#FishEagle: The shad have arrived!

The return of shad season has seen many more anglers hit the beaches at first light, casting their lines which has seen several decent sizes shad caught this past week.

Offshore fishing conditions were uncomfortable toward the end of last week as winds howled, but as the week progressed, so too did the weather and ocean conditions improve.

Although winds still persisted to some degree, surf conditions were fine enough for early morning rock and surf anglers for most of the week, until a bit of a storm arrived on Saturday, ruining the fishing for almost everyone.

Picking up from shad season’s return, most catches have weighed between 3-5kg.

As it is now toward the end of the shad run, catches have dwindled a bit.

Shad tend to feed in the dark just before first light, and then disappear.

This could be owing to grey sharks increasing in numbers, and a number of anglers have hooked into these greys while targeting shad.

It is great fun hooking into these sharks because they produce a great pull and are not easy to land.

From now onward, shad will become smaller in size and normally found feeding right in the shore-break, so there is no reason to cast as far as one can into the water.

Grey sharks become more plentiful each year around this time.

But there was a time back in the 1980s when the sea was alive with the creature.

It was said there were more sharks in the water than edible fish and it became a bit of a celebration when an angler caught a nice edible fish from the beach.

Competition anglers used to gather on local beaches during weekend afternoons and pull sharks to create weight points.

I can remember one Saturday watching the guys fishing at Westbrook.

They totalled more than two tons of fish.

Lately the numbers seem to be considerably less than they used to be.

Water temperatures were hovering around 23-24 degrees Celsius again last week and this means that anglers can now begin to fish the deep water points and target the kingfish species, plus the queen fish that should begin to make an appearance.

Garrick will soon begin to become a bit scarce, and it is definitely time to change tactics and target the summer fish.

The problem at present is the winds that tend to blow from early morning, so check the long range weather reports when planning a fishing trip.

Offshore angling conditions were favourable during the second half of last week, and anglers were able to travel out to the deep water reefs to target dorado and the big bottom fish. Some big dorado have been boated recently and the billfish seem to be plentiful, with a number of strikes reported.

Not many anglers target the marlin but most dream of catching a “sailie”, and there have been several hooked recently.

This year there seems to be plenty of big yellowfin tuna to be found out deep and a few arms have been stretched already.

There have been many shoals of bonito seen in the water as well, and bonito are a great baitfish, either for the marlin or for bait to be used when fishing on the bottom.

The northerly fishing venues seem to be the most productive fishing areas present, and Cape Vidal is still extremely popular as a number of species have been caught.

Plenty of billfish, couta, dorado, big snoek and a few wahoo have been caught.

Unfortunately, the fuel price will be a big factor now for the offshore anglers when planning a fishing trip, especially for the guys using two-stroke motors.

Anglers wanting to book a fishing trip on one of the charter boats will now have to dig deeper into their pockets, but the really keen anglers will somehow find the cash, although not as often as they want to.

There were more reports of pollutants pumped into the Durban Bay last week, this on top of the sewage already causing a big stink.

What a year it has been with pollution being reported from several areas.

The latest I saw was from Westbrook beach where sewage was reportedly entering the sea from the stream alongside the sewerage plant.

To think that this used to be a blue flag beach.

The Tongaat River mouth used to be a area that made local residents angry when the textile mill was in operation, and I am not sure whether the lagoon at the river mouth has yet recovered.

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