Angling Report

Fishing conditions were good for much of last week except for the water that was a bit discoloured inshore. By Friday morning however a groundswell had moved in and the surf was smoking with the waves coming through with very little gap in- between them. The light easterly winds during the week moved a lot of sand inshore and this made surf conditions worse than they should have been with the water rushing over the sandbanks.
Local surf anglers found a lot of small shad on the bite last week with plenty of peckers as well. The discoloured water was ideal for the small sharks to move inshore and they made a nuisance of themselves by attacking baits meant for other species. It is cold on the beach during the early mornings at present and I am sure that many anglers are waiting for the fishing to improve before braving the conditions as I saw only a few guys fishing during last week.
Anglers are still catching some decent fish up north at times and I hear that the Wild Coast is also fishing well at present. Apparently there are plenty of nice shad being landed, along with some big salmon, copper bream among the rocks and a couple of sizeable brusher. Anglers have been smashed up by big sharks as well so it seems as if it is all happening down in the Transkei.
Offshore anglers fishing during the week are still catching the odd decent sized couta in the Stud Rock area but I see that this area is not as popular at present as it was a couple of weeks ago. Ski boat anglers tell me that down south the guys are pulling some really big couta, weighing over 30kg and this is where the gamefish anglers are fishing now. These big crocodile couta always congregate in the South Coast waters at this time of the year and they are probably looking for the sardines. Even on the bottom anglers are hooking some big fish with daga salmon, a couple of musselcracker and some big reds included in catches.
I have spent a considerable amount of time talking to anglers about fishing equipment and it is amazing the amount and variety of tackle available to anglers on the market today. When I started fishing as a kid the only reel available was the scarborour and most of these were homemade. Glass fibre rods had just come onto the market and then the first fixed spool and penn type reels appeared. Many anglers used the penn type reels because the drag mechanisms were far superior to the fixed spool reels. Today the drag mechanisms are really smooth and a far cry from the early days. In
the early days it was unheard of for offshore anglers to use the fixed spool or coffee grinder type reels and the penn and scarborour were all the rage. Today many anglers use the coffee grinders when fishing deep sea and they say that they would not use anything else. I was talking to a paddle ski angler a while back and he showed me two small Daiwa reels that he had just purchased and he said that we were looking at fifteen grand. He had just caught two couta weighing over 20kg with the same reels.
Even the new carbon fibre rods are small and lightweight but very strong.
There are many different types of lures available as well as different lines and even the hooks have come a long way from the pressed type of years ago. One angler told me that he purchased four circle hooks to use deep sea and he said that the four hooks had cost him seventy bucks. Wow. I wonder what some of the fishing greats of yesteryear would have done had the equipment of today been available to them.
Sealice