Angling Report – 24 January 2014

Most of last week was hot and humid with easterly winds prevailing. Heavy rain was forecast for the Mozambique area thanks to another cyclone that was moving over the islands.
A good friend phoned me at the weekend offering me a place on his boat for this week and he told me that he had done quite well at sea last Tuesday. He had been fed-up with all the shark activity in the local gamefish grounds, the bumpy conditions and the strong currents, so he decided to try the gamefish grounds in the Zinkwazi area. Apparently they found plenty of bait fish on the small reef they were fishing off and they caught a lot of these to use as live bait. They landed a nice sea pike or pick handled barracouta of 9kg, one and a half couta (thanks again to the tax man) and one very nice bull dorado. The guys had fished on the bottom as well and had boated several very decent rockcod. On the way back to the launch site, the anglers spotted a big sailfish sunning itself on the surface of the water.
The surf-ski anglers looked to have had mixed success over the last few days. One angler told me that they had done well in the La Mercy area on the Saturday, but when I had a word with another surf-ski enthusiast, he told me that he had fished the same area on Saturday morning, but had seen little of note landed – one snoek was caught plus a couple of very small tunny, but that was about it except for a few sharks.
I called Bruce Long on Sunday afternoon and he told me that they had launched early that morning and had also fished the La Mercy area. He said that the ski anglers had caught a couple of fish, including a couple of snoek, one or two tunny and one very nice wahoo weighing around 25kg. Bruce said that they themselves had caught nothing even though they had tried a few different areas close inshore and deeper out.
There was not much news from the shore anglers last week except for a nice shad of 3kg that an angler pulled in at Umhlanga whilst  spooning. The only other decent edible that I heard of was a small queenfish caught in the Glenashley area on a shad trace. There are a few nice grey sharks being caught in different areas at present and the best time to fish for these guys seems to be in the late afternoons. Many of the popular beaches are also sanded up at the moment so the best fishing times are one hour before high tide and one hour after high tide.
I have been wondering why I have not seen more of the ski-boat guys launching in recent times and I put it down to the fishing being a bit quiet, but maybe there is more to the story. When I spoke to Bruce on Sunday morning he told me that they had used a thousand bucks worth of fuel on their fishing trip, which equates to three tanks at the present price of petrol. With the small return the guys are going to think twice before setting out again any time soon. Another angler that I was talking to told me that he likes to fish from the beach in the Zinkwazi area but a round trip now costs him over three hundred Rand so he only thinks about visiting the area when he is almost sure that the trip will be worthwhile. There will be another big fuel price increase next month so anglers will have to be even more careful in planning their fishing trips.
Sealice