Angling Report

Not many anglers were on the beaches last week although fishing conditions were favourable much of the time.
Anglers were saying that they are a little nervous when it comes to fishing – especially at night – because of the theft of motor vehicles. Vehicles parked by fishermen are easy targets and the theft of vehicles is not restricted to one area but is widespread and I have heard comments from several anglers in different areas about vehicle theft from popular angling spots.
I was at the beach the other day just watching the sea and thinking about the time when rock and surf angling was really big and there were the big fishing clubs such as Umgeni, Bluff and Leviathans, to name a few, and some of the giants of rock and surf angling such as Bruce Cannon, Cyril Panaino, Bill Dinkele – who by the way was the guy that did the daily fishing report on Radio Port Natal as it was then. Most anglers would listen to Bill’s angling report on the radio at 5.40pm every afternoon as it was really popular. There were many other big name anglers belonging to the fishing clubs and other very capable anglers that did not belong to a club and preferred to do their fishing alone.
The club anglers would fish the weekly angling competitions up and down the coastline and it was entertaining to watch these guys in action and when they arrived at Westbrook beach on a Saturday afternoon, people would rush down to the beach and spend a couple of hours watching. One had to make sure to buy a copy of the Monday newspaper because all the news and results of these highly competitive competitions would be printed in the sports pages. It was really entertaining but sadly those days are over now and many of these top anglers are long gone.
There was also a different type of angling that was popular in those days and it was the guys that fished from the South Pier for the big sharks. There was what was called the Thousand Pound club and to qualify for membership, an angler had to land a shark weighing 1 000 pounds (500kg) or more.
There were some really big sharks caught by these guys and one I remember was a great white shark weighing 2 200 pounds that put up a battle lasting more than eight hours. The shark was subdued in the channel between the piers and lifted out of the water by the large crane that used to be on the pier. Of course today great whites are protected.
Another form of angling that one does not see anymore is kite angling. These anglers usually operated from the Umgeni Pier from this time of the year when the offshore winds began to blow early in the morning. The object was to get the kite flying well past the wave line and then attach the baits which would travel out into the deep water beyond the breakers. I saw some big fish landed by the kite anglers and these included big tuna, sharks, barracouta and garrick. One angler even caught a sailfish one morning and this made big news.
When more and more anglers started to fish for the shad, the kite anglers began to get cramped for space and eventually gave up trying to fish from the Umgeni Pier.
When talking to the older local anglers one would hear exploits of their forefathers that fished the local coastline. These anglers would ride through the sugar cane on bicycles with their fishing rods and tackle strapped to the bike.
Most of these guys worked the sugar cane fields so they took to fishing to supplement their diets and because they loved fishing. When looking at old photographs, all one saw was big dagga salmon, shad of a size that one seldom sees these days and many other varieties of edible fish.
These anglers had no fridges like today so they worked out ingenious ways to keep their bait fresh and if an abundance of fish were caught, it was shared among friends. If an angler had a big catch it meant that it would be a long walk home pushing a bicycle because there was no room on the saddle. Nobody ever dreamed of being robbed because it just did not happen and it was just the wildlife and sugar cane trains that one had to be wary of.
Sealice

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