When the poison wind blows

During the past two weeks, there have been some excellent fishing conditions coupled with some reasonable weather plus some not too perfect fishing conditions which have been pretty normal for this time of the year.

The weather people reported that there would be a change in the weather at the weekend and there would be a southerly current moving up the coast meeting a northerly current moving down the coast. This would have resulted in a large swell at sea creating large surf conditions but fortunately, this did not happen because the residue from the cyclone just south of Mauritius was not as strong as expected.

The weather and sea conditions looked pretty good early on Saturday morning but unfortunately there was a bit of south easterly wind blowing and in fishing circles this wind is known as the poison wind because the fish tend to remain off the bite when the south easterly is blowing.

On Sunday morning there was a southerly wind blowing and the fishing conditions were not at all inviting after thunder, lightning and the rain the night before. More rain was predicted for the day so many anglers decided to scrap any ideas of fishing.

Many offshore anglers will be looking forward to the Umhlanga deep sea angling competition to be held at the end of the month. I am not sure of the rules this year but normally the first prize is for the largest game fish caught during the weekend but there are also many other great prizes to be won as well and this will attract anglers in their numbers. At present anglers are still catching some decent sized dorade plus a few large yellow fish tuna. I believe there has been a couple of big wahoo caught in the deeper water off Durban. There will be those anglers that will target the billfish such as the sailfish or marlin and will also be looking for the big couta that could be lurking on the deeper reefs.

The problem with fishing in this type of competition is the launching through the surf because of the number of craft involved. The first morning of the competition is not too bad but the second morning can prove to be very frustrating. It is no joke arriving at the beach just after 4am in the dark and only manage to get onto the water around 7am because of all the boat traffic.

Then there is the problem of crowding on the popular fishing reefs and it sometimes pays to have a secret venue out in the deeper water where one can fish in peace.

Anglers fishing up north have had some excellent catches at times recently with big snoek, crocodile couta, big tuna and plenty of dorado all being caught.

These fish should begin to move southwards, especially the couta but it is a bit surprising just how long the dorado have been in local water this year. Normally these fish become scarce during the month of March but anglers are still catching a few decent dorado although the numbers do seem to be declining.

Anglers have found snoek at times along the backline in local water but sometimes these fish are not interested in feeding.

Rock and surf angling remain quiet with just the odd decent fish being caught from the surf. During the recent period of flat seas and surf, I expected to hear that there was at least one big pompano that had been caught in the perfect conditions but there was nothing. Friends of mine said that during the period of perfect conditions, they had persevered in several known pompano spots with no luck at all. One keen angler told me that during the past couple of weeks he had been fishing at every opportunity, just had not caught anything of substance.

Fishing up north seems to be the way to go for the rock and surf anglers where a few decent sized fish have been caught recently.

The area between the Tugela mouth to Amatikulu has produced a few shad weighing between two and three kilos.

This is surprising because these fish should have been long gone and then there has been a couple of decent kob caught plus a few really nice stumpies. The problem is though one has to be fishing this area at the correct moment so it pays to have one of the locals passing on the information.

Sealice