Angling Report – 5 September 2014

Fishing was a no go for anglers the entire week because of the heavy sea conditions and large, rough surf. The sea was starting to moderate nicely on Thursday, but then the first of the cold fronts came through and any thoughts of fishing over the weekend quickly disappeared.
On Tuesday morning Westbrook beach had this yellowish-brown substance washing up and down in the shorebreak and the stench coming from the water was terrible. It was as if there was something in the water that had been dead a long time and it seemed that even the strong waves could not wash this substance away. By Wednesday morning the smell had disappeared but the brown substance remained in the area. Fortunately, the heavy seas cleaned up the water during the weekend. I would advise members of the public to refrain from picking and eating mussels or any filter feeders for a while just to be on the safe side.
Some beaches, Westbrook included, had a lot of sand scoured down to bedrock in places so even when the big seas subside, anglers will have to be careful when casting. The heavy seas could be a blessing in disguise because I can see that some of the big sandbanks have been broken up and this could be just what was needed to shake the fishing up a bit.
It is the beginning of spring and there is now just one month left for catching shad before the season closes (reopening in December). It has been a pretty poor winter shad season locally, with very few anglers who can say they took their quota from local shad spots. One regular angler who fishes the Umhlanga area told me last week that he had only caught three small shad the entire winter, which is even less than the poor shad fishing last year. Don’t despair just yet, however, as the larger blue shad should begin to move into the local surf this month. I have heard that a couple of big shad have been caught down south already so I think it might be the time to start targeting these fish as soon as the sea settles a bit.
I met a deep sea angler on the beach during the week and he although he had owned his ski boat for some time now, he has decided to sell up and call it a day. The reasons he gave were the high costs in running a boat, the disappointing couta seasons of the past couple of years and the general decline of the deep sea fishing he had known in the past. He told me the guys down south were still catching a few fish but for him it was a hassle to travel and launch down the coast. The angler said during the summer he would target the gamefish and then in the winter period, it would be the garrick, daga and geelbek salmon.
Another friend of mine just returned home from a 10 day holiday on the South Coast. He was unlucky because he caught the sea conditions at their worst and they struggled to catch anything decent. He said that when speaking to some of the locals, they told him that a few really nice daga salmon had been caught in the Port Shepstone area by anglers fishing at night with live baits. The shad was also plentiful before they arrived but in the 10 days down the coast, they only managed to catch two shad of around 1kg each.
It will probably be about the middle of the week before the sea settles enough to cast a line, so good luck to all.
Sealice