Angling Report

Surf angling conditions were pretty good all of last week, even though the wind was fresh at times (which is to be expected at this time of the year). Sea conditions were not always that great as the wind made the sea very bumpy with plenty of white horses, which is not what the offshore anglers like to see. Unfortunately, there was a bit of rain around at the weekend, not enough to put the fishermen off on Saturday morning, but more than enough to keep them at home early on Sunday.
I was watching a group of anglers fishing at one of the local beaches during the week and the guys were catching a few fish. While I was watching, one of the anglers walked off the beach and I asked him how the fishing was going. He answered that it was pretty good and said that he had caught seven shad and he inquired whether I was interested in buying a couple of fish. What struck me about this angler was that he had no hesitation in telling me that he had caught nearly twice the legal catch limit and also that he wanted to sell me shad which is illegal. A couple of my friends that are on the beach just about every day told me that they had seen many anglers exceeding the legal catch limits and even seen anglers openly selling fish. It seems as if some anglers are just ignoring the laws now that the conservation people are no longer patrolling the beaches.
There was another nice sized brusher caught in the vicinity of the Umhlanga lighthouse last week. I am quite sure that local anglers could also find some of these fish lurking around the rocky outcrops so it will be worthwhile trying for them. Some of the local beaches are nicely scoured out by the recent rough seas and there is some deep water close-in. This is confirmed by catches of some cat faced rockcod that were caught from the beach in the Tongaat area. One of these fish weighed over 3kg and there were two others that were slightly smaller.
There are still plenty of garrick about in the Tugela mouth area but catches of these fish remain a bit disappointing at other local river mouths, which could be because of the scarcity of shad in these areas. For some reason the shad are not remaining in one place for any length of time and seem to be moving up north quite rapidly. Backline anglers have caught a few between Umhlanga and the Umgeni mouth. One angler I spoke with fished the backline at the Tongaat mouth and caught one fish only after trolling live baits back and forth for over two hours. Historically, the garrick seem to feed better in the Tongaat mouth area during the month of September when divers have seen big shoals congregating before moving south again.
Shad anglers have basically just over one month left before the season closes at the end of September and encouraging news is that some larger shad are now being caught in the Umgeni mouth area. With a bit of luck, local anglers may be able to catch a few of these big blue shad before the season closes.
I was talking to a couple of surf ski anglers during the week in the La Mercy area and they brought ashore quite a few snoek weighing between 3 to 4kg. The fish were found on the backline opposite the Sea Belle hotel and the guys said that they had some hectic fishing for a while before the fish went off the bite. They also caught a couple of nice shad on lures whilst fishing for the snoek.
Sealice