Angling Report – April 19

Last week began with good weather on Monday, a fairly bumpy sea and a mushy surf but as the day progressed, the sea flattened out and the surf was looking pretty good by the afternoon.

From Tuesday through till Thursday it was the KZN coastline at it’s best with beautiful weather and light to moderate winds.

Unfortunately as the long weekend drew closer, the weather changed with moderate southerly winds that brought with it some rain and a drop in temperature.

The sea and surf conditions had deteriorated by Friday and thoughts of having a decent weekend’s fishing were dashed after two days of fresh southerly winds.

Although fishing conditions were excellent during the week, the surf anglers told me that the fishing was slow and not too much was happening when it came to catches of edible fish.

I believe that there were a couple of stumpies caught at night locally but not much else.

Surf anglers fishing the Durban North beaches reported that there were only a couple of small fish being caught and fishing was quiet.

Maybe the drop in temperature will shake things up locally.

Every angler that I have spoken to recently, whether they be surf or offshore, said that heading north to fish was the way to go to have some decent catches of edibles.

The guys that fish the Tugela and surrounding areas report that some decent sized salmon and grunter have been on the bite in the dark. The grunter have weighed between three and five kilos and salmon up to ten kilos have been caught.

Further north some decent sized pompano have reportedly been be on the bite as well as big wave garrick or three spot pompano.

From Zinkwazi northwards, offshore anglers have had some excellent fishing with both game and bottom fish.

Up at Cape Vidal shoal couta are plentiful as are the billfish. There is still the chance of the shoal couta moving south and a fishing friend of mine always said if one wanted to catch couta, then the month of May was the time to persevere. We will have to see and watch the weather.

I think that it is time for anglers to start looking at fishing for the winter fish and if the cold fronts continue to move up the coast, then the small shad will arrive and hopefully the garrick with them.

As reported earlier, salmon and grunter are already on the bite and the rough surf conditions are ideal for the big stumpnose that feed in the dark during the winter months.

Whether there will be a daga salmon run this year is debatable, especially after I was shown a video of 200 tons of daga salmon aboard a deep sea trawler. Where this video was taken, I am not sure but it was disturbing to see all those fish aboard the ship.

This time last year anglers were catching good bags of small shad but this year there has been nothing so far.

Anglers are already dusting off their rods and shad tackle in anticipation of the sudden arrival of these much sought after fish and it won’t be long before the popular shad spots are crowded again in the early mornings.

I have spoken to several anglers using shad tackle these past few days and they all report that peekers are stripping fillet baits in record time in the dark so it is best to wait a while until there is news that the fish are on the bite because bait has become too expensive to be wasted on peekers. Sealice