Angling Report – 9 October 2015

Anglers had to put up with some rough seas last week with a large ‘shorey’ at Westbrook making fishing a little dangerous for the unwary. There were some waves that were washing up against the sea wall and the water was rushing back with such power that could have easily seen someone washed into the sea had they been caught in the backwash.

Some anglers made the most of the last day of the shad season, but unfortunately these fish were difficult to find. I heard that only a few fish were caught from the popular shad angling spots. Last week I watched a fishing program about a recent shad angling tournament that was held at Cape Vidal. This tournament has been held for the past 39 years and involves the fathers, grandfathers and sons. The youngsters were really enjoying their fishing and the normal conservation rules were applied and after the four day competition, the average catch for the day was 250 shad. Most of the fish that I saw measured around 350mm but there was one shad caught by an excited youngster that weighed in at 1.4kg.

Apparently on the best day, 1 000 shad were caught and that far exceeds anything that I have seen or heard of in local waters this year. Some of the historically best local shad angling spots of years gone by have just not worked at all in recent seasons. I think that this year one of the reasons for this could have been the sandbanks that have formed at some of the beaches and another could be amount of food beyond the waves.

Anglers are still catching sand soldiers and maasbanker off the beach at Umhlanga and in the Durban North area – which is something I have never seen before. There are also some big pinkies being caught and it was this time last year that I said that it was a long time since I had seen pinkies caught from the beach. I believe that when the season opens at the beginning of December, anglers are going to have some excellent sport with big shad that will be on the bite.

There were a few more copper bream caught last week and anglers fishing with crayfish baits were recording the most pulls. I actually saw three copper bream that weighed over 2kg in the La Mercy area last week. One angler with two fish said that he was having an excellent season in this area, landing a fish on almost every outing. Of course he would not say exactly where he was catching the fish but these excellent table fish have been on the bite at several of the local rocky fishing spots, with more and more anglers now targeting them. The rough water of last week was ideal for the copper bream.

I watched an 82-year-old angler hook and land a grey shark in the rough water on Wednesday morning and this guy really enjoyed himself. He fought and landed the fish without any help from anyone and I must say that he used the big shore dump well to beach the fish. There are plenty of these greys around at present and it is great fun fishing for these sharks. It’s also good to see that the anglers are returning these sharks alive to the water. There were no reports of any sandies last week and maybe the surf was too rough for them to move inshore, but I am sure that they will be back on the bite pretty soon.

I heard from a source that some sizeable grunter have been caught in the Mapelane area recently, with a few of these fish weighing in excess of 4kg. My contact also said that some nice shoal kob have been feeding in the dark so it seems as if the fishing is picking up in this area. I am sure that there will be some big summer flatfish in the area as well so this area could be worth a visit for a few days.

Sealice