Angling Report – November 22, 2013

There was a bit of everything last week. Some rain, dirty water, wind, rough seas and even times of very fish-able surf. Unfortunately the tides were against the early morning anglers, but those those who fancy the afternoon would have had some good fishing time.
Although there is still seaweed being washed up, I noticed that it is not as bad as a week before. During the high tide periods, there also seems to be quite a shore break around with evidence that the sand is being scoured out. On the positive side, this has provided nice banks to fish off on the beach.
A friend told me that they had some good sport with snoek that moved close inshore at Virginia last week and anglers with a strong cast pulled in a few of these fish on spoon. Apparently the snoek were decent sized fish and were hitting the spoons really hard. Some decent shad of around 2,5kg also apparently took spoons in the same region.
I heard that the shad were on the bite for most of last week in the Umhlanga area, so I decided to have a look at the weekend. There were very few anglers on the beach at first light, but it was not long before the mob arrived. I saw some really decent sized shad caught – some must have weighed around 4kg or more. As usual, almost all of the fish caught weren’t being returned to the water.
The crowd was actually quite entertaining to watch and there was thick aroma of weed or zoll in the air.  Anglers were running up and down the beach, casting lines (not looking or caring where their sinkers were flying) and feverishly striking. One angler got hit in the face by a fishing rod when his friend had a bite and his line snapped as he struck. Another angler had the bracket of his reel break when he was reeling in a shad and it was quite hilarious watching him trying to hold his rod and retrieve his line with the reel now in pieces.
While I was on the beach at Umhlanga, I had a word with a surf ski angler who had just beached. He told me that he had been at the barge where he had seen several dorado in the water, but the fish would not take any lure that was presented. He did manage to catch a couple of snoek however and said that the shad were thick on the barge.
Arthur, a local offshore angler, told me that they caught two really nice yellowfin tuna off Ballito on Saturday. The gamefish season seems to have started in earnest and there has already been some news of a couple of wahoo being caught on the South Coast.

Sealice