Fish Eagle / Angling Report

The north easterly winds that have been blowing quite strong at times and have had the effect of building up sandbanks along the local coastline. The shallow water during the ebb tide stretches quite a distance and anglers are having a tough time casting into deeper water. The result is that only a few anglers can be seen fishing during the week with generally not much success. The tides last week were ideal for the early morning and late afternoon anglers but because of the winds, the surf was very unsettled and the water running over the banks was drifting pretty badly. A friend told me that Durban View at Umhlanga was badly sanded up, as were the Durban North beaches. I had a look in the Umdloti area, La Mercy mouth, Westbrook and the Tongaat mouth where it was the same story.
I did not see any decent fish caught from the surf last week, but I heard that there were a few stone bream landed by anglers who put in the time. The only other reports were of a couple of small blacktail caught amongst the rocks. Unfortunately, there is still no news of any pompano making an appearance, but I am sure that these fish will turn-on anytime now. I believe that even the Virginia and Umgeni mouth areas have gone quiet and anglers trying for the undersized shad went home empty handed.
A friend who recently spent some time at Cape Vidal found the fishing pretty good with a variety of edible fish being caught by the offshore anglers. Catches included couta, with some nice snoek, dorado, yellowfin tuna plus one big prodigal son and some billfish in the deeper water. All the craft that launched returned with couta, a species that has been a bit scarce in local waters so far this year. The surf anglers were also finding some decent fish. From my experience at Vidal I have found that one catches fish on every launch, but the wind can really blow up, so it’s always an early launch to try and beat the wind.
There has been only the odd couta caught by lucky anglers in local waters but the guys are keeping very quiet on where they have caught these fish. So far it has been a bad couta season for the local offshore anglers but there are still plenty of tunny and dorado about and a few snoek in certain areas. When I first began offshore angling in the 1970’s, all of us used to await the arrival of the jellyfish. Normally in the month of November when these creatures arrived in great numbers, we knew that we would be in for an excellent couta season. I remember launching early one morning from Westbrook beach and on travelling to Stud Rock, seeing acres of jellies floating closely together in the water. That morning the couta went dilly and we soon ran out of sardine baits and we resorted to pull feathers and still the couta nailed these lures and ripped them to shreds. I have not seen jellyfish for many years now whereas they used to be an annual occurrence when the Mozambique current moved down the coast.
The guys are catching decent bottom fish still in some areas and there have been some big slinger, soldiers and rockcod boated. Anglers along the South Coast are getting some really big bottom fish plus some decent catches of gamefish. One angler caught a big seventy four on a charter boat. This species is on the prohibited list so the fish was not brought ashore.
We are rapidly moving into the time of the year when we have the best weather conditions with calm warm days and calm clean seas. When anglers see these conditions move in, they should get down to their favourite pompano fishing spots because the fish will probably be there waiting.
Sealice

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