August has been windy and unpleasant for fishing, yet the occasional large garrick still rewards the most persistent anglers.

The bodyboarder who caught the 15kg garrick by hand at Salmon Bay recently must still be in a daze because that type of thing happens once in a lifetime.

The rest of us have to put in the hard yards.

It has mostly been the guys fishing the backline who have been catching garrick recently, including Ballito resident Alister Franz who caught a 14kg garrick at Ballito using a live maasbanker as bait last Friday.

These garrick are believed to be on their way back down south.

To help one along there is plenty of live bait available at present in the form of mackerel and maasbanker, plus the popular pinkies that garrick prefer.

Local anglers should find that the Tongaat River mouth plus the Chaka’s Rock, Salt Rock and Tinley Manor areas are all well-known garrick spots and can produce fish at any time.

It just takes perseverance.

Offshore reports by commercial anglers last week were not too encouraging, but here again cold water was encountered plus the inevitable patches of sardines observed travelling north.

Early last week a small net of sardines was brought ashore at Isipingo but there was no more netting news after that.

The next morning pockets of fish said to be sardines were observed passing by quite deep, so it seems as if the sardine run is now at an end – although pockets of sardines were seen in several areas by anglers fishing at sea.

The sighting reports are becoming fewer and fewer, however. Anglers will be much happier once the sardines are gone.

This year the netters definitely netted fewer fish than last year but these fish have a habit of appearing when least expected, so the run may not be over yet.

Some good catches of geelbek salmon have again been reported along with some rock cod and some nice reds in some areas.

The big blow on Sunday may help to change things behind the waves but only time will tell.

The anglers concentrating on fishing the rocky gullies probably enjoyed the best of the rock and surf angling, but it was hard work and slow, plus the water was really cold.

Copper bream were again the species mostly targeted and some really good sized bronzies were landed.

Anglers said some big blacktail were on the bite as well, and some of them were really old fish as the black spot near their tails was missing.

The last time I saw blacktail of this size was down at Port St. Johns.

The usual stone bream were also on the bite in some areas but the lantern bream were scarce.

Shad were quiet last week with the Umgeni mouth probably the pick of the shad angling spots but unfortunately at present this is not a safe area for fishing.

Some of the other local shad spots produced one or two catches but there was nothing to shout about.

Most of the shad that have been caught recently have been of decent size, and the monster blue shad are not too far away now and will probably begin to feed in about a month’s time.

Until then fish weighing just over one kilo will be welcomed by all.

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