#FishEagle: Tough conditions for anglers

On Monday last week, a light north easterly wind was on the water for much of the day but unfortunately the wind changed direction on Tuesday to a south westerly that was light at first then moderate by 7am, and by 8am the wind was fresh and gusting strongly at times.

On Wednesday morning at first light, the fishing conditions were amazing and the sea water had cleaned up significantly.

At the Tongaat River mouth the sea water was a nice ginger beer color which was ideal for the salmon.

There was a fair crowd fishing this area during last week with many of the anglers fishing up towards the Fairmont hotel but during the time that I spent watching the anglers, I never saw anything caught.

Just one week remains before anglers can legally catch shad again.

Although many anglers refrained from fishing for shad, there were many that could not resist the temptation and were on the beaches early every morning when weather and sea conditions allowed.

After fishing the morning period, these guys were back during the late afternoons for the late shift. Some big shad were caught recently and fortunately some of the fish caught had already dropped their roe and could be regarded as what used to be called ‘return shad’.

If history repeats itself, anglers will flock to the beaches early on the morning of December 1 but many will return home empty handed and disappointed. But as the weather patterns change, so the seasons change as well, so the rock and surf anglers could have some rewarding fishing.

The dirty water from the flooding rivers has caused problems with the inshore game fish angling.

I believe that there was an inter-club competition held recently where there were twenty five surf ski’s entered but only three fish were landed.

Not the greatest result in local waters, but up at Cape Vidal anglers have been having some excellent angling recently.

A variety of game fish have been caught and catches have included billfish, sailfish, couta, plenty of dorado and some big snoek at times. Normally the wind howls every day up at Vidal but there have been days recently that the wind has been kind to the anglers on the water.

At the weekend, offshore anglers found the fishing conditions quite reasonable for a change after weeks of bad weather.

Most anglers were targeting the dorado and there was no shortage of live bait.

Last week there were big shoals of baitfish close inshore and these shoals contained a mixture of Natal sardines, red eye sardines, maasbanker and mackeral. There are also some big yellowfin tuna around and out in the deeper water, there is the chance of hooking into a sailie.

On the bottom, there have been some decent reds, rockcod plus the odd cracker caught recently. Apparently there has been a lot of shark activity in the Umdhloti area and anglers that have been fishing in the area have said that there has not been too much action excepting for the sharks that have eaten several hooked dorado.

Friends of mine had planned to travel North this month in search of big grunter that gather to spawn at this time of the year.

They were telling me that they had shelved plans to fish for grunter because of the heavy rains and the recent flooding.

They did however try their favorite local fishing spot last week but they said the fishing was quiet and they returned home empty handed on two occasions.

They said the sea water was a little dirty but quite fishable, and they did have minor problems with weeds in the water and there were a lot of peekers shredding baits and apparently at times they did not even feel the peekers ruining their baits.

The stumpnose seem to be really scarce at present and one local angler that tries just about everyday for these fish told me during the week that it has been quite a while since he last caught a nice stumpie.

He also said that this time last year proved really profitable for him because he caught four really nice stumpies over a three week period.

He has friends that fish the rocky outcrops locally and they have been catching very little as well but he has heard that several nice sized copper bream have been caught at La Mercy recently.

The local angler also said that this year there has been more southerly winds than normal and he believes this is the reason that the stumpies are off the bite. But, he will carry on persevering he said and believes that his luck has to change soon.

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