Angling Report – November 29, 2013

Last week was a bit unusual, with some really bad weather with good weather in between. On Monday morning the weather was initially good until a westerly buster came through that turned the sea on its head. Even though there was some rain about on Tuesday morning, surf conditions remained generally good. The north easterly wind picked up later later in the day, but the surf was back to normal by the next morning. This trend seemed to continue during the rest of the week.
Last week I wrote how I was quite entertained watching the anglers on the beach at Umhlanga catching shad. What these anglers did not realise was that they were also being watched by the law. The conservation people were on the beach early on Tuesday and they began digging up shad that were buried in the sand. Apparently these guys were on the beach every day and I hear that some arrests were made. The sad part is that a lot of shad were killed needlessly and although confiscated and taken away by the officials, all of these fish were prime breeding stock that have now been lost.
My brother phoned me on Saturday morning, telling me that he was on the same Umhlanga beach that morning fishing with a spoon. He said that he had caught four decent sized shad and had returned the fish alive to the water, but notably the crowd had disappeared and there were only a dozen anglers or so around. Many of the remaining guys were casting their lines into the water then turning around with their backs to the water and were watching the car park carefully. The word had obviously got around that catching shad was a costly business and no longer profitable with the conservation people about. There was also a story that one angler had his vehicle confiscated at Umdloti.
I consulted one of the regulars in the Virginia and the Umgeni north bank area to find out whether any more snoek had been caught. He said that although no snoek had been caught from the beach, a few did come out just off backline. They also mentioned that a couple of big grunter had been caught after dark on sealice and sardine strip baits in these areas.
Skates came on the bite on Wednesday morning during the humid period and I hear that three or four of these fish were landed. The humid conditions are ideal for these summer flatfish. Other fish caught in the Durban North area were a few small wave garrick or spotted pompano.
News from deep-sea anglers in Durban was that although they could not spend much time at sea, there were some catches, which included two yellow fin tuna and one very nice dorado of ll kg caught off  Glenashley. Apparently the sea was pretty  bumpy, but the water quite clean and the  water temperature was on the warm side.
It seems that the weather is again going to play a role this week in determining good fishing times, so take advantage of any opportunity that may arise. I see that the easterly winds are busy building sand banks again and it may be that anglers will have to use the high tide periods and fish the rocks as the tide drops. There has been news of some shoal sized salmon and a few inedibles having been being caught in the Tugela area.
Sealice

Trifacet Nationals
Steven Walder, Stuart Blesovsky, Jess Jarvis and Jayden Blesovsky represented KZN in the South African Deep Sea Angling Association trifacet tournament held at Sodwana Bay last week. The tournament had anglers compete in three divisions – heavy tackle (37kg line class) billfish, light tackle (10kg line class) billfish and gamefish (6kg line class). The rough sea conditions made fishing difficult, but Salt Rock resident Jayden Blesovsky managed to land the only sailfish in the 10kg line class category, seeing to it that his KZN team took the honours.