Angling Report – 30 October 2015

Anglers have been conspicuous in their absence from the beach again this past week although the weather conditions did play their part. Monday last week was the perfect day with good sea conditions and just light winds for the entire day, but then the winds began again from the north and the south for the rest of the week.

The guys that I did see fishing were all doing so amongst the rocks and it was obvious that they were targeting the copper bream without much luck in the turbulent surf conditions. There was one angler that I watched with interest on Monday morning and this guy was fishing light tackle using drop shots. I could see that he was an experienced campaigner and was expertly working the drop shot lure. He had a pull every third or so cast and was looking like he was having great fun. I probably watched this angler for an hour or so and during that time he caught two small lantern bream or cave bass, a small shad and a small stumpnose. All these fish he returned to the water alive. I decided to go and introduce myself and it turned out that he was down on a business holiday from Mozambique. We talked about fishing whilst he continued casting when suddenly something grabbed his lure and took off out to sea before the line parted. He said that it was definitely a kingfish that had taken the lure but he had no chance with the light tackle that he was using. After that the fishing went quiet and the angler decided to call it a day.

The winds have certainly brought back the sand big time and a couple of the popular fishing spots that I visited were badly sanded up. I visited these beaches during the low tide periods so that I could get some sense of where one would have the most chance of catching a couple of fish, but I did not see any breaks or channels. At the La Mercy mouth I saw a lone angler sitting on the beach and when I spoke to him he said that he had been on the beach from first light but had not had a decent pull all morning. At the time of talking to him, he had a slide bait out but everything was quiet.

My friends that fish the Umhlanga and Durban North areas tell me that the fishing has been quiet with some small fish being caught in the shorebreak. The fish that were caught were mainly mullet and wave garrick or spotted pompano but even these fish were few and far between. I did however hear that there had been a few garrick caught in the Beachwood and Umgeni mouth areas on live mullet. Nobody is talking about the shad and if any are being caught, it is being kept very quiet.

I have not heard much from the offshore anglers but conditions at sea have not been all that great. The surf ski anglers have also found the surf launch very tricky at most of the sites. At the time of writing this column, the wind was already pushing from the south and it is only 4am in the morning so nobody will be putting to sea. The last I heard though was that a couple of small dorado have been caught out in the deeper blue water and the billfish anglers are just waiting for a break in the weather so that they can try for marlin out in the deep.

Sealice