Angling Report – 11 September 2015

Sardines were netted again in the Addington basin on Thursday and Friday last week and apparently the netters were selling the fish for R200 a basket – not a bad price for those wanting to stock up on bait. There were about half a dozen anglers fishing from the beach in the area that the netters were operating but these guys caught nothing at all. It makes one wonder just how many sardines are still in local waters and how much these fish have been influencing the fishing these past few days.

It was windy on most days last week with southerly winds pushing up the coast and this culminated in strong a south-wester on Thursday. The resulting big surf pounded the beaches and surf anglers were not able to spend much time on the beaches.

The popular Tongaat mouth was almost deserted last week and the beach has been eroded quite badly. From what I heard only the odd shad were caught from some of the popular areas with a few grey sharks in between. The beach at Umhlanga, which has been very popular in recent times, was also almost deserted with only a few regular diehards fishing in the early mornings. The shad tend to prefer the north easterly winds so there could be some more action this week.

A couple of my fishing contacts told me that they had tried to have a few throws last week during the late afternoons without much luck. They did say however that the anglers putting in the hours at night caught a couple of big grunter from the Umgeni north bank. Apparently the most productive baits were sealice which were also very difficult to catch in the rough surf conditions. I believe this is the way to go currently as it is time for the grunter run and there are several areas (especially near the local river mouths) that produce big grunter at this time of the year. Anglers were saying that it is the grey sealice and not the spotted rock lice that are producing the pulls.

It has been interesting to hear from the ski boat anglers the ‘seventy four’ are definitely making a comeback. This much sought after reef fish was so over exploited that the numbers collapsed and the species was put on the banned list – where it remains today. The guys are also mentioning that there is a good daga salmon run this year and the easily available live bait situation has helped when fishing for the dagas.

A few deep sea anglers fishing for daga salmon have hooked into some big musselcracker and rockcod. It has just been the adverse sea conditions that do not allow for any lengthy bottom fishing that have spoiled the time at sea. Of course when sea conditions do not really allow for fishing out deep, there is always the option of fishing the backline for snoek or garrick. Anglers do not relish the backline fishing as it is very intense and one must be ultra alert at all times. Unfortunately the garrick do not seem to be as numerous as they were in the past just yet.

Shad anglers have basically three weeks left before they put their tackle away until December so they should use any time available.

Sealice