Angling Report – 20 June 2014

The sea was settling nicely on Monday last week but the westerly came through early on Tuesday morning, pushing the whole day and leaving behind rough surf and a fair swell that took a couple of days to settle. By Friday morning conditions were near perfect with the sea calm and clean.

There was a report early last week that shoals of sardines had been seen approximately 40km north of East London – its still a way off but who knows, they might be heading our way this year.

I was down at Westbrook Beach on Wednesday and I saw two flocks of cormorants flying very low on the water inside the backline. There was nothing on Thursday, but on Friday morning I saw several small shoals of fish moving northwards. I thought them to be baitfish but a friend who had been out fishing on his surfski that morning told me later the shoals of fish had in fact been shad. I contacted my brother and told him he should get down to the beach early the next morning. He duly phoned me the following day and said he had been on the beach at Eastmore and had managed to pull five shad, only one of which was put back as it was undersized. A mutual fishing friend of ours also arrived at Eastmore and said he had been fishing at Glenashley and had caught three shad on spoon. Apparently shad were also caught a little north at Durban View which is just south of the lighthouse, as well as off the rocks in front of the lighthouse. The word was that most of the fish caught were over the size limit. Shad were also caught at the Tongaat Mouth area at the end of last week. A couple of local anglers told me at the weekend that the odd large shad has been caught recently mainly in the La Mercy area and the word is that the largest of these weighed in at around 4kg. These big unseasonal shad seem to be loners and there would only be one caught by a lucky angler.

Sunday was quiet and I just had one pull at first light and this fish was probably a shark as it struck and began to peel off line from my reel before it just became slack with my entire trace having been bitten off. I noticed on Sunday afternoon that the barometer was down again and I believe that once the barometer drops, fishing is usually poor.

I had a word with one of my deep sea angling friends at the weekend and he told me that a few decent bottoms have been caught recently. One skipper apparently travelled all the way from Durban to Ballito and anchored on a reef at around twenty six to thirty fathoms and proceeded to fish on the bottom with a trap stick out with a live bait in case there were any gamefish around. At the end of the day, the anglers on the boat had caught some nice rockcod, soldiers and lantern bream or cave bass plus three couta of over twenty kilos each. As yet, there has been no news of any garrick being caught and only a few snoek at times along the backline.

Sealice

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