Fish Eagle – May 2, 2014

The south westerly really pushed during the second half of last week and this culminated on Sunday when fishing was completely blown out. The weather disappointed many deep sea anglers who were entered into a Durban competition over the weekend. The first half of the week was still pretty good for fishing although the sea was a bit bumpy after the westerly blew on Wednesday morning.
I said last week that the stumpies love the rough surf and a couple of anglers made use of the conditions and caught some decent fish. I heard of four stumpies caught in Ballito and Salt Rock last week. Three of these fish weighed around 1.5 to 2kg and the other just short of 4kg. I also went through to the Durban on Friday morning and found that one angler had caught three stumpies just south of the lighthouse on Wednesday morning. The fish were small, averaging between 1 and 1.5kg, but the angler still had some excellent fun.
Anglers in the Durban area told me that things were pretty quiet along the sandy beaches last week with just a couple of small fish being landed. One angler told me that the fishing has picked up along one or two of the upper south beaches where shad had been plentiful, although small in size. A couple of very nice shoal salmon had also been caught by anglers using fresh fillet bait but they apparently did not touch sardine. There have also been a few big grunter around but no garrick have been reported yet.
I also spent some time with the local rock anglers last week and they told me that the copper bream are still around plus some large stone bream have now come on the bite in the rough water. What I realised was that if you are prepared to put in the effort, there are some fish around for the patient. The successful anglers have been arriving at the beach just on first light, fishing until the weather chased them home, which equates to a considerable amount of time on the beach.
Anglers are going to have to wait until the sea and weather settles again before the fish are back on the bite after the weekend. It certainly seems as if the winter weather is with us now and it should not be too long before the winter fish are here – shad, garrick and the daga salmon.
Some big couta are now coming on the bite up north and fish weighing up to 30kg have been caught recently. I hear that the bigger the bait, the bigger the couta, so I would say that a small bonnie should be a good bet to produce a big fish. Normally at this time of the year these crocodile couta move southwards so there is something for the local anglers to look forward to.
At the beginning of last week, a few nice couta were caught along with a few big tunny and some snoek, but the sharks are still proving to be a bit of a problem with anglers losing some nice fish. At times, the guys are also catching some decent bottom fish but conditions have not always been ideal. With the weather as it is at present, it is difficult to predict how the fishing will be and anglers are not going to put to sea unless they know that it will be worthwhile and this is mainly because of the price of fuel these days.
Hopefully, the present heavy seas will break up the sandbanks and this will help to improve the rock and surf angling. By now there should have been reports of shoal salmon being caught locally after dark and it has been quiet so far.
Sealice