Fish Eagle – August 1

Last week was another where anglers struggled to catch anything of note. Even the guys fishing in the rocky gullies reported very little activity. I was on the beach every day last week but most of the local fishing spots remain sanded up. You could see the waves washing up the sand and matters were not helped by the low tides in the prime early morning fishing times.

I took a drive to Umdloti to have a look at the beach next to the big bricks at the side of the tidal pool and was lucky enough to meet a regular angler I used to fish with at this spot. He told me he had been fishing a lot but had not caught anything notable and not a single shad this season. We reminisced about the ‘old’ days when we caught salmon, shad and big stumpies at that particular beach during this time of the year.

I had a call from my brother on Friday afternoon who said the water in the Umhlanga area was looking pretty good and was worth a try in the morning. A couple of surfski anglers had just beached with two tunny between them. They reported that the shad were gale at the barge where they were fishing for live bait which clinched it for my brother. At 5am the next morning he was on the beach fishing hard, but after a few hours he still had nothing to show for his efforts and all he saw landed were two small silver bream. It seems like the lack of water over the sandbanks proved to be the problem here as well.

A lot of shad are being caught in the Durban basin which stretches from Ushaka to the Umgeni river mouth. The challenge is that all the anglers from Durban and the surrounding areas are trying to fish these limited areas and it is chaos. The shad have moved into this basin because the area is protected by the piers at the entrance of the harbour so there is not a great movement of sand by the waves. This is the same area in which the seine netters used to ply their trade, pulling in full nets of shad in those days.

Early morning tides are much better this week so one must just persevere and hope that the fish come on the bite. The brusher season should also be in full swing, but I have yet to see or hear about any brusher being caught. It seems as though if you want to have some good fishing then it will be a case of travelling either north or south to catch fish.

Sealice