Angling Report

The weekend weather was favourable for angling even though at first light on both days rain was threatening. Fortunately the wet weather did not materialize.

During the week there was a bit of a swell at sea that would have been uncomfortable for anglers had the wind really pushed but fortunately the weather held and the only real problem was that the sea water was not all that clean inshore. Because of the discolored water anglers that did launch opted to fish the deeper, cleaner water.

I was talking to some anglers at the Westbrook launch on Sunday morning and a large shoal of yellowfin tuna appeared just off the backline and the fish appeared to be feeding on baitfish but there were no anglers in the vicinity to take advantage and try to pull a couple of tuna. Unfortunately the game fish angling is still a bit slow locally and most of the action remains up north.

Apparently the area between Zinkwazi and Tinley Manor has been working well with a few crocodile couta weighing over 30kg having been caught. This area has been productive for a couple of seasons and some big fish have been landed during this time by anglers with a bit of patience.

The water is still very warm so this should keep the summer fish around for a while but the season will be drawing to a close soon and although some pretty decent sized fish have been caught, it has not really been a season to be remembered.

Anglers are already looking south for any word of the winter game fish putting in an appearance. The garrick have yet to make an appearance locally and there have only been a couple of small fish come out in the surf far down the South Coast. The trend will be to fish the deeper reefs for the bottom fish that normally begin to be caught at this time of the year.

These will be the daga and geelbek salmon and although there has been a bit of geelbek caught, no dagas have been reported as yet, even though there have been a couple caught at night from the surf in the vicinity of the river mouths when the water has been a bit discoloured.

Rock and surf anglers that fish at first light report that the fishing remains quiet with very little of note on the bite. Most of these guys have been hoping that the green shad would move into the surf but as yet this has not happened. Anglers may have to wait until the temperature of the sea water drops a bit before these fish move up the coast but who knows because the shad have surprised many in the past.

The rock anglers have struggled again this past week but it must be said that the surf has not been favourable at times to fish the rocky areas. In the recent past there have been a couple of big spade fish and stone bream landed plus the odd nice copper bream in certain areas. These days one does not see the karrenteen biting as they used to in the past at low tide because I believe that this species is almost fished out and because of this, the larger fish do not move inshore to feed as they used to.

A fresh karrenteen fillet used at night was almost guaranteed a pull by a salmon or stumpie but those days are gone now.

Surf anglers that normally just fish the local angling spots will just have to play the waiting game and keep their ears open for word that the fish are on the bite.

The best bet at present is after dark because this has been when the few decent edible fish have been caught recently. Unfortunately it has only been at selected venues that these fish have been caught and the anglers that have been lucky tend to keep mum about exactly where.

Sealice

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