#FishEagle: Discolored waters attract Zambezi sharks

Last week’s weather (strong winds and a big swell with rough seas from Wednesday) made it feel as if winter had returned.

By Friday morning the wind had swung back to a north easterly which was light to moderate and all was looking good for the weekend anglers.

Unfortunately a moderate to fresh south westerly wind arrived early on Saturday morning so many angling plans had to be shelved by the offshore anglers. A pity because some excellent fishing was expected as the dorado seem to be plentiful at present and some anglers commented that they have been catching dorado close inshore which is a bit unusual.

But there could be good reasons for the fish to move to shallower water.

One may be the recent rains that resulted in dirty water and a lot of debris entering the sea and another may be that this year there seems to be a lot of baitfish on the shallower reefs. Some anglers have been hooking a dorado, bringing the fish to the side of the craft and leaving the dorado to swim close by while setting other live baits in the water close by.

There have been some double figure catches of dorado by anglers using this method of enticing the fish near to the original hooked dorado.

The recent discolored water seems to have attracted some big Zambezi sharks.

Another big Zambie was caught by an angler fishing from the beach recently and returned alive back to the water.

These Zambezi sharks do normally arrive on the gamefish reefs during the summer months but this year they in all probability could be more numerous. I can remember hooking a big Zambie while fishing for couta near deep Stud Rock and the fish slowly swam away and stripped my reel of 400m of line. There was no chance of stopping that shark. Fortunately the line parted right at the trace but only after being towed for some distance.

At present, the offshore anglers are still catching some decent fish up north plus there is a variety of game fish being caught. Billfish, couta, dorado, tuna and even some big snoek have all been hooked and I believe Cape Vidal has been busy with many anglers all looking for some decent fishing.

Closer to home, Zinkwazi could be the place to be quite soon and no doubt, the deep sea anglers will have their eyes and ears wide open for any sort of news.

The local beaches were pretty quiet this past week with few anglers fishing the early morning periods.

This could be due to the overnight rain that had fallen but also because the fishing has been quiet.

A few small shad have been caught but anglers have been complaining about the amount of peekers in the water destroying fillet baits. Anglers fishing the late afternoon and early evening periods have had some excellent sport with sharks that have been feeding. Unfortunately many of the local anglers do not fish for the sharks but it can be great fun hooking these hard fighting fish in the surf.

Closer to Durban, the Umhlanga Rocks beaches have been producing a couple of shad plus a few small summer flatfish such as skates and one or two sandies. The Durban North beaches are a bit quiet at present but I heard that a few big mullet have been caught at Beachwood.

Anglers are still fishing from the pier and catching some small shad at times but it is hardly worthwhile waking up early and driving to the beach in the hope that one may be lucky and pull a small shad.

lt’s party time at the beach during the weekend periods again and this coming weekend will probably be quite hectic at the beach and it might be a good idea to remain at home and not get involved in any nonsense.

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