Angling Report – 27 November 2015

The weather was a bit unpredictable last week and anglers found that the best time to try their luck was the early morning period when the wind was down. Monday was a write off after the strong southerly of the previous day created very rough surf and almost impossible fishing conditions.
For the rest of the week the winds blew from both the north and the south and these winds would be moderate to strong by 8am in the mornings. Surprisingly the surf remained fishable during the early morning periods for most of the week, but anglers were soon chased from their angling spots by the blustery conditions.
Most of the anglers fishing during the early morning period were targeting the shad that would move inshore at first light, but would disappear by 5am. Anglers would then have some nice bites from sharks or summer flatfish.
I saw one angler fishing on Tuesday morning and he had a pull from a big fish that stripped a lot of line from his reel before stopping and seemingly anchoring itself on the bottom of the sea. Unfortunately his line parted after ten or fifteen minutes and it certainly fought like a large skate. At the time the angler was using a shad head as bait. I heard of a couple more instances of anglers hooking into flatfish with one angler landing a nice brown skate that was returned to the water after a hectic battle.
Because of the windy conditions, there were very few of the regular anglers fishing their favorite local rocky gullies and apparently all these guys caught were a few small blacktail. Those that I had a word with said that there were plenty of tobies around that were stripping hooks of bait in record time. I was trying to find out whether there were any copper bream around but it seems as if these fish have disappeared. What I did see though was that fishing these rocky gullies was a bit dicey in the unpredictable surf and this was why it was just the regular anglers that knew the areas that were fishing.
With all the rain about I expected to see dirty river water flowing into the sea but this was not to be. Durban and up as far as Umhlanga Rocks received the heavy rain and from Umdloti northwards the rain was not as heavy. Some of the local beaches have been scoured out nicely by the strong surf caused by mainly the strong southerly winds. Where once there was a sandy bottom, there is now just rock and quite a few anglers have been caught out losing some tackle.
As expected with the weather, I did not see many surf ski anglers launching, but I did see one ski on the beach that was in two pieces and completely destroyed. It just shows how powerful the sea can be. I believe that nearer Durban, the guys who launched early caught a few tunny and there was one nice wahoo landed on live bait. The anglers were nervous to travel too far because of the wind so I never heard whether any dorado were boated, although they are plentiful in the water at present. Apparently some big shad have been attacking the lures or live baits and one angler told me that these fish weighed up to four or five kilos – so they are big fish.
I believe that one surf ski angler fishing off Glenashley beach boated a garrick of around 6kg that took a live pinkie bait that was put out for a tuna. I hear that the wahoo was caught in the same area but apparently there were sharks feeding there as well so a few traces were demolished and the tackle lost by anglers targeting the edibles.
There is just over one more week until the shad season reopens again so guys just be patient and use the time to prepare tackle rather than stand a chance of obtaining a criminal record for doing something silly.
Sealice