Angling Report – 23 May 2014

The sea was settling very nicely last Monday after the previous weekend’s bad weather, but then another Westerly came through on Tuesday morning, pushing all day and turning the sea on its head all over again. The large surf that accompanied the wind may actually be a blessing in disguise as there is a good chance that the sand banks may have been broken up.
As expected I saw very few anglers fishing from the beaches last week because of the adverse weather conditions and there was not much fishing news doing the rounds. I happened to bump into a fisherman friend whilst in Durban last week. He told me he had been lucky enough to land a very nice salmon weighing 8kg on prawn bait while fishing from Durban North beach. He usually fishes from the Umhlanga beaches, but decided to try a little south because his normal spots suddenly went dead. He also mentioned that he checked out the Durban piers and found that there were some very small shad plus a few small stumpies coming out (mostly in the dark). Small skates have also been feeding in the vicinity of these piers.
I visited five of the popular local angling beaches last week and almost everyone I spoke to confirmed that the fishing had been poor. When I enquired about the shad, I was told  they were very few and far between and those that had been caught had been small and not worth fishing for. Apparently, a few grunter and small salmon have come out from the North Bank at the Umgeni mouth.
Gamefish anglers were mostly also stumped by the weather, but I heard the odd decent tuna were caught with one or two nice couta also coming out during last week. The anglers who prefer fishing on the bottom have struggled with unfavourable sea conditions although some nice soldiers and rockcod have been caught by a lucky few. I did hear of a Durban angler who pulled a nice cracker of 28kg off Umdhloti last week using a live shad for bait.
The South Coast rock and surf anglers also struggled last week but word is that a couple of small garrick have come out from the upper South Coast beaches. There have also been small salmon on the bite at Umkomaas, with plenty of small shad plus the odd decent grunter, but the fish are not on the bite every day.
I was hoping to do some fishing, but I have decided to wait until I know it will be worthwhile.

Sealice