While sardine choked waters have spoiled much of the fishing, luck seems to be with the surf ski and boat anglers fishing backline areas.

They have had good results with . Unfortunately it seems as though snoek are moving on and those fishing areas such Cape Vidal should cash in now.

Areas to target garrick would be Tongaat River mouth up to Sweet Waters just south of Ballito. The Umdloti River mouth is another good area for garrick, including Selection Beach.

Closer bottom fishing reefs have produced a number of half kob along with some nice rock cod, but anglers should try and fish areas free of sardine pockets.

Shad have been caught by some surf anglers, but they remain low in numbers. Umgeni mouth produced some garrick last week when using live bait.

First light has seen guys catch some nice salmon, especially at Tugela mouth. The rocky gullies still seem to be the areas to look for fish at present.

Copper bream remain the main target but other species such as stone and lantern bream have also been caught.

Small species such as blacktail and karranteen always keep rock anglers busy at this time of year.

Water ‘thick’ with sardines

While weather made fihing bleak last week, it did begin to moderate with time.

Tuesday included reports of numerous sardine sightings and pockets of the fish moving north, with shoals deep out to sea, too. Every recorded netting attempt failed, however.

A small net of sardines was hauled in at Isipingo on Wednesday, with more netted at Umkomaas later that day.

Thursday morning indicated that Isipingo could become a sardine hot spot with another successful netting.

The windy, somewhat wet weekend was not ideal for fishing however, which proved to be slow at times.

Two white steenbras were caught down south last week, something unusual as the species is only found in Eastern Cape waters.

At Port Edward some shad had been caught, including further south. While shad were not caught in numbers, catches included a few big garrick and salmon.

Durban produced some shad, garrick and grunter, but sardines have been plentiful in some areas.

The upper South Coast has seen similar results with sardines passing by and a deep sea commercial fisherman mentioned fishing was poor owing to the water being ‘thick’ with sardines.

They were spread over a wide area and when fishing on the reefs, one found the fish were not looking at baits presented on the bottom because they had been feeding on the remnants of sardines as shoals passed by,” he said.

The odd bottom fish was caught and plenty of geelbek salmon can be found in deeper waters.

With the arrival of August, anglers should turn their focus to shad.

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