Angling Report

Fishing conditions were quite good early on Monday morning, even though the bad weather of the day before had threatened to turn the sea on its head. These good conditions did not last long though because the north easterly began blowing and as the day progressed the wind became stronger and with it the sea became rougher. Strangely enough, the fishing conditions were still good on Tuesday morning but the barometer had gone down and it was clear that a south wester was on its way. This wind arrived that afternoon bringing cloudy conditions with it. Wednesday was a washout but the rest of the week the weather and sea conditions were favourable for fishing.
I did not see too many anglers on the beaches during the week and they may have been because many of them were fasting. The anglers that I saw fishing were mainly in the rocky areas where the copper bream are found and I believe that a couple of nice sized fish were landed. Fishing for the copper bream can be great fun if you have the right tackle and know the art of fishing among the stones. One angler fishing in the rocky area near the La Mercy hotel caught two nice copper bream and a cat-faced rockcod of 2kg on Thursday.
Up north in the Tugela area the water has been dirty but the sea did clean up a bit last week and some nice kob were back on the bite again in the dark. It was sad to read about the gill nets stretching across the Tugela river but I think that this is a sign of the times to come and maybe the regular or club anglers can help by finding and destroying these nets before too much damage is done.
On Thursday I spent a considerable amount of time at the beach watching what seemed to be shoals of baitfish moving north. Some of these fish could have been shad swimming to the spawning grounds but I did not see any larger fish feeding on the shoals. On Friday morning the visibility was poor and I didn’t see any movement in the water.
During the week, backline anglers found garrick on the bite between Umhlanga Rocks and Blue lagoon. Most of the fish were caught on live pinkie which are plentiful at present. The water unfortunately was not all that clean but was ideal for the snoek and there were snoek amongst the garrick. Apparently some of the garrick caught weighed well over 10kg and I think that this just shows that these fish are on their way back South. Offshore anglers fishing near the shoals of baitfish reported that they hooked into some big yellowfin tuna whilst casting lures but the fish were too big to subdue on the light tackle used by the ski anglers. One angler said that he estimated that some of the tuna weighed between 25 and 30kg.
I think that when the sea settles the gamefish anglers are going to have some excellent sport with the yellowfin tuna. Guys testing the deeper water could also find dorado feeding because the water is quite warm and I hear that the water is nice and clean out deep. The bottom anglers have not really been able to spend time on the reefs lately and there could be some big fish about because there is plenty of live bait around and that is the way to go at present.
During the week I had a word with a couple of crayfish divers that were in the water in the Tongaat area and they said that the visibility was okay and they managed to catch some really decent crays. One diver had six and the other five but they said that they could have had more but some of the crayfish that they had caught were in berry and they had to let them go. The season ends at the end of October. The divers said that they saw some nice fish near the backline and these fish included big stumpies and a couple of nice brusher.
Sealice

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