Angling Report – 26 June 2015

There were no reports of any shoals of sardines along the entire KZN coastline last week, but the Shark’s Board reported plenty of activity in the Port St Johns area on Friday. I was in Durban North on Friday morning and there were only a couple of boats on the backline targeting snoek around the Virginia area. On Saturday morning a pocket of sardines suddenly appeared in the Glenashley area and the netters were soon busy. Just a couple of hours later, more sardines were reported close inshore in the Eastmore area just south of Umhlangs Rocks. The netters were busy again and soon there were two nets in the water. A friend called me about the sardines but recommended that I stay away because it was chaos at the beach. It was the usual bun fight,common when the first few sardines appear. People were behaving badly with nets apparently being cut open, leading to punch-ups with everyone squabbling for a few sardines. The asking price for the sardines was ridiculous as well so I think that I did the right thing by staying at home.
Late on Saturday afternoon, a small pocket of sardines moved into the surf for a short while at Beachwood but the fish soon moved out of range. On Sunday morning I spent some time searching the water in the Westbrook area for any signs of the little silver fish, but there were none. Reports soon came in of sardines being netted on the South Coast at Illovo and Umkomaas. The shoal at Umkomaas stretched as far as Widenham and more shoals were reported further south. I am positive that there will be sardines in local waters this week, but only time will tell. Shoals normally pass by the local beaches out deep and sometimes out of sight from the shore.
The surf angling was quiet for most of last week with just a few shad being caught in some areas and grey sharks making up the majority of the fish caught. On Saturday morning my brother was fishing at Virginia when the shad came on the bite in the dark and he was lucky enough to bag three fish, all over the legal limit size. Everyone thought that the fishing would be good the next day after the sardines had appeared, but this turned out not to be the case. Eastmore was crowded but the lack of fish left many disappointed anglers on the beach.
I saw Bruce Long last week who told me that they had caught some really nice fish out deep on the bottom. He caught a nice cracker and some big reds were boated plus a nice Scotsman and some big rockies. I have heard from a couple of deep sea anglers now about sizeable Scotsman being on the bite and this is a bit of a surprise because it has been a long time since I have seen or heard about these fish being caught. Geelbek salmon have also been caught but the guys were saying that unfortunately currents and the presence of hammerhead sharks were making things difficult. These sharks are tremendously strong and give one’s arms a real workout.
News of gamefish is scarce but I hear that there are a few snoek on the backline and a couple of garrick were caught by anglers fishing the backline in the Umhlanga area. This is good news because this just confirms that the garrick have arrived and the gamefish anglers will be back in business again although many anglers do not like fishing on the backline especially when the surf is a bit unpredictable.
Hopefully the fishing will improve this week as the shad that I have seen coming out locally have generally been small and not worth targeting.

Sealice

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