FCS is Tiger fishing at KITFT in Zimbabwe - Africa

Early this summer, I was approached to sponsor a fishing team in South Africa for a Tiger Fish tournament - Kariba Invitational Tiger Fish Tournament - also known as the KITFT in Zimbabwe, Africa. Here's a link to the website.

Stop by Fish Creek Spinners Web Store and checkout it's new format!

This is what a Tiger Fish looks like -  a striper with lots of big teeth

So the teams are Hamba Bamba 'A' and Hamba Bamba 'B'.

One thing lead to another and we decided they would test some custom FCS spinners that I built for them just last month. The tournament runs 10/26-10/28 and with the - 9 hr time difference to Colorado,  they fish thru our night and rankings are posted about noon. Day 3 finals are in.

It's pretty exciting - FCS in two new countries - Zimbabwe and South Africa, and a new continent!

They are off the grid and its unlikely I'll hear from them until they complete unpacking and settle back into the norm. Maybe never again, if the FCS stunk!

Anyways, to dull the edge on my excitement, I decided to do some web research and gather up a little history on the teams. Here's a facebook page URL KITFT Facebook

The two teams are number 50 and 51 in the 2011 entry sequence (that's not standing, just team registration order).

Last year Team A finished 50th in standing and 111th (Team B) in the 2010 tournament finals.

The 2011 tournament is special, it's the 50th KITFT anniversary - lots of 50's and 1's across the last three lines!

Last year, it took 60 fish and 170kg to place first and win.

Team Hamba Bamba A caught 27 for 51.3kg placing 50th.
Team Hamba Bamba B caught 5 for 7.6kg placing 111th.

At their request, I modified our already noisy spinners to include mirrors for extra flash. I guess the water can be muddy and the extra flash coupled with the FCS noise is intended to get attention and excite strikes. That's the plan.

If you go to the KITFT website and look at the pre-tournament pictures, you'll see there are hippo's in Lake Kariba and they're wandering around camp and in the lake. The last picture in the pre-tournament gallery is a celebrity hippo caught in it's raid.

YIKES! Talk about working for your fish! These guys are hard-core, did I mention it's 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 Celsius) in Zimbabwe for the tournament?

Here's a Picasa slideshow of FCS contributions from my pre-tournament project.



Day 3 Final results in!~ By my YTY calculations, Team A has moved up in position over last year, by 12 percentile points! 62th of 268 this year, vs 50th of 143 last year.

Maybe that's just me in envy in the Colorado snow, putting a 'spin' on it or cook'in the books to stay warm!

It ends up they caught fewer fish resulting in less weight, BUT relative to the overall population of anglers, their final placement was in the top 1/4 of 268 teams; in the 23rd percentile of the total team population for 2011 vs the 35th percentile in 2010.

Here's my chart and visual representation of Day to Day rank, against 2010 on the left

Hamba Bamba 2011 Final - 62nd place 20 fish 44.315kg
                   2010 Final - 50th place 27 fish 51.3kg

The 50th anniversary tournament brought in more teams. More fishing pressure, for sure.


Team Hamba Bamba A caught 20 fish for 44.315kg placing 62nd.
Their largest fish placed 12th at 6.55kg.
Team Hamba Bamba B caught 3 for 5.990kg placing 165th.


Nice job everyone and thanks for stopping by the blog post. Can't wait to exchange some emails with you guys and hear some fish stories!