Rock and surf anglers had some trying conditions to put up with the whole of last week and on Tuesday morning, a swell had built up out at sea and the surf was huge, almost like a storm surf.
I really thought that the big surf would break up the sandbanks but the opposite actually happened. The broken water from the big surf rolled ashore and began scouring the sand from the beach and made the sandbanks a lot larger and wider. This happened at most of the popular sandy angling beaches and trying to cast over the banks is impossible.
On Wednesday, the large surf had moderated a lot but was still rough and it could be seen that the broken water was running both left and right over the sandbanks, creating strong currents. I decided to have a couple of throws early on Thursday morning and when I arrived at the beach around 5.30am the surf was still a bit rough. It was also freezing cold with the offshore wind adding to the cold. There were two anglers huddled down on the beach and within a couple of minutes, my hands were frozen and I could not feel anything so I decided to laugh off the fishing and return home to try and warm up.
I had a word with a few of the regular local anglers and they all told me that because of the cold and the slow fishing, they have decided to watch and see what is happening before they try their luck again. This is exactly what I am doing at present and so are some of my fishing friends from Durban and Umhlanga.
The news from Durban is that there are plenty of shad being caught in the Umgeni area and one of my friends said there was a crazy mob fishing at this spot and the shad that are being caught are small, mostly undersized so it is not worth the effort. I was told by a couple of guys last week that a couple of small pockets of sardines were seen in Transkei and the fishing was good in the areas that the sardines had been seen, with a variety
of fish being caught. A couple of outsized shad had come out as well on spoon and fresh fillet baits. I also heard that fishing was tricky at times because of the rough surf conditions and it is widely known that fishing can be dangerous when the surf is big and rough.
Bruce Long told me that he had been for a dive in the Umdloti area and once he had managed to swim out beyond the backline, he found the visibility very bad, no more than a metre. There was no hope of seeing anything in the murky water so he called the dive off. He said that some of his diving friends had dived in several areas but they also complained about the water condition. They were all hoping to shoot a garrick or two but this did not happen.
It has been confirmed that there are garrick around but the sea has to improve before any action will be seen. The problem is that from the beach the water looks good but when one arrives behind the backline and has a look from close up, one finds a different story.
I thought there would be some action from the beaches at the weekend but my brother said he had been fishing in the Umhlanga area early in the morning and had found the fishing to be dead with just one or two very small shad being caught. Although he used bait and then spoon, hoping for a snoek, he never had as much as a knock. He said that the sea conditions were much the same as here.
The heavy seas kept most anglers off the rocks last week and the only news I heard from the rock anglers was that just a few small blacktail had been caught and some of the gullies were now badly sanded. Hopefully
things change this week.
Sealice