#FishEagle: Summer fishing season drifts in

Ideal conditions for the summer fishing season have arrived, despite strong winds and a storm with much rain which greeted anglers last week, spoiling conditions on some days.

The winds blew in from the north-east and from a south-westerly direction. Ocean temperatures averaged between 23 to 24 degrees Celsius, ideal for summer fishing.

The best day last week was Friday, but on Saturday a moderate north-easterly wind was on the water very early with the wind gusting to fresh by lunch.

This spoiled excellent fishing conditions.

Early morning surf anglers were at their favourite fishing spots before first light, with most targeting shad, but catches were disappointing last week.

History has proven that the end of November is usually the end of the shad run, although the odd big one will still be caught from popular beaches for a while.

Wednesday, December 1, will see the shad ban being lifted, but this year one would not really have believed there was a ban during October and November.

This time of the season one would see 50 anglers targeting shad during the early morning, and possibly 4 or 5 fish being caught right at first light.

I have experienced on many occasions that shad would suddenly begin to bite just before, or at first light, only to disappear 30 minutes later.

One angler fishing at Eastmore in the Umhlanga Rocks area caught a nice salmon of 12kg while fishing for shad last week, but not much else was caught that morning.

Experienced anglers tend to have their lines in the water long before first light, just in case there are species such as salmon or stumpies lurking in the surf.

Just before first light they change their tackle to target the shad.

The tide plays a big part and a high tide around 3-4am in the morning is ideal.

Apparently a few garrick have been caught at Eastmore.

This angling beach has been a pretty productive one for some years now.

It is time local surf anglers prepare for the summer flatfish which will soon arrive in numbers.

There have been a couple of big skates caught already, plus the sharks are becoming more numerous.

Not too many local anglers target the non-edibles, however.

Ocean temperatures are now also ideal for bull mullet to make an appearance, and these fish are caught right on the shorebreak along with wave garrick and juvenile stumpnose, also called yellowfin bream.

Game fish anglers found big dorado feeding last week, along with the usual yellowfin tuna and snoek.

Word is a couple of sailfish were caught and safely released off Durban.

Early catches suggest dorado are going to be thick again this year, and the bigger dorado seem to have arrived earlier than usual.

There were more rumours of couta having been caught, but I think time will tell whether the couta have begun to arrive.

The larger craft have found live bait readily available in the form of big shoals of bonito, to target the marlin with.

Unfortunately, the windy conditions did put a bit of a damper on game fishing action last week.

But come Friday, plenty of boats could be seen fishing at Glenashley and Umhlanga Rocks.

Waters have warmed up nicely, but bottom anglers experienced windy conditions on most days last week so sea time was reduced.

Travelling out deep was not really on, so most anglers had to try the in-shore reefs. Some guys found a bit of fish, but others struggled.

Many anglers were hoping for favourable weather on Saturday morning but that was not to be, so it was time to do a few chores around the house and sulk.

Guys fishing the backline areas have delivered a few garrick, a few snoek in some areas, plus the odd big shad.

At Durban North one backline angler caught 2 big springer, which he released.

The water was a bit discoloured and this brought sharks on the bite.

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