Angling report – 5 December 2014

What I call the crazy season has begun early this year and I was awoken at just after 2am on Saturday by a volley of gunshots fired down by the beach area.

Not long after that vehicles began racing past my place blaring loud music with the occupants screaming at the top of their lungs.

I drove down to the beach at 4am to check out the fishing and luckily for me, I decided to park my car right by the lifesavers’ building.

It was just as well because the entire car park was strewn with broken bottles with glass everywhere and the party up in the top car park was still at full revs.

It was shocking to see how some people behave and just how they can throw their mess about with no qualms at all.

In the water, young females were bathing in the nude and it was easy to see that they were completely inebriated, oblivious of the dangers that the sea poses in the dark.

Anglers now no longer have to come up with ingenious methods to hide their fish as the shad season is officially open again.

Just a reminder that the bag limit is four fish a day with a minimum size of 300mm.

The shad is not a commercial fish which means that they cannot be sold and I mention this because one of the local anglers told me last week that a woman had been prosecuted for selling shad and apparently she had 200 fish in her possession.

I was at the beach before first light just about every morning last week and saw just a few shad caught.

The fish I saw were on the small side although just over the legal limit.

Like clockwork the fish began feeding around first light and were gone after about fifteen minutes (between 4.30am and 4.45am).

On Sunday morning the water was pretty low as the change of tide was only two days away.

There were several anglers trying, but the fishing was dead with only tobies (which seem to be full up at the moment) being landed.

I did see one decent shad of around 1kg come out just before I left at 6am.

One of my friends told me that there w e r e some pretty big grunter caught during the late afternoons in the Durban North area.

These fish have been showing a preference for sealice baits but a couple have been caught on red eye sardine fillets.

Apparently, a couple of sandies of around 10kg have also been caught in this area on sealice.

I think that anglers fishing the local river mouths could have a good chance of pulling a nice grunter or two.

I saw a lot of surf ski anglers launching at Westbrook on Sunday morning and they were all looking for live baits at the shark nets.

These anglers have been catching some big yellowfin tuna lately. There have been no reports of any couta being caught as yet.
Sealice