Angling Report – 27 February 2015

Fishing conditions this weekend were not good at all. The South Westerly wind on Saturday morning brought bad weather, lasting until Sunday. Thursday and Friday had the best conditions for those lucky enough to fish.
Most of the action for edible fish was beyond the breakers and the anglers contine to catch sizeable yellowfin tuna. I saw a couple of surf ski anglers beach with big tuna in the Tongaat area and on Friday I saw another surf ski angler with two really nice dorado that were caught fairly close inshore in the La Mercy area. Unfortunately the water is still a little green and the clean water line can still be seen about a kilometer out. Despite this, I heard that a couple of decent sized couta, tuna and dorado have been caught off Durban.
I heard that a couple of really big couta weighing around 40kg as well as a few wahoo have been caught by anglers on the South Coast. Apparently bottom fishing is producing some very nice fish when the currents have not been too bad. Some big reds and rockcod plus a few kawa kawa have been biting on the reefs and anglers who fished the deeper water have found a few geelbek salmon at times. Apparently guys launching from Rocky Bay have been doing well lately, catching both gamefish and bottom fish.
Grey sharks have been plentiful at times and most of the local beaches have produced sizable greys as the water has been ideal for these hard fighting fish. Anglers have had their tackle tested properly mainly because some do not set the drag on the reels properly. I saw an angler pulled right out of the deckchair that he was sitting on and I really thought that his rod would snap but instead, his hook straightened.
I visited La Mercy mouth on Thursday afternoon and saw a lone angler on the beach who after a while caught a nice shad of around 2,5kg. He said that he had landed another shad a few minutes earlier which weighed around 2kg – not a bad afternoon’s fishing. It is surprising to see shad of this size at this time of the year but it just shows that these fish are still around although not plentiful.
The guys fishing the rocky gullies have been struggling a bit to find decent sized fish on the bite. Fishing these rocky gullies is always hard work and the regular anglers tend to use methods passed down from generation to generation. Not many of the anglers use modern methods such as drop shots which have proved to be quite productive during the past couple of years. Most of these anglers still use red bait, mussels and rock crab but I must say that they do catch their fair share of fish when conditions are right. One of the regulars said he preferred the old methods because tackle is expensive these days and when one fishes the rocky gullies, one must expect to lose tackle.
I was looking at the long range weather reports and it seems as if the North Easterly winds will be blowing all week with a switch to the South West on Friday so anglers will probably be looking at washing machine conditions in the surf. The best fishing times could be the early morning periods. This could mean that even the inshore gamefish anglers will find the conditions unfavourable so the long range forecast does not look that good.

Sealice