#FishEagle: Pompano ripe for fishing

Nice and cool, that is what the weather is at present during the early morning first light period.

Still hot and humid during the day plus there were no gale force or strong winds last week to hamper anglers.

The autumn season has only just begun but we are rapidly approaching the time of year when we enjoy the best weather along this coastline.

Light to moderate north easterly winds were the prevailing winds of last week and this resulted in pretty good fishing conditions for anglers.

I happened to bump into an old friend of mine last week who does most of his fishing at night or during the early morning periods along the Durban beachfront.

He was telling me the anglers have been having some great fun recently during early evening periods catching small grey sharks.

Anglers are using light tackle mostly and there have been a few edible species caught as well.

In the Addington area a couple of shoal salmon weighing up to 2kg plus a few stumpies of a similar weight have kept anglers interested.

My friend also said there was a down side to fishing the Durban beachfront area at present.

Apparently there are two gangs of car thieves operating between Suncoast casino and uShaka marine world and vehicles have been stolen daily.

Anglers in Durban bay have been catching some really nice grunter recently but there have been a couple of hooked fish taken by sharks in the bay.

I used to fish a lot in the bay in the past but nowadays the bay is so polluted that any fish caught must be considered suspect and not recommended for eating.

I can remember fishing on the north pier one night with several friends for grunter.

We had caught a couple of grunter weighing around 1.5kg and I returned to my tackle box for a fresh bait and saw one of the largest rats that I have ever seen trying to drag away one of the grunter.

The summer flatfish run has been an excellent one up north so far, some big flatfish – a few weighing up to 100kg – have been caught by those targeting them.

Apparently there are some really big sandsharks around this year and anglers have been smashed-up after hooking into these monsters.

Anglers fishing the local sandy beaches have also enjoyed some great sport this year when fishing for these summer fish.

Durban North beaches have proved to be profitable and a number of sandies and sizeable rays have been caught and returned unharmed to the water.

A few big sharks have also been caught in this area and an angler fishing at Eastmore early one evening last week, very nearly lost his rod when he was picked up by a large shark.

Apparently the angler was about to place his rod in his rod holder when the shark picked up the bait and nearly pulled the rod from the angler’s hands.

Local anglers fishing the rocky areas report that a few stone bream, blacktail and other odds and ends have been on the bite.

One angler told me that he had heard of a nice pompano caught at Tongaat.

It is the right time of the year to target these hard fighting fish and a fresh crab or crayfish bait could produce a pull.

I have seen that some of the local angling beaches are sanded up so anglers will have to watch the tides carefully before setting off on a fishing trip.

A good bet could be the river mouth areas during the early evenings to try for the shoal salmon that usually appear at this time of the year.

Another good local spot to try is Salmon Bay in Ballito.

The offshore anglers continue to target game fish but there has been a problem in areas where the water has not been too clean.

One angler fishing the dirty water line at Umdloti had some excellent luck last week when he caught two big snoek, a kingfish weighing about 10kg and a yellowfin tuna of 15kg.

The fish were caught during the early morning just after first light on spoon.

Anglers fishing for couta off the Umdloti river mouth report that there are some big sharks there and landing a fish could be a problem.

The bottom anglers have had a couple of reasonable catches this past week where a few really nice rockcod, some reds such as soldiers and Englishmen have been caught along with a couple of kawa kawa.

The water has been bumpy at times but the guys said it was not too bad fishing on the anchor.

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