Angling Report – 30 January 2015

Anglers had to put up with rough seas and fresh to strong winds for most of last week. As can be expected at this time of the year the weather was also particularly hot and humid, even though some rain did cool things down a bit. The surf did calm down a bit by the weekend, but the water was dirty and the dirty water line stretched pretty far out to sea.
The rough surf does not always mean that anglers are wasting their time by fishing because certain species of fish enjoy the rough conditions. One of these species is the stumpie and I saw two nice fish caught in the early morning before first light. One weighed around three and a half kilos and the other just over 2kg. The one was trapped on a squid bait and the other fell to crab. I have also heard from local anglers that the odd really decent shad has been caught at some of the local beaches. Normally the shad caught at this time of the year are small with many being undersized so this is good news.
The early morning anglers found the summer flatfish on the bite in the dirty water and on Saturday morning and I saw two sandies weighing between ten to fifteen kilos landed. Bruce Long told me that he fished the Sheffield beach area where some decent shad and sandies were on the bite. Apparently someone also hooked into a fish that he fought for two hours before it broke off.
The deep sea anglers had some trying conditions to put up with during the week but a few barracouta weighing between 15kg and 20kg were caught off Durban. Dorado also seem to be really plentiful at present. On Wednesday morning I was watching two ski boats fishing just off the nets at Westbrook and although the anglers seemed to be struggling a bit with the bumpy conditions, I saw them pull in a couple of nice sized fish. Although it wasn’t clear through the binoculars it looked like they were catching couta. Unfortunately the dirty water towards the end of the week was not what the gamefish anglers were looking for as this attracted the sharks.
I read an interesting article in a newspaper recently about a pair of ski boat anglers who found a fish tracking device floating 15 nautical miles off Shelley beach. The anglers brought the device ashore and made some enquiries about how it worked and where it was from. It turned out that it belonged to a Spanish fishing company – the name of a fishing vessel could be seen on the device. Traulers usually drop these devices into the water and they emit sonar signals which show concentrations of fish such as tuna. When a big concentration of fish is found, the ships move into the area and clean it up. The spokesman of the company said that they had been fishing in the seas off Mauritius and the device had probably drifted down with the current where it was found off Shelley beach. The anglers who found the device said that they were highly suspicious because Shelly beach was a long long way from where it was dropped into the water.
For many years ski boat anglers have been saying that foreign trawlers have been operating in local waters under cover of darkness. When I was fishing offshore on a regular basis we often found evidence of trawlers having been in the area. Netting, buoys and bits and pieces of fishing equipment was often brought ashore by the ski boat anglers.
Sealice

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