go and fish on a private game and citrus farm in Southern Zimbabwe, not far from the town of Beit Bridge, called Nottingham estate. The farm covers 20 000 hectares of mostly wild bush, with plenty of wildlife, including elephants, hyena and leopard. The dam that we went to fish in is called Mashilichokwe, and is around 7km long.
The fishing retreat is a peaceful lodge, built amongst some big trees on the water’s edge. They have a sheltered jetty area, and a number of boats for use on the dam. The dam has plenty of structure in the form of rock outcrops and sunken timber. Some world class large mouth bass have been caught in the dam, including the current farm record of a fish weighing 7.8kg’s.
We were there during the post spawn period, which made it a bit difficult to locate big fish, but had quality fishing anyway, with a number of good size fish being landed.
The fish were in excellent condition, and fought very hard. We also had some good fun targeting Niloticus bream on small spinners and light tackle, and managed to catch a few quality specimens.
In the evenings we were treated to dinners at the lodge, or at the fly camp, where low grade oranges from the citrus farm are dumped to feed the elephants. There were plenty of herds of these huge beasts, as well as eland, warthog and baboons which all came to feast on the fruit. The view from the escarpment looked like a scene from “The Lion King”, with electric lights lighting the area up at night.
This trip was something really different for us, with some amazing bird watching, great game viewing and excellent bass fishing. Nottingham Estate is one of those special destinations which should be on any keen bass fisherman and outdoorsman’s agenda to visit.
