#FishEagle: Challenging conditions impact anglers
Many popular angling spots have become problematic with sand banks having formed thanks to north-easterly winds.
Plenty of fish were spared the hook last week owing to rough sea conditions caused by gale force winds, impacting both in-shore and off-shore angling.
Rough seas last week caused damage mainly to South Coast areas, with conditions moderating quite rapidly although a big swell remained out in the deeper waters.
More bad weather was predicted for the weekend, but fortunately Saturday’s weather and sea conditions were excellent. Sunday, although a grey, wet day, wasn’t too bad either.
Upper South Coast anglers had to contend with dirty waters and plenty of seaweed floating around, meaning all was quiet on the fishing front aside from the odd shad caught.
Conditions were slightly better at Durban, and anglers did manage to catch the odd decent fish with Durban Bay producing grunter and a few small kingfish, kob and salmon.
Local anglers also struggled with rough seas, but still, a few fish were caught.
La Mercy again produced a few decent bronze bream and some spade fish, but shad and garrick were few and far between along most of the coastline.
Many popular angling spots have become problematic with sand banks having formed thanks to north-easterly winds. The result has seen fish unable to move inshore to feed.
Local shad anglers only have this week left to catch their quota before the season closes until December 1.
I was at Eastmore Beach at Umhlanga Rocks on Saturday morning and I talked to a surf ski angler who had just beached after a couple hours of fishing.
The sea and surf conditions were good and I found out that he and several other surf ski anglers had been fishing the backline area but found it very quiet.
He said he decided to paddle out to the bait barge, where he later hooked and landed two big garrick weighing between 15-18 kilos.
Both fish were released. He said two of his mates had paddled out with him and found a patch of snoek which proved very reluctant to accept any lure or strips of bait offered.
He said he saw two or three “on-off’s” before the snoek disappeared.
Offshore news was really scarce because of the big swell running at sea last week, keeping anglers shore-bound.
On Sunday morning, the sea water temperature was just below 22 degrees Celsius and this means the temperature is rising and early summer fish species should begin arriving soon.
Already there have been one or two big diamond rays caught along the coastline and surf anglers have reported that shoals of mullet have been seen in the shore break in some areas.
Anglers using live mullet have already caught garrick on the South Coast, so it should be much of the same for the local anglers.
Hopefully the elements will be more favourable this week and the fish begin to move inshore to feed.
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