Angling Report – 18 March 2016

Sea and surf conditions were pretty good for fishing most of last week but this changed when the southerly came up on Friday. The surf became choppy and remained so until the end of the weekend.
There were still a lot of baitfish around last week and on Thursday there was a large shoal of spratin in the surf at Westbrook. The sprats were within casting distance from the beach and the fish were accompanied by plenty of sea birds diving into the surf and feeding on the small fish. I believe that there were some snoek in the area feeding on the sprats and there was a boat on the backline with anglers throwing spoons for them.
I missed a call from a fishing friend in the Tugela area and although I could not get through to him later, he only contacts me when the fish are biting in the area. I heard at the weekend that labotes were on the bite at the Tugela mouth. Not much is known about these strange fish but there are only a couple of places in the world where labotes are caught and one of these is the Tugela mouth. These fish will eat almost anything and I have been told by anglers that they have caught labotes while using dead birds or chickens. When hooked the labotes give a strong and often spectacular fight and are sometimes caught in the lagoon at the Tugela mouth as well. I had the chance to sample the flesh of one of these fish once but I found it very oily and I did not enjoy it at all. All the regular Tugela anglers fish for the labotes when they are around and many do so simply because of the tremendous sport of catching these fish.
Anglers fishing the beach at Virginia have been catching some very nice grunter recently on sealice baits. Most fish have averaged between two to three kilos, but every now and then a nice big fish of six kilos is hooked. The early evening or before first light in the mornings are the best times to catch these grunter but anglers said that the odd fish has been caught during the day as well. Not much else has been caught in this area except for a few wave garrick and the odd grey shark. It is the grunter that are keeping anglers interested however.
It is the time of the year when the shoal salmon or kob begin to move into the surf and again, the best time to target these fish is the early evening periods. I have heard that a couple of small salmon have been caught in the Tugela area but it could be worth looking at the local river mouth areas to fish for them. In the past I have caught a number of shoal salmon in the Westbrook area at this time of the year. A couple of hours spent fishing after work was always productive although sharks did spoil the fishing at times.
The Easter long weekend is rapidly approaching so local anglers should make sure they have sufficient bait before the holidaymakers snap up all the stocks. Anglers with bait licences should be concentrating on using crab, sealice, crayfish and even mussels because if the conditions are good, there should be some big pompano feeding. The pompano tend to like a flat, calm and clean surf and they normally feed later in the morning so there is no rush to get to one’s favourite pompano angling spot.
When conditions have allowed, offshore anglers are still recording some nice catches when fishing the deep reefs. Big rockcod of several varieties have been boated recently plus some nice soldiers, Englishman, the odd scottsman and kawa kawa when fishing at the bottom.
Gamefish anglers continue to catch yellowfin tuna, snoek plus the odd wahoo and couta but sharks are still a hassle. The trick has been to catch one or two fish then move to another area.
Sealice