Sardines were the order of the day on Monday last week, but this soon changed causing much disappointment among netters who were left sending messages back and forth, and up and down the coastline hoping for news that sardines would be found somewhere.

All hope of a bumper sardine run season are not lost, however. Reports indicate there are still plenty more sardines on the move up the lower coastline, with shoals accompanied by birds, dolphins and in some instances, even sharks.

While most of the shoals appear to be moving in deeper waters this could change as ocean temperatures begin to drop. Of course, rough seas or windy conditions make it difficult to spot a pocket of sardines and even more difficult for netters to encircle the fish, but I am convinced during the next few days sardines will make an appearance again.

Rough surf conditions did not keep shad anglers away from the beach last week, especially at the popular Umgeni River mouth fishing spot during the early mornings. Small shad were again caught but there were days that fishing was quiet. Even popular South Coast shad angling spots were busy, but fishing was not nearly as hectic as the week prior.

The lower South Coast beaches produced some nice sized shad plus a few garrick as well, but unfortunately the rough surf did hamper anglers.

As always, Margate pier proved popular and produced some decent fish. Umkomaas also once again proved itself true for producing a variety of edible fish but sadly the area does become really crowded when shad come on the bite. Even guys fishing at night have reported uncomfortable fishing conditions on some occasions but good-sized shoal salmon and big grunter continue to be caught, including some big perch, I’m told.

Local anglers anticipate the arrival of shad, which historically come on the bite around August. Normally, these are the small green or China shad which are caught before the arrival of larger blue shad. At the moment many popular shad angling spots have sand banks but these are sure to clear soon with the help of south-westerly winds, normal for this time of year. This will help open up channels that the fish use to move inshore to feed.

Early morning anglers can now expect other edible fish in the surf and, depending on where one is fishing, salmon, stumpies or even garrick can be caught.

Anglers fishing rocky areas will find excellent sport catching copper bream, lantern bream and all the other usual residents of rocky outcrops. But again, many of these gullies remain sanded up and will only begin to be productive once the sand is moved.

Baitfish such as karenteen normally begin to make an appearance at this time of year, so there is still something to keep most anglers happy.

Sardines passing by in deep waters will hamper offshore anglers as they attract just about everything like a magnet.

Sometimes, anglers are lucky and find game fish with the sardines and then experience some hectic fishing but, most of the times, there are no game fish in attendance.

There is plenty of live bait to be found at the moment, so an option could be to try for garrick at river mouths. Fishing for garrick along the backline can be productive but not for the faint-hearted when the surf is unpredictable, so it is normally the experienced anglers that try this form of angling.

Deeper bottom reefs are normally the target of offshore anglers at this time of the year and a live bait on the bottom can produce really nice fish such as daga or geelbek salmon, even possibly a large cracker or even a nice rock cod.

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