Fish Eagle: A tough week for anglers

It was a tough week for anglers, beginning with a howling North Easterly whoosher on Monday that created rough seas plus hot and humid weather. The rough seas began to moderate towards the end of the working week and then came the wet weekend that brought some relief from the heat and high humidity.

As expected, very few anglers ventured out as the surf was not user friendly and some anglers said not much was happening anyway. The cyclone season is not too far off now, so more rough seas can be expected as these huge storms move across the islands and into Mozambique, which has already received some heavy rainfall. All eyes will be on the weather up North for the next couple of months and offshore anglers will be hoping there will not be heavy swells moving down through the Mozambique channel, creating difficult angling conditions.

Although a few dorado and tuna have been caught recently, the summer game fish season does not seem to be in full swing yet. The popular barracouta have not yet arrived but this has been the trend for some years and now the shoals only begin to arrive in numbers during March. The month of February is normally a windy time of the year but who knows, maybe this year will be different and anglers will be able to put to sea. Some decent catches could include yellowfin tuna, the odd big dorado, kingfish, snoek and maybe even a few big barracouta. Normally offshore anglers try for game fish just after launching at first light then travel out deep to fish the popular reefs for bottom fish. Weather permitting of course.

Rock and surf anglers will continue to try for the summer edible fish in the surf and search for snoek from the deep-water rocky outcrops. Usually one does not see many local anglers targeting the summer flatfish or the sharks that are prevalent in local waters at present but the competition anglers certainly do target them. I can remember when I was very young and could not wait for the Monday evening newspaper to read the results of the weekend competitions fished by the big clubs of those days. These competitions were fished by some famous names in local angling circles and the tackle used was not as sophisticated as the tackle one can purchase these days.

I always believe that at this time of the year anglers should consider fishing the dropshot method because it can pay unexpected dividends.

Many of the edible species found in local waters at this time of the year can be caught by using this method of fishing. Normally one uses light tackle which adds to the fun when hooking a nice fish. A few years back I had a visitor phone me one morning to see whether I could identify a fish that he had caught in the La Montagne area when using the drop shot method of fishing. The fish turned out to be a pompano weighing 5 kg. and the angler said it had provided excellent sport on light tackle. I have caught several nice stumpies at this time of the year in this way and it certainly beats casting a bait into the water then waiting hopefully to have a bite.

I contacted my friends who fish the Umhlanga and Durban North beaches but they tell me the fishing has been quiet, with few anglers frequenting the beaches. They have not had any more news about the Umgeni North bank but the surf has not been all that great recently. Apparently, the wave garrick and small yellowfin pompano are still quite numerous and on Sunday morning one angler hooked into and landed a good-sized ray that was returned alive to the water. One angler said he saw some action in the water just beyond the backline in the Glenashley area on Friday morning but could not identify what species of fish they were.

Hopefully there will be a change in the weather this week allowing anglers to get back to the water and enjoy some decent fishing for a change.

Sealice

Catch of the week

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