Angling Report – 26 February 2016

Anglers must have been pretty disappointed with the weather on Saturday morning when the south westerly wind came through quite early. This was after some decent fishing conditions during the week although there was some early morning rain on some days.
It was nice to see some decent weather for a change but unfortunately there are not too many anglers that can take advantage of this during the work week.
I was surprised just how few anglers I saw on the beaches during the first half of last week and even some of the regulars were absent. I did meet one regular angler on the beach just north of Westbrook and we had quite an interesting conversation. It was Wednesday morning and although he fished the same spot for a couple of hours and the day before he had not had a lot of success – he was using ghost crab as bait.
During our conversation he told me that he was a pensioner and spent a lot of his time fishing, weather permitting, not just because he loves the sport of fishing, but mostly as he had to try and catch edible fish to supplement their diet at home because of spiraling food costs. He fishes different areas at different times of the year for the various edible species and has found, over the years, that certain areas were more productive depending at what time of the year it was.
I mentioned to the angler that I used to keep a log book and entered information after every fishing outing which increased my catch rate dramatically. He also said that bait selection was very important when fishing at different times of the year and at the present time he would be fishing the beach on which we were talking because he had had some excellent results in the past catching some nice stumpnose and sizeable pompano at times.
After speaking to him for about 30 minutes I left the beach and said that he should let me know whether he had caught anything.
About an hour later I heard someone hooting in my driveway and it was the angler that I had been talking to and he said that he had something to show me.
He opened the boot of his vehicle and there was a beautiful pompano that weighed out at 7kg. He said that the fish had taken his crab bait about ten minutes after I had left the beach and although he had put out a fresh bait after landing the fish, he had had no more pulls.
Although edible fish have been scarce the past few days, anglers fishing for the summer flatfish and sharks have had some excellent sport. Guys fishing just south of the Umhlanga lighthouse in the late afternoon periods after work have had their arms stretched. A friend was fishing that area and said that he had seen a couple of big sandies and skates landed plus the odd sizeable shark just before dark.
My friend also told me that the ski anglers fishing along the backline have been catching some very nice snoek recently on spoon and strip baits. The odd queenfish have been caught as well but fishing has not been all that hectic. As the week progressed and conditions deteriorated the news just dried up so obviously not much was happening.
Sealice