Angling Report – 9 May 2014

As I am writing this column the south westerly wind has just arrived which is probably a good thing as it can help sort out the sea after the north easterlies of the weekend. Hopefully when the sea settles down the edible fish will come back on the bite.
The Durban Festival deep sea angling competition really made the headlines last week with the incident of the marlin injuring anglers and damaging their ski-boat off Umdloti. We wish them a speedy recovery. I believe this incident will again underline the hidden dangers of offshore angling to those who practise the sport which will hopefully help to make it safer through this awareness. Although there were some nice fish boated, catches were actually disappointing and the guys I spoke to estimated an average of less than one fish per boat was recorded. It must be said though that fishing conditions were horrendous on the Sunday with the howling south westerly that turned the sea on its head. Surprisingly a couple of couta were caught in these terrible sea conditions with the winning fish weighing around 23kg – nowhere near the 36 to 38kg crocs that have won this competition in the recent past though.
Because of all the public holidays, many anglers decided to travel and look for fish and the general feedback was that edibles were difficult to find. I have spoken to a few guys who fished the Wild Coast and they all said that there were plenty of sharks around and only a few small edible fish. It was the same along the South Coast with some small shad in places, a few small salmon and the odd grunter caught by the lucky anglers.
The weather and water settled a bit by Wednesday last week and I decided to have a throw. As usual I was at the beach early with high expectations, but after three hours I was pretty disillusioned as I had not had even the smallest of pulls. Anglers who fished in other areas confirmed that the fishing was completely dead. The barometer went down later on Wednesday and sure enough a west came through the next day and any thoughts of fishing in the surf were dashed.
I heard from friends that there have been some very nice salmon caught at the Tugela North bank of late. These fish would blow hot and cold however with a couple of fish on one day and nothing the next. Rather than taking a gamble and driving some distance I think that the local river mouths would be a better option at present. There are no fireworks here either but as all anglers know, things could turn on at any time.
There has been no news from the guys who fish amongst the rocks and this is probably because of the adverse surf conditions last week. A couple of decent fish have been caught recently however, which included some nice stone bream, the odd rockcod and even a few copper bream. I did hear that one angler caught a very nice spade fish in the La Mercy area. A friend also saw a nice brusher of around 5kg come out in the Toti area at the end of last week.
A cold front is busy moving up the coast so anglers are going to have to watch the weather carefully this week and hope that the winter fish start coming on the bite. Shad is normally the first of these to arrive, but news from the South coast is that the shad caught there recently have been really small.
Sealice