Fish Eagle: Edible fish remain scarce

The weather bureau monitored the storm that reached cyclone status in the Mozambique channel last week very closely. Who can forget the huge amount of damage that cyclone Demoina caused along the local coastline during the 1980’s?

Fortunately, this recent cyclone was not expected to have any influence on the local weather or sea conditions and at best, there could be a bit of a swell moving down the local coastline.

The weather and sea conditions were mostly favourable to anglers last week but the real problem being the tons of river weeds washed into the sea from the swollen rivers. I saw tons of water hyacinth and other weeds floating in the surf and this is bad news for anglers because these weeds tend to remain in the sea for a considerable time before being washed onto the shore. Not too many anglers could be seen at the various popular local angling spots throughout the week and this was not really too surprising.

Talking to local rock and surf anglers recently, they all mentioned that there was not too much happening in the surf with just the odd decent fish being caught from time to time and most active anglers spending time at the water for very little return, sometimes managing to catch just a few small fish in the surf.

On Friday morning I saw a familiar face leaving the beach just north of Westbrook so I drove to meet the angler and find out just how his fishing trip had been.

He said he normally fished his favourite spot almost every morning when he had completed working the night shift.

So far this year catches had been disappointing and he had only caught two decent sized stumples and that morning he showed me a kingfish weighing between three to four kilos that he had caught just after first light.

He said he was waiting for April so that he could begin to fish for the pompano. In recent years this angler has recorded a couple of really big pompano that he had caught at his favourite fishing spot and was hoping for much of the same this year.

I contacted my angling friends that fish the Durban area and they had much the same comments as local surf anglers. They said edible fish had been scarce but a few small sharks and sandies had been caught in the discoloured water but there was not much else around at present. These guys fish on a regular basis and when they say that the fishing is quiet, they mean just that, not much is going on.

Offshore anglers caught some bomber yellowfin tuna again last week with a couple of these fish weighing over 30 kg. Unfortunately, the surf ski anglers had to struggle to try and find clean water when fishing inshore and said that weeds in the water were a big problem.

Many anglers ended up searching for snoek and a couple of ski anglers managed to catch a few in the Peace Cottage area. The couta are still scarce and one now begins to wonder whether the days of big shoals of couta moving down from up the north are now over. One seldom sees the small shoal couta or darts as they were once called and the larger couta tend to arrive in local waters much later in the year.

This year the dorado remained in local waters longer than usual but they are now becoming difficult to find as they return back north. It will be interesting what the Umhlanga offshore competition will produce this year and there could be a few surprising catches.

From what I have been told by a couple of deep sea anglers, there have been a few crocodile sized wahoo in the deeper water off Durban and one of these fish could certainly bring home the first prize.

The sea is slowly but surely taking on its winter look but the water temperature remains high and it is just the humidity levels that are still high on some days but even they are becoming fewer and further behind. I think that most are waiting for the winter to arrive and hoping that the cooler weather brings a change and the fishing improves somewhat.

Sealice

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