Fish Eagle: All eyes peeled for sardines

Another week has passed by and one can now feel that winter is now here. Temperatures are low during the early morning periods but the days have been nice and sunny. The only real blemish in the weather for the week was the south westerly buster that came through on Wednesday night and continued blowing throughout the day on Thursday. The sea and surf conditions were almost ideal for anglers for most of the week and these conditions lasted throughout the long weekend.

Big shoals of sardines accompanied by thousands of gannets were seen just South of Port St. Johns during the week and it was reported that this year could be an exceptional sardine run along the Kwa-Zulu Natal coastline. It was a week ago that the sardine sightings were reported so the first shoals could appear on the South Coast as early as this week. Last year anglers had some hectic shark angling among the sardine shoals but unfortunately there were no game fish but hopefully this year this will be different and some big gamefish will be around to stretch anglers arms.

The fishing did improve some down the South Coast last week with plenty of small shad being caught during the early morning periods but many of the fish caught were undersized and made perfect live baits for garrick. A few garrick were caught at selected angling spots but I believe that anglers had to be patient and wait some time in between pulls. It was also reported that several kob were caught and these fish varied from small to medium sized and all were taken at night. I believe that anglers were saying that the fishing down South is still up to speed even though a few fish were caught last week and most are gearing up and waiting for the arrival of sardines.

My group of friends that fish the Umhlanga and Durban North beaches were back in action again last week and fished on three nights at their favorite angling spot near the hypermarket in Durban North. On the first night the fishing was really slow and reported that they had caught nothing of note although they had a couple of promising pulls. On the second night the four anglers used a variety of baits that included sealice, live crab, chokka and fresh shad fillet. The anglers said the chokka produced a lot of small bites and eventually the angler using the squid changed to fresh shad fillet.

They received their first decent bite at about 11pm on the second night and one landed a very nice kob of 8kg that took a shad fillet bait. An hour later another of the anglers using shad fillets landed a kob of 3kg and that was about their total catch. They did not fish the following two nights because of the southerly wind but they were back on the beach on Friday night. On this trip one of the anglers caught two small stumpies weighing around 2kg and the anglers fishing with shad fillets never had a touch the whole night.

Local anglers report that not much has changed and the fishing is proving to be really patchy. Most are fishing the rocky areas where a few small fish have been caught but I have seen that a few anglers are now trying for garrick which I think is the correct way to go. There was a report during the week that surf ski anglers fishing the backline between Umdloti and Umhlanga have managed to land a couple of nice garrick. Apparently the fish were caught on live bait that has proved to be a bit difficult to obtain at present. The river mouth areas will be the best venues for anglers looking for the garrick but places such as Chaka’s High Rock is famous for the amount of garrick caught from the rocks.

Local anglers should keep a good eye and ear open to what is happening down the South Coast this week because the fishing could turn on at any moment especially now that the shoals of sardines are due at anytime bringing the fish with them. Remember the sardine sightings were from the inshore shoals and there could well have been several shoals out at sea that were not sighted at all. These are the pilot shoals that could surprise everyone

Sealice

Be the first to receive breaking news straight to your device with our WhatsApp broadcast service.

Send us a WhatsApp message (not an sms) with your name and surname to 061 718 4438.

Please read our WhatsApp broadcast list disclaimer.
Join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram