Angling Report – 10 February 2017

There was some really hot and humid weather last week, making for very uncomfortable conditions. North easterlies were the main culprit but even when the winds blew from the south, humidity levels remained high. For much of the week anglers had to put up with a big, strong surf that was pounding on the sandbanks, creating walls of broken white water. You could see the swells moving inshore from out deep and increasing in size as they neared the shore, resulting in big waves. Towards the latter part of the week the surf did moderate and fishing conditions became more manageable. One would think that with the rough surf, fishing would be a waste of time but this is not always the case, as some species of fish love these rough surf conditions.
In some areas anglers found shad on the bite and several nice sized fish were caught, especially during the late afternoon periods. A shad of 7kg was caught by an angler in the Umhlanga area and he was using a mixed grill bait and targeting grey sharks. The Ballito area also produced a few shad and anglers fishing north of the Tongaat River mouth had some productive fishing. Stumpies love the rough surf and anglers targeting these fish had some good fun, although they had to wait long periods in between bites. There were still plenty peckers around and fillet baits did not last long in the water so the way to go was with squid, octopus, crab and sealice baits.
There seems to be a lot of snoek around at present and the shoals are widespread with anglers catching nice fish in several areas. The problem was getting out to the fish because of the unsettled sea conditions, but the guys that launched from the sheltered Durban area recorded some decent catches of snoek, mainly on lures. The fish were predominantly found in the areas of discolored water and the anglers fished along the color line where they had the best results.
Fishing for snoek can be very frustrating as one angler I spoke to found out during the week. This ski angler was fishing just North of Umhlanga and said that there were decent sized snoek jumping out of the water all around him, but he could not induce a pull no matter what he tried. A ski boat arrived on the scene and they also struggled because the fish were just not eating. The next morning the ski angler paddled to the same spot but saw no action in the water. He cast a small spoon anyway and it was not long, seven pulls and four nice sized fish landed.
Sea conditions were not all that great last week so not many anglers travelled out to the deep water. Those that fished among the ships in the outer anchorage found dorado on the bite. I believe that some nice dorado were caught and there was one nice couta of 14kg boated on the north side of the anchorage. Again, anglers did not stay out long because of the easterly winds and on Thursday most did not even bother to launch because of the ‘poison’ south easterly. It is strange that one does not catch fish when this wind is blowing.
I hear that anglers that fished the shallow reefs recently had their arms just about pulled off when they hooked into big rays. These fish come to the surface like huge blankets and believe me, it takes a while to recover after hooking into these large skates.
Sealice

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