Angling Report – 31 July 2015

The rain was a really welcome sight again last week and I saw fresh water flowing into the sea for the first time in a long while which is not a bad thing at all. The surf was not ideal for much of the week because of the choppy sea conditions, but the shad thrive in the rough surf as do other sought after edible species such as salmon and the stumpies.

On Monday morning anglers in the Umgababa area had some hectic fishing with a variety of edible fish being caught. Snoek, queenfish, garrick, kingfish and some nice shad were landed and this was because of the baitfish that moved into the bay. The day before netters encircled a shoal of what they thought were sardines, but turned out to be maasbanker.

Sardines were netted in the Durban area on Tuesday and the netters were selling the fish for between R500 and R700 a basket. No more sardines were sighted for the rest of the week but there are still an exceptional variety and amount of baitfish just off the backline.

The Durban north area seems the place to be for anglers looking to catch shad at present. The shad have been biting really well in the Blue Lagoon area and at times guys were catching these fish throughout the day. I hear that there is still a bit of a “crazy mob” fishing in this area. I also heard that the shad were feeding at Virginia beach and a friend said I should join him in this area on Saturday morning. It was raining a bit when I arrived around 5am but there was already a bit of a crowd. The shad came on the bite at around 6am and my friend quickly had his limit catch of four nice sized fish and he stopped fishing. Some of the anglers were wrapping shad in plastic bags and hiding the fish in the bush fringing the beach and carried on fishing. Not long after the time that the fish began feeding, the conservation people arrived and began digging up the hidden fish and at the same time began to check the anglers. I could see that many of the anglers were becoming agitated because the conservation people were in no hurry to leave the beach and the shad were still feeding. We decided to leave and on the way out of the parking area, my friend stopped at the boom and showed me where some idiot had hooked a cable to his bakkie and pulled the pole that holds the boom out of the ground simply because it was locked. The boom is open from five in the morning till seven at night and this is the second time that this has been damaged. This area used to be in a bad state of repair with vagrants living in the bushes and the council had done an excellent job with tarring the road and paving the area. Today there are no vagrants around any more and anglers can enjoy their fishing with their vehicles parked in proper designated areas. Why some people want to destroy the boom all the time I do not know. There are ample parking spots outside of the locked area at the side of the airstrip and access to the beach is not denied at night.

On Tuesday morning there was a diver spear fishing along the backline in the Westbrook area and when he swam back to the beach I saw that he had speared two nice stumpies weighing around 4kg. He said that he had not seen a lot of decent fish in the area but did not venture out deeper because a westerly wind was predicted. The other thing he said was that there were plenty of shad in the water so I wonder why the fish are not moving into the surf to feed. I think that there is enough food at backline because a couple of the fish that my friend caught on Saturday morning had been feeding on sprats.

Sealice

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