#FishEagle: Angling conditions picking up

Offshore anglers fishing the bottom reefs recorded decent catches that included musselcracker, soldier, the usual rock cod plus a couple of good-sized daga salmon.

The water temperature is rising slowly and peaked at 22 degrees, while the water was much cleaner last week in places such as Salt Rock.

There is plenty of bait available on the inshore reefs that include mackerel, red eye sardines and the usual mossies.

There was also news of one or two dorado caught, which is good news. Last year was a really great season for the dorado that seemed to go on forever as the fish remained in local waters longer than normal.

The outer anchorage produced a lot of fish with anglers catching dorado every time they ventured in. Last year’s season also began right on time during November with smaller fish being caught at first, with the larger dorado not far behind.

With the water temperature rising nicely, anglers can expect game fish to begin arriving in local waters and many are waiting keenly for the big yellowfin tuna to arrive.

There was also news of a couple of barracouta caught, but it is still a bit early for these fish to begin feeding on the local inner reefs.

A surf ski angler fishing for live bait off the Umgeni mouth suddenly found snoek working around him and he managed to catch two good ones before the shoal moved away.

He continued to catch bait, then a trap stick he had set suddenly moved away and he discovered he had hooked into a garrick. Not a bad morning’s fishing – a garrick plus a couple of snoek and a good supply of bait.

The garrick will be gone in the near future and the offshore guys have said that this year’s garrick run was one to remember.

Shore anglers fishing the rocky gullies have found plenty of copper bream. La Mercy is producing copper bream again this year and there has been a number of big stone bream caught among the copper bream.

Sheffield is another area fishing quite well, producing copper bream and small salmon or kob. One or two nice-sized stumpies have also been caught by the guys targeting the copper bream, plus the odd big blacktail among the other smaller species found among the rocks.

The summer flatfish have arrived and anglers fishing at Glenashley have hooked into big diamond rays plus a couple of outsized honeycomb rays.

Already a number of sand sharks have been caught and released and, though it is still early days, things are looking up for the summer surf anglers.

Guys fishing in the shore dump have found bull mullet feeding and a few good sized mullet have been caught.

Durban bay is still producing big grunter with a couple of 7kg catches brought in. Springer are becoming more numerous while the inevitable snapper salmon and small king fish made up catch bags.

There have been a number of small sharks and sand sharks caught as well, plus one or two small skates. The bay seems to be the area at which to persevere when sea conditions are poor. It has been working well for some time now.

Surf anglers these days seem to have lost the urge to keep an eye on conservation because some of them are doing their best to catch as many shad as they can and actually boast about it.

Everyone knows there is virtually nobody patrolling the beaches these days but that is not a license to ignore the rules of shore angling.

The guys catching twenty or thirty shad an outing during the closed season are not heroes because all they are doing is putting the future of the shad species in jeopardy.

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