Angling Report – 15 January 2016

It was a hot and humid first half of last week and the hot conditions were aided by moderate to fresh north easterly winds. It was a relief when temperatures dropped a little for the second half of the week and surf conditions remained good throughout the weekend. Rough seas have however been predicted for the near future so this is something that rock and surf anglers will have to watch out for.
Decent sized edible fish were hard to come by and it was mostly in the rocky areas that anglers caught a few fish. Recently anglers fishing the gullies have caught a few rockcod but most of the fish were under-sized. I heard of one or two spotted rockcod weighing just over l,5kg. Quite a few stonebream have also been caught amongst the rocks but larger sought after fish such as the pompano remained elusive. I had a word with one local angler during the week just as he was leaving the beach and he said that all he had caught was one small copper bream and that was after a three hour stint fishing from the rocks.
Early morning anglers are still catching some shad but the majority of the fish are way undersized and should be returned alive to the water. I was at Virginia beach during the week talking to a couple of anglers and they said that the fishing had been quiet except for a couple of nice sandies and skates that were caught by anglers using fresh fillet or shad head baits. I heard that these summer flatfish are feeding all along the Durban North stretch up to Umhlanga Rocks. There have been a couple of nice sized sharks caught as well, mostly in the evenings.
With the hot, humid weather that we are experiencing at present, it is difficult to spend a lot of time on the beach and the most comfortable times are the early mornings and late afternoons. The water temperatures are high and species such as big pompano will move into the surf to feed. These fish tend to feed during the mid-morning period (looking back at past catches) and I think that anglers should forget about fishing for the undersized shad and fish the known local pompano spots with crayfish baits or my favorite, live ghost crab.
I have been reading with interest the letters in the Courier written by Mr Jansen about the proposed opening of the marine reserve along the Tsitsikama coast and allow for anglers to fish this area. I must agree with what he says as this is a nursery for the fish species all along the South African coast and this reserve has been in operation for more than fifty years. He holds that this area will be plundered in a very quick time and he cannot understand the reasoning for the so called “pilot lifting of the ban”. All the old time anglers that I have spoken to about lifting of the ban in this area seem to agree that someone is going to score big time for a short while and then many of the angling species will disappear from our local coastline.
I was watching a documentary on the long line fishing boats fishing our coast waters. In the documentary it showed these long lines being set with as many as three thousand hooks each and anything and everything is being caught. It was actually sad to see dead fish what was classed as by-catch just tossed overboard – the damage caused by these longliners is tremendous. Gone are the days when the coastline was patrolled on a regular basis.
Sealice