Angling Report – 21 February 2014

I saw an interesting letter published in the media last week in which the writer was proposing an answer to the often asked question in fishing circles – where did all the pinkies go? His answer was simply that the small fish had been caught by their thousands, put into bags and taken home to be made into fish cakes.
Fishing seemed slow last week if compared to recent times and I am of the opinion that it was because the tides were all wrong, with low tides falling in early mornings, and many of the beaches badly sanded up. When the tide rose during the course of the mornings so did the wind and those anglers hoping for some afternoon fishing found that being on the beach was not that pleasant.
The weather and sea conditions were perfect during the weekend but I saw very few anglers at the popular local fishing beaches that I visited. One of the fishermen that I had a word with said that he had caught nothing although he had tried a variety of baits, including mussels and red bait. He was mainly targeting pompano. Historically I have found that the best time to try for pompano is the months of March and April when the fish are usually plentiful, but I have seen some nice pompano caught at this time of the year in the past as well.
A newspaper report I have seen talked of large shoals of stumpies in the lighthouse area of Umhlanga. A friend fishing this area told me that the fishing had been quiet last week however, with just a few small skates being caught during the day. He did say that there were a couple of guys that fished at night and they might have caught their share of the stumpies that I read about. He also mentioned that the water was green last week and he had tried early in the mornings for snoek, but found that the fish were off the bite even though he had seen many jumping out of the water.
Apperently a couple of good sized skates and one very nice sandie had been landed in the Eastmore area last week. The surf conditions were very good in this area despite the relatively bad weather elsewhere. These Umhlanga beaches could well be worth a visit this week for those looking for a bit of fun as they have been productive for a while now.
Offshore anglers battled a bit last week because of the windy conditions and the guys were saying that the gamefish had gone quiet as well. A couple of couta did come out in the Umdloti area, mostly caught on live bait that still seems fairly easy to come by.
I spoke to a ski angler on Saturday morning and he said that he had launched with six ready made up couta traces and when he beached, he had no fish and only one trace left. Sharks were taking the live baits plus the traces. He mentioned that when a shark larger than his ski moved slowly passed him he decided that it was time to head back to the beach. Every now and then, the ski anglers catch the odd small dorado and the guys fishing out a little deeper are getting the odd nice tuna.
The weather was perfect early on Monday morning when writing this column and hopefully it will remain this way throughout the week and if so, then the fishing should improve. This is the time of the year that I normally start targeting the shoal salmon during the evenings with good results.  Sealice