Angling Report – 24 July 2015

The weather played along from Wednesday last week onwards, giving anglers some quality fishing time over the weekend.
There was more sardine activity down south last week and although there were some sardines caught, most of the nets contained mixed baitfish, which included red eye sardines. I saw a lot of baitfish activity last week in the waters off Tongaat beach and on one day I distinctly saw gamefish feeding on these fish just beyond the shark nets. Gamefish were reportedly also feeding in the north beach area on Sunday morning and there was more activity down south in the Umkomaas area.
I saw a few whales last week and my best sighting was of a large humpback breaking surface just beyond the shark nets at Westbrook beach on Friday morning. I watched this whale for a long time before it slowly made it’s way out to sea as the wind grew stronger. Fortunately this huge creature did not venture too close to the shark nets which does unfortunately happen from time to time. If the wind does not push too hard, there should probably be more whales around in the coming week.
The shad were on the bite from Umhlanga Rocks to Blue Lagoon from Friday and throughout the weekend, with the fish feeding all day long on Friday and Saturday in the Blue Lagoon area. Of course this area was over crowded with anglers totally disregarding bag limits and I hear that the beach is in a terrible state. The guys that mess up the beaches are normally the guys that only fish when there are shad on the bite and when the shad are quiet, they are nowhere to be seen. One of the regulars from the Virginia area told me that they have been fighting with these guys to keep the beach clean but to no avail. They have even been threatened with harm by these unscrupulous fisherman.
There have been some shad caught locally this past week, but nothing like the action that was recorded in the Durban area. Most of the local shad have been caught in the dark and moved off when the sun began to rise. This could be because of the predators that are around at the moment which include big barracouta and garrick. Another reason could be the shoals of baitfish that is currently abundant just beyond the surf.
I was talking to a couple of the local rock anglers this past week and most of them have apparently been battling a bit. Apart from the odd copper and lantern bream or cave bass not much was happening. One angler in Westbrook did land a stumpie when, out of desperation caused by smaller fish shredding his bait, he picked a few mussels and cast that out – the fish weighed only around 1kg.
Some of the offshore anglers told me that a few big couta were caught at La Mercy and Umdloti during the week on live baits. I also hear that anglers caught some nice fish in the Durban area during the weekend. With the warm water and baitfish still around gamefish anglers are bound to have some success with species like couta and garrick.
Sealice