Angling Report – 22 April 2016

The sea and weather conditions were perfect for fishing last week and it has been a long time since I have seen  it looking like a lake. For three days in a row there was absolutely no surf at all, with the water just lapping the shore. The winds were light except for Thursday when there was a bit of a north east but it hardly changed the conditions and the small surf continued until the end of the weekend.
I spoke to a couple of divers during the week and they said the conditions were perfect for catching crayfish. Apparently the visibility was not as good as expected but they did manage to catch a few ‘bugs’. One of the guys said that they saw a couple of pompano sniffing around a bit of reef on Wednesday morning and on Thursday there was a big brusher on the same reef as well. There were two pompano caught locally that I know of and one of these fish weighed just over 4kg and the other just under 3kg. Both were caught in the Tongaat area  one sealice bait. Conditions could not have been better for the pompano and I am sure that there were more fish caught locally. Tides were just right for the anglers and the flat surf conditions encouraged sharks to move inshore as well with anglers having some great sport with these hard fighting fish. One angler told me that he had caught seven greys on Wednesday afternoon and had lost several others.
Small shad have been on the bite for much of last week as well and although many of the fish were small, a few decent sized shad were caught as well. One angler caught five shad on one early morning outing last week and had to return three of the fish to the water because they were undersized. Another angler, fishing a different beach during the weekend, caught six shad and returned four to the water. This bodes well for the upcoming shad season because last year at this time the fishing was dead and it was not until the middle of June that a few shad were caught locally.
I believe that the shad were not biting early but came on the bite with the incoming tide with the best times being between half and full tide. This is probably because the water is very shallow when the tide is low because of the sand that has built up. The angler that caught the shad during the week said he caught most of his fish while reeling in and if he threw too far, he never had a bite.
Anglers spinning in the Virginia area had some excellent sport when a shoal of small bonito moved close inshore in the flat sea conditions and several of these hard fighting fish were caught.
Every morning I now watch the offshore wind blowing on the sea and it reminds me of the old days when the kite fisherman used to arrive at the Blue Lagoon at this time of the year with their equipment. Of course one does not see them these days but I used to watch as they would pull in some really big fish, both edible and inedible.
Sealice