Angling Report

There was a fair amount of rain last week but fortunately the strong winds held off so anglers were able to wet a line on most days. The weather was okay early on Saturday morning and the early birds managed to get in a couple of hours’ fishing before the fresh north easterly wind arrived. Just after lunch a south westerly buster came through bringing with it stormy and rainy weather.
Although there were a few anglers fishing for  shad and garrick, most local anglers are fishing the rocky areas for copper bream. Some nice well-conditioned copper bream were caught again last week and I was told by one of the locals that he saw two nice sized rockcod caught by an angler fishing in the La Mercy area. There was an unconfirmed report of a nice salmon caught in the area as well. One local angler that spends a lot of time fishing the area in front of the Fairmont hotel caught a nice garrick of around thirteen kilos and this angler said that there are plenty of sizeable shad around as well at first light.
Anglers fishing up north are saying that the summer flatfish are becoming more numerous and there have been reports of some big skates being hooked. The Durban anglers have also reported that a couple of skates have been landed on fillet baits. Other species caught in the Durban area are stumpies and a couple of nice sized grunter at night. Anglers that enjoy fishing for the grunter should consider a trip up to St Lucia or Maphelane as it is the time of the year that these fish gather in these areas to spawn. I can remember spending one weekend up at St Lucia one year and we caught big grunter virtually shot for shot and it did not take long for one to catch the bag limit.
I saw one of my Durban contacts at the end of last week and he showed me some photographs of big soldiers that they have been catching when deep sea fishing. These fish ranged between 3 and 5 kg and there were also shots of nice sized captain fine rockcod that they had landed. My contact said that there is plenty of bait around and some anglers had been having some excellent fun with the yellowfin tuna which he said are thick at times. Other species that were caught last week were a couple of small dorado, and billfish were seen out deep again. It seems as if the summer game fish season is beginning but it is still early days yet.
The storm on Saturday afternoon soon put paid to any thoughts of fishing the next day. There was a fair swell running out at sea on Sunday morning plus the surf had picked up and the rivers came down in flood. When I had a look at the water on Sunday morning, it was really dirty with weed floating in the surf. I think that it will take a few days for the sea to right itself again. There was also a report from the weather people on Sunday that there was a big swell moving up the coast and if this swell does reach the local waters, it could be some time before the fishing conditions are right again. It is ironic that every time the fish start feeding, we get weather that upsets the sea and the fish disappear.
It was really interesting to read the report on the dusky kob (or daga salmon as we call them locally) and what is happening at Richards Bay. This species has definitely been overfished and the main problem was when night fishing for ski boats was introduced. Anglers would sometimes beach with a couple of tons of daga salmon on board. It got to a stage that a catch limit of one fish was introduced. Shore anglers were complaining that it became a rarity to hook a daga from the beach during the winter months. Apparently, these fish are being bred for the market and the article said that the first of these fish will be marketed next year and the average size would be around 2kg. This is quite small for this species but there is no better eating fish than a salmon weighing between 2 to 7kg. Hopefully some of these fish will be introduced back to the wild to increase stocks.
Sealice