Angling Report

South westerly winds pumped the entire week creating adverse surf conditions that made fishing really tough for local anglers. It was strange that the southerly winds blew every day because normally, as a cold front moves up the coast, the winds would change direction. This time the front moved in and remained static the entire week, resulting in large swell and a rough surf with plenty of white water rolling inshore – not ideal for rock and surf angling.
On Saturday there was a huge change in the weather and anglers were blessed with favourable weekend conditions with the offshore anglers able to stay on the water and not having to run away from a windswept sea.
Later on Sunday morning I was told that anglers were fishing a competition at Warner beach and catches on Saturday were encouraging. Catches included big couta, yellowfin tuna, some nice bottom fish and even a couple of dorado. Most of the game fish were caught on live maasbanker. I wonder what is happening in local waters because one hears that anglers are catching fish up north and down south but here hardly anything. This has been happening for some time now and I believe that there is little food on the inshore reefs so the game fish do not stay around. I had a word with one of the local divers recently and he said that he had gone spear fishing but had seen no fish and even in deeper water there was very little fish life.
The once very popular Stud Rock reef has been dead for some time and very few game fish anglers can be seen in this area these days. A diver that did a survey of the reef a couple of years ago said that the reef was alive although there was a lot of lost tackle to be seen. The local offshore anglers have a gentleman’s agreement about not fishing on the bottom on this reef, but I have seen a couple of anglers fishing on the bottom but they did not catch anything worthwhile. As the catches of game fish declined on the Stud so did the fishing from Westbrook beach. All that is basically caught from Westbrook these days is a few shad and small sharks.
Before the weather turned bad last week, anglers were reporting that the catches of salmon or kob were improving steadily with some nice sized fish being caught at night in the Tugela and surrounding areas. Now that the surf is settling nicely these fish should be back on the bite. With anglers reporting that the water has cooled down, one can expect the brusher to start moving in and there has already been a report of a couple of garrick being caught locally. The brusher prefer the rough surf but anglers should use heavier tackle when fishing for this species. These fish are always found near the rocky areas where food is plentiful, especially mussels and crayfish.
There is still no word of any shad being caught and the snoek have moved off as well. The walls of broken white water rolling inshore and a strong south to north drift would have made it almost impossible to keep a bait out in the water last week and news of catches were predictably sparse. Some of the local beaches are showing signs of erosion as well with some steep banks that could make casting dangerous. Hopefully the fishing conditions will be better this week.
Sealice

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