#FishEagle: Summer action still hot

This year’s game fish season can only be described as epic.

Anglers again found couta on the bite at most of the regular game fishing spots last week and on some occasions crews had two sticks away at once only to lose one of the fish to marauding sharks.

One angler said the fish were all weighing between 12 to 15 kilos, so it was difficult to pull them out of the water quickly enough before they became shark lunch.

Couta can now be found almost everywhere along the coastline however, the trick is to find them where sharks are less active.

It can be very frustrating but sometimes the only answer is to move once the sharks are onto you.

The kayak anglers fishing Durban North and nearby got into the snoek again this past week.

Many of the fish were on the small side but still worthwhile and fresh fillets seemed to attract the most pulls.

Those who braved the paddle out to No 1 among the ships pulled a few nice couta.

Some nice, small dorado and a nice sailfish were also caught by an angler.

I believe one kayak angler fishing between Glenashley and La Lucia hooked into 2 nice sized queenfish landing one, only to have the other eaten by a shark – he was left with only the head.

Anglers fishing deep bottom reefs aboard a charter craft have been catching a few exceptional bottom fish.

A couple of sizeable musselcracker have been boated along with some big rockcod and really nice soldiers and slinger.

Those fishing closer reefs have found big stumpnose and at times have hooked into a few monster rays that earned them their wings when the fish were eventually subdued.

It is no joke fighting a big ray from the deck of a boat because these fish certainly do not give up!

There is still some way to go before the summer fishing season comes to an end so, there will be more memorable catches yet and, the big tuna are still testing angler’s tackle.

This past week revealed that there were still some big shad about with one that was caught at La Mercy measuring 74cm.

This fish took a fresh fillet bait plus there was another shad caught in the Bluff area that weighed just under 7kgs.

Anglers fishing at uShaka at night have also been nailing the shad.

Unfortunately, there were two anglers who walked off the beach with 75 shad between them!

The bag limit for shad is 4 per person per day.

It is a bit unusual to find big shad being caught here at this time of the year but small brusher have been caught recently down south.

Also unusual, but this may be because of a sudden drop in water temperatures.

But fishing conditions have been ideal.

Anglers fishing at Durban Bay continued to enjoy some profitable fishing.

Along with grunter, a few big stumpies were caught with an angler taking 2 fish weighing about 5kgs on one outing.

Light tackle fishermen are reeling-in a variety of edible and inedible fish and the anglers have really enjoyed their fishing.

At the weekend snoek were seen entering the bay, plus several summer flatfish have provided some excellent fishing so far this season.

For visitors looking to fish around Ballito this weekend I would recommend using the drop shot method.

It has proved quite effective recently.

Anglers have been fishing the local rocky areas using this method and they have caught some really nice blacktail and other species which frequent rocky outcrops.

The pompano are also due at any time now and the drop shot method of fishing has produced some excellent results with these fish in the past.