Angling Report

There were some really hot and humid days last week and some excellent fishing conditions as well. The North Easterly winds later on in the week did put a bit of a chop on the water, but it was the south westerly wind that came through on Friday that left the weekend anglers rather grumpy.
This was because there were reports of some decent catches of fish, mainly from the offshore anglers and divers during the week and their chances of getting in on the action were dashed by the weather that brought on heavy seas.
Fortunately it was just on Saturday that the weather and sea conditions were bad and on Sunday morning the weather was good although still overcast but the sea and surf conditions were much better and anglers were able to launch again and the surf anglers were able to cast their lines into the water. It always seems to be the case, no sooner are the fish biting well than the weather turns and creates rough seas with unfishable conditions. Unfortunately this is something that one has to put up with when fishing the KZN coastline. But the month of April is fast approaching and normally this is when we have the best weather of the year.
There were plenty of snoek around last week with offshore anglers, spear fishermen and even rock and surf anglers catching a few fish. There was a lot of action from Umdloti southwards and some anglers recorded decent catches of nice sized snoek just off the backline. I spoke to a couple of surf ski anglers that launched locally on Tuesday morning and they said that they had not managed to catch anything. But that spear fisherman had shot some nice sized snoek.
When the snoek turn on they go into a feeding frenzy and anglers sometimes become too excited and this is when many fish are lost. The snoek have razor sharp teeth but very soft jaws and if the angler exerts too much pressure on the line, the hook will pull free and the fish is lost. I have seen this happen many times when the fishing is fast and furious.
A couple of nice couta and big yellowfin tuna were also boated last week but catches of couta seem to be better up north near Zinkwazi. Apparently anglers have seen plenty of small bonito in the water and these are excellent live bait for the billfish. Shad anglers should note that bonito fillets are excellent shad baits and are rarely left by hungry shad.
Surf anglers fishing for the edible species found the fishing to be a little quiet last week with just the odd small stumpies and a few small salmon being caught. The pompano seem to have gone quiet but they will be back so anglers must just be patient. I believe that one or two nice salmon have been caught up north but it is still early days yet for these excellent table fish especially those weighing around 5kg.
Some big sandies have been landed by local anglers so far this year and I watched an angler having a tremendous battle with a large sandie in near La Mercy last Wednesday. The angler managed to land the fish with a bit of help from his fishing companion and the sandie was returned unharmed to the water. There has been the odd big skate or ray as well and a couple of anglers have told me that they have hooked into fish that proved too big to handle and were lost. These big flatfish are tremendously strong and leave anglers gasping for breath at times, especially those not expecting to hook a sandie or big skate.
The early mornings are nice and cool at present and one can feel that winter is not far off and this means a change in tactics again when the winter fish begin to arrive, which could be soon. From now onwards we can expect to see the cold fronts moving up the coast from the Cape and normally the first winter fish to arrive are the small green shad and then the garrick that follow the shad shoals. Last year the small shad started arriving early so it could be much of the same this year.
Sealice

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