While Easter weekend was calm, allowing anglers four days of good fishing, this was not the case the weekend past.

It was pretty windy and looking at the horizon on Sunday morning, a big swell could be seen running, moving inshore to spoil the recent productive fishing.

Prior to that though, rock and surf angling was quite productive and a few happy visitors left for home with some fresh fish in their cold boxes.

A variety of edible fish were on the bite, notably shoal salmon or kob moving into the surf to keep anglers busy.

The Tugela area has been producing a few decent fish and it is this time of the year that the labotes arrive at the mouth and good catches were made.

These fish are mainly caught right in the mouth and anglers use weird bait such as chicken or birds to catch these strange fish.

I was once given a portion of lobotes to sample and found the flesh to be very oily, but quite tasty. The Tugela area is the only location along our shores that these strange species are found.

A number of salmon and shad have also been caught at Tugela and it is said there are plenty of perch present in the river mouth.

Shad were also on the bite last week and were caught locally, up north and along the upper South Coast beaches and at Durban.

Strangely there was no news of shad being caught along the lower South Coast beaches but anglers could be keeping quiet about shad they have caught.

A big shad just over 7kg was caught at “Lugs” by an angler using fresh karranteen fillet. Normally at this time of the year the small green China shad begin to move up the coast.

The rocky gully anglers boasted of some decent catches last week and a variety of edible fish were caught. It seems as if copper bream are still around, with a a few good catches recorded at Sheffield.

Lantern bream have suddenly made an appearance and a couple of nice rock cod were reported as well.

At La Mercy a number of snapper salmon kept anglers happy, and this week the sea water temperature has risen a degree or two and there could be a change in fishing, especially if the big swells move inshore.

It is right in the middle of the gamefish season at present and the Easter weekend proved to be a great time for the offshore anglers.

Barracouta made up the majority of most catches and many of the fish weighed in around the mid-20kg mark.

Umdloti and the La Mercy proved to be popular fishing spots producing a number of fish, as did Ballito and Tinley Manor.

This bodes well for the big Durban fishing competition in a couple of weeks time.

Anglers fishing out deeper found a few dorado, big tuna among the bonito, plus a couple of sailfish caught and released.

Backline surf ski anglers caught plenty snoek at Blue Lagoon, again using fillet strips and artificial lures.

The La Mercy stretch also produced snoek, and the guys caught couta as well. Inevitably sharks proved to be a problem at times.

The water temperature remains high so excellent game fish fishing should remain this week and big catches are expected.

Guys fishing the bottom reefs were also over the moon last week.

Some big rock cod were caught again and these included the common spotted, captain fine plus the odd yellow belly. Some

nice soldiers and slinger also made up catches and the guys that fish the inshore reefs also found a few lantern bream and some salmon.

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