Angling Report – 21 November 2014

The theft of vehicles and drivers being hijacked in the vicinity of the local beaches recently is becoming a real cause for concern.

Three different people mentioned this problem to me last week and occurrences seem to be on the increase.

It is not just the anglers who are being targeted but surfers, divers and the general beach goers are all at risk.

I heard of an angler who was taken off the beach at gunpoint in the La Mercy area.

He was forced to start his vehicle thus enabling the thieves to easily drive away with his car.

Many anglers are now carrying firearms on the beach which is also worrying because soon someone could get killed, whether it is in trying to steal a vehicle or just trying to protect their property.

Anglers and surfers are probably more at risk of being confronted by would-be thieves because these guys mostly arrive at the beach early in the mornings when the dim light makes it difficult to pick out criminals.

As it is not easy to predict where they will strike next, I would recommend that people choose beaches that are a bit busier with more foot traffic.

I said recently that the early mornings would be the best times for anglers because of the wind and this proved to be spot-on last week.

Anglers had to make the most of the calm conditions between 4am to 7am before the winds began blowing.

A variety of edible fish were caught locally and these included shad (which are plentiful at present), a couple of nice stumpies, a few garrick and a nice daga salmon of 28kg.

Raveen said that the daga was caught by an angler fishing for shad in the Tongaat area.

A few grey sharks came out in the murky water and a couple of nice sized skates in the Umhlanga Rocks area.

Apparently, Tinley Manor is fishing quite well but this area always does at this time of the year.

The La Mercy mouth has also produced a couple of nice fish recently and I heard that some big shad have been feeding in this area as well-as grey sharks. An angler fishing the south side of the mouth also caught a nice 12kg garrick on spoon last week.

Bruce Long and a friend were spear fishing up at Vidal last weekend and I heard on Saturday that they both missed shots at barracuda before the Westerly buster ended their excursion.

I had a word with a couple of deep sea anglers in Durban and although the weather has been bad, they apparently did come across some purple water further out.

This means that the Mozambique current is moving inshore and there have been some big yellowfin tunny and a few dorado caught by the South Coast deep sea anglers.

There are plenty of mackerel around at present so bait is not a problem which means that things are looking good for the coming summer gamefish season.

The long range weather report predicts a lot of rain for this week and I predict that the early mornings will again be the most productive times to cast a line.
Sealice