Angling Report – 8 May 2015

Anglers experienced some great weather and fishing conditions last week. The water was crystal clear all week long and in fact some anglers said that the water was a bit too clean.

I watched a couple of spear fishermen beach their boat on Wednesday and they said that the diving conditions were perfect, but even though they spent a lot of time in the water and covered quite a distance, no fish of any size were seen. They said their friends diving in another area also did not see anything of note.

I had a word with a couple of anglers who were in Durban for the gamefish competition and they said that they also struggled for fish, even though there were a few big fish caught. There were apparently a couple of couta weighing over 30kg landed, with the winning fish pulling the scale at an impressive 36kg. Other large fish that were caught included a wahoo weighing over 30kg, a really big prodigal son also weighing over 30kg and a couple of yellowfin tuna. When you consider the number of anglers fishing and the number of fish weighed, you still have to say that the fishing was not all that good.

I have heard from other people that there are a couple of big couta around but one has to try really hard before having any luck. It still seems better to target the wahoo off Durban, especially around the ships at anchor.

It can be rather boring spending hours trying for a gamefish and this is why many anglers opt for the more ‘lucrative’ bottom fishing. By all accounts, anglers fishing on the bottom are catching a variety of decent sized fish at the moment. I have heard that there are some big rockcod feeding in some areas and one guy told me that he lost a big rocky to a shark and when he weighed the head, it weighed in at l1kg.

I spent a considerable amount of time at different beaches during the week and I saw only one sizeable edible fish caught and that was a pompano of about 5kg – caught at about llam as the tide was rising. Another nice pompano was caught in the Virginia area on Sunday morning. My brother fished the weekend in the Durban North area and he caught several small fish on squid bait which included one shad just over 300mm, a nice sized wave garrick and a small Jesser sandshark. All these fish were caught on light tackle.

The local anglers said they have been catching a few small fish amongst the rocks but it has been hard work. Nobody is offering any information regarding where fish are being caught which is normal when the fish are scarce. The best way to find out where there is some action is to see where there are a group of anglers on a regular basis.

Although it is still very early in the season, it is encouraging to hear that the few shad that have been caught are mostly over the legal limit size. The past couple of seasons have been disappointing because most of the fish caught were undersized and it was just later on in the year that the larger fish began feeding. What is interesting is that in the recent past, the odd lucky angler has pulled a shad weighing over 3kg which is unusual for this time of the year.

Hopefully this spell of good weather will continue for a while, although at present, the winter conditions are slowly moving into the Cape.

Sealice

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