#FishEagle: Dirty seas favour kob anglers

With the arrival of October comes the closing of the shad season, which will reopen on December 1.

This year’s shad season has been disappointing, caused by several negative factors, the floods having had the most impact. Dirty waters definitely contributed to the poor winter run.

Blue shad should be moving up the coast to spawn, but again anglers reported poor catches last week. Beach closures obviously played a role in this.

Reports from Margate indicated large shad being caught by anglers using live bait.

But ever-changing weather conditions last week limited favourable fishing.

The best times were mostly at first light and sometimes during the early evening but fishing was quiet with only few decent fish caught.

The rocky gullies again proved most productive for anglers gunning for copper bream, which were scarce on this occasion.

A few good-sized stone bream were recorded in some areas but not much to talk about.

If you were fishing for salmon or kob over the past year, you would have had a productive time despite the dirty sea waters, especially during the beginning of the winter season.

Several kob species are known to prefer murky sea water.

Some big daga salmon were landed over the year from a number of angling spots, especially those rife with sardines.

While kob weighing around 8-9kg were mostly caught, the smaller shoal salmon offered beach anglers good catches, especially around river mouth areas.

Some brusher were caught at the Bluff last week, but there were no reports of local catches.

Some sizeable Stumpies have been caught. They prefer rough conditions and are a nice reward for anglers who persevere. The past year has seen plenty of these fish caught.

With shad season closed, expect anglers to turn to targeting copper bream and other species which frequent rocky gullies.

If you’d like your arms stretched, inedible fish seem to be becoming more frequent, especially up north.

Water could be warming up with report of springer caught in the bay – a sign that wave garrick and mullet can’t be too far off.

Many popular angling beaches remain closed in the eThekwini region in the interim owing to E.coli.

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