#FishEagle: Summer fish come on the bite

Another week nearer to summer as we are now past the mid-point of the spring season so the hot and humid weather is not far away.

Although the early morning periods just before and just after first light are nice and cool plus calm with no wind, it is not long before the winds begin blowing during the day.

At least we have had a bit of rain that has kept the temperatures down a little but the big thunderstorms have been predicted to begin soon by the weather people.

The competition anglers were busy recently and I believe that some of the guys fishing up north did well and caught a few really nice fish.

One of these fish was a daga kob weighing 50kg that was returned alive to the water after being weighed.

A real monster kob. Apparently there have been a few kob caught in that area of the Tugela north bank recently and the snapper salmon have been on the bite as well.

A number of raggies were caught as well and anglers can quickly rack up the points when landing these large sharks.

The bait of choice has been red eye sardine and mackerel and the north coast is really beginning to produce some big fish with the summer flatfish becoming more numerous.

The North Coast is the place to be at present for anglers as the fishing offers both edible fish plus inedible fish at this time of the year.

On the edible side, anglers can expect to target kob, snapper salmon, garrick and grunter.

There are always the big perch that are found right at the mouth and it should not be too long before the other summer species such as sandsharks and big rays put in an appearance as well.

One of my angling friends told me last week that the guys were catching shad on a daily basis from a certain popular angling beach.

I agreed to meet my friend before first light the next morning just to see what exactly was happening.

The next morning my friend and myself met before first light and proceeded to watch the action.

I saw one nice shad of around 2,5kg caught on a spoon plus a couple of others caught on bait but there were no fireworks so I left the area at about 6.30am.

Later in the day my friend contacted me and said that the fish had come on the bite just after I had left and quite a few fish were caught. I agreed to meet my friend at the same venue the next morning.

The weather was quite good for fishing the next morning although the surf was a bit unpredictable.

I saw a couple of nice sized fish caught plus there was the usual tangles caused by anglers not following their lines correctly but the fishing was a bit on the slow side.

I was watching one particular angler who had just cast his line into the water and I saw that he suddenly just about had his rod wrenched from his arms by a big fish that had taken his bait.

I saw that the angler was going to try and reel the fish as quickly as possible from the water. I said to my friend that this guy is going to lose this big fish which obviously was a big shad.

That was exactly what happened when the fish was in the shore dump because the anglers drag had been tightened and there was no line given to fight the fish properly.

The line snapped and there was no use made for the surf to help the angler at all. Unfortunately that big fish will probably not last too long in the sea because it is now handicapped by dragging a trace plus the sinker when swimming.

With the summer rapidly approaching, offshore anglers will now have their ears and eyes wide open in order to find out when the first of the yellowfin tuna and dorado arrive in local waters.

Last year was a good one for the tuna and dorado but not so good for those targeting the barracouta. There has been a couple of lean years recently but hopefully this coming season will not be one of them.

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