Angling Report – July 28

Early morning weather was favorable to anglers right up to the weekend last week when another front moved through, bringing some rain.

This resulted in the surf becoming rough again but anglers were hoping that the rough surf would move the sandbanks that stretched across some of the popular angling beaches.

I have been hearing for a while now that there were a lot of anglers fishing at Virginia beach so I had a look myself to see what was happening there.

I discovered there were just small fish being caught such as blacktail and pamphlets but not much else, what was disturbing though was the state of the beach.

To put it mildly, it was a mess with old bait scraps, paper and plastic wrappers strewn all over. An angler that I was speaking with said the pier was in an even worse state with bait scraps everywhere on the concrete.

It makes one wonder why these anglers cannot just throw their bait scraps into the water.

The same man said he had just returned from a few days down at Pennington on the South Coast and had been hoping to catch a few shad during his stay but found the fishing on the quiet side, which is also surprising for this time of the year. He said there had been a few garrick caught from one or two of the popular angling spots and a couple of daga salmon at night but the angling could not be classed as productive.

He did say though, that the surf had been rough for most of the time that he had been down there.

I met two local anglers during the week and they said they had been up to the Tugela but all they had caught were some perch and snapper salmon in the mouth.

They had also heard reports of a few big shad and some decent salmon that had been on the bite but all they saw was a group of anglers fishing a bit north of where they were and these guys pulled a couple of small shad.

When I asked these anglers whether they had been fishing locally they said they had caught a few blacktail and stone bream at Salt Rock and one angler said he had caught a small stumpie on prawn bait.

Most of the local anglers are still targeting the rocky outcrops where the fishing seems to be more productive at present.

I was told this week that offshore anglers had some excellent fishing down the South Coast, even though the sea conditions have not always been that great. A number of big couta and yellowfin tuna were caught along with some excellent bottom fish.

It is encouraging to hear from the anglers that the seventy-four seabream are becoming quite numerous after being put on the extreme danger list a few years back. These fish are still on the banned list so anglers have to return any seventy-four caught back to the water but unfortunately, when pulled from deep water, the chances of survival are slim.

Anglers fishing up north at Sodwanna Bay and Cape Vidal have also found some decent gamefish on the bite. Apparently some really big yellowfin tuna have been caught along with a couple of billfish – and couta have been plentiful at times.

During this part of the year Cape Vidal is well known for the big snoek that are caught inshore and there have been several big couta boated as well. The unfortunate thing about Vidal is the wind that tends to howl at times, making being on the water very uncomfortable.

The local offshore fishing produced little news this week and this was probably because of the swell that was running out at sea for much of the week. I think the cold water of last week would have put a lot of anglers off as well. The one bit of news that I did receive was that there is plenty of bait around in the form of mackeral and small shad that seem to be reluctant to move into the surf zone.

Sealice

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