Angling Report

It was a bit of a mixed bag of weather and sea conditions for anglers last week with both good seas for fishing and some bad seas plus winds from the North and from the South that brought rain, especially at the weekend.

I awoke long before first light on Saturday morning to find the rain falling and the wind blowing a bit.

I thought fishing was out of the question but not long after it became light, the rain disappeared and the wind died away with the result that the fishing conditions were good.

The weekend actually turned out not as bad as the weather people had predicted. The guys fishing during the week could also boast about some excellent sea conditions although the inshore water was not all that clean in some areas. The dirty water was found mainly around the river mouths.

There were a fair number of early morning anglers at first light and it was plain to see that these guys were targeting the shad but at the end of this week the season will reopen and anglers will be able to catch their shad legally again.

The month of December is usually said to be the end of the shad run but the past couple of years have yielded some sizable shad throughout the month.

Usually there are some nice fish but mostly small shad caught at first light and I have always found that the best time to try for the larger fish is late in the afternoon and into the early evening.

Many anglers use a cork or top bung but I have found that using no cork at all sometimes produces the best results and the trick is to not cast too far because the larger shad tend to feed just beyond the shore break. Anglers should remember the bag limits of four fish with a minimum size of 300mm.

Some anglers fishing during the week had excellent fun with light tackle along the sandy beaches.

These anglers found three spot pompano or wave garrick feeding and some of these fish caught were really decent sized fish. It was the more experienced anglers that had the best results because of the various tricks that they have learned during their years of surf angling. Small baits and a light sinker usually bring the best results because this method produces a moving bait that this species tend to favour.

There were those though that preferred to fish the rocky areas for stone bream and blacktail and whatever else was amongst the stones.

There are still plenty of baitfish to be found beyond the waves and offshore anglers found geelbek salmon fairly close inshore, especially in the Durban area. Some excellent catches were recorded. Yellowfin tuna are still plentiful but still a little elusive, especially if there are shoals of sprats or red eye sardines around where the anglers are operating. I believe a couple of large wahoo were caught amongst the ships off Durban during the week.

When these fish take a bait, the line just screams off the reel and it can be difficult to stop a large wahoo.

I have seen quite a few damaged fingers in the past. Dorado were also boated last week and there were some decent sized fish caught on red eye sardines. One paddle ski angler caught two nice dorado one morning close inshore in the Umhlanga area.

The fish were caught on a trap stick that the angler was using to catch bait for the coming game fish season. The game fish season seems to be slowly coming to life and now it is only going to depend on the weather as to how much time anglers will be able to spend on the water. I have not heard of any barracouta having been caught yet but I think that it is still a bit early.

In the past we used to look to the 16th of December as the date that the couta would begin to arrive but the recent past has shown that they arrive a bit later now.

The Summer is definitely arriving rapidly now because there were some hot days last week especially when the North Easterly wind was blowing and first light is just before 4.30am.

Sealice

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