#FishEagle: Poaching is out of hand

‘Difficult’ is the word I would use to describe fishing conditions anglers faced last week owing to rain, rough seas and moderate to fresh winds at times.

Although beaches from Umgeni Mouth to Tongaat River remain closed, anglers are now ignoring the warnings.

The shad season is pretty short at the best of times and now with the closure, there is a growing desperation to catch their annual quotas.

Even though it is illegal to sell them, there is a ready market waiting for the shad run each year.

The high unemployment rate has aggravated the situation and some will go to extraordinary lengths to catch as many as they can every day.

In past years beaches were regularly patrolled and many anglers were caught trying to steal a shad or two, but lately it has been fishing as normal during the closed season with very few anglers being caught.

Rocks are also being stripped bare. Areas that used to have an abundance of mussels, catfish, crabs and other creatures that live on the rocks are now bare and devoid of life. On Friday I saw a guy with a bag of oysters at La Mercy and he was not even trying to hide them.

Anglers fishing up north are now beginning to find the summer flatfish back on the bite and a few sandies and skates have been landed although fishing is still slow.

The water up north is a little warmer than it was locally last week, one day being around 20.6 degrees Celsius.

This could be why several small pockets of sardines were reported to have been netted at Durban, but I think that the public has now had their fill of sardines.

The rocky gullies continue to produce some nice fish such as copper bream, the off-lantern bream, stone bream and the usual smaller blacktail.

Copper bream seem to be preferring prawn baits while anglers looking for larger brusher have been using crab, which has proved very successful along the upper South Coast.

A couple of lucky anglers picked up nice sized stumpies fishing with crab and one I spoke with said he had lost a ‘bus’ of a stumpie early one morning, just north of Westbrook Beach.

Offshore angling is a bit in-between seasons at present but game fish anglers can still target snoek and garrick in the river mouths.

The backline guys also suffered last week because of rough seas. I did however see a couple of surf ski anglers fishing for garrick at the Tongaat River mouth.

Now is the time to fill up on bait as there will be mackerel almost everywhere and the winds will prevent crucial skippers to venture out deep.

Come the summer game fish season again, this stock of bait could prove crucial.

For breaking news follow The North Coast Courier on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.