Have the dorado arrived?
It looks like some superb summer fishing is around the corner.
HAVING alluded to the start of the dorado run over the last couple of weeks, last week produced the first couple of these fish of the season.
Tuna.Com came in last Thursday with a fish of around 6kg and then yours truly (Mark Bennett) boated a good-sized bull dorado of around 14kg on Protea Reef. This fish was taken on a chum piece fishing for tuna.
Normally, this time of the year the first fish are taken out in the deep off ‘Diep Gat’ and Protea, and then towards December move in on the backline where some hectic fishing can be had.
This is the perfect time for the paddle ski fraternity to cash in on the action, so to the guys that paddle, you had better start dusting off those skis and have a few paddles to get rid of those extra bulges accumulated over the year.
The tuna fishing has been excellent over the last week, with some really good fish being taken on both the lures and chum. The bigger fish are still preferring the chum baits.
We have had excellent results in chumming with anchovies instead of cutting sards. We believe the reason is ‘less blood, more shine’, so the sharks don’t seem to hone in as quickly, and we are getting the bigger fish out.
One commercial boat (the crew of which wishes to remain anonymous), had a haul of around 400kg of yellowtail on Sunday which is a great sign that the summer gamefish have arrived.
Darren Poole, fishing with his dad Glen, had a nice ‘kaakaap’ green jobfish of around 7kg, and so did Jacques Olivier, fishing on his boat Too Tight.
These fish are rated as one of the finest eating fish around and are a great summer species to catch. One can target them by ‘whipping’ the spoon. If there is very little current they will eat your chum pieces that sink to the bottom, when targeting tuna.
Glen also caught a marlin last week which was duly released, so it really looks like we are in for a bumper summer season of fishing.
Reports are that rock and surf anglers are being ‘stretched’ off the points by possibly some big sandies. This is a great sign of the first summer flatfish having arrived.
Ockert Schonken and his son, fishing off Orange Rocks at St Mike’s, caught some really good sized lesser sandsharks of around the 7kg mark, and then had a ‘steamer’ that was obviously a big sandy. Unfortunately, this fish cut him off some 250m out to sea.
Stiebel Point at Umzumbe has also had its fair share of sandy pulls, but no fish were landed.
Sandspit at Port Shepstone is still producing some good catches of garrick on live baits, with mullet being the preferred flavour.
Unfortunately, at this time of the year, with all the garrick moving around, the mullet are very scattered and scarce, with anglers spending sometimes the entire evening trying to get live baits for the next day.
Bronze bream are still biting freely with most of popular spots producing fish.
A team from the south fished a triangular against Zululand and Mpumalanga at St Lucia last weekend.
Not a lot of fish were caught as conditions were less than perfect with lots of weed on both days in the water, and rain on the Sunday.
However, Nathan Appalraju got a giant guitar fish of about 15kg, a brown skate of 12kg and a kingfish of 3.2kg, which was the biggest edible for the weekend’s competition.
The 2013 Bass World Championships was held in Cordoba, Spain at Lake La Brena this year, between October 30 and November 3.
Excited, and ready to take on the world the SA boys, mostly from KZN, and including Hendrik Korf from Uvongo, left SA in their gold and green Protea colours to compete against all the other countries.
The competitive teams were from Russia, Spain, South Africa, Venezuela, France, Portugal, Mexico, Germany, Italy, Swaziland and Croatia.
After the first two practice days, SA had a good game plan in hand, which ensured them second place on the first tournament day, with Russia in first place and France in third.
After an average second day, they dropped to third place, still with Russia in first place and Portugal moving into second place.
SA needed a new game plan for the final day. After much team talk, homework and consideration, they went out with a vengeance, wanting to climb back up the ladder and fishing against a reverse grand prix system.
With the SA national anthem playing (goose bump time), the team earned silver medals, ending in second place, with Russia in first place and France in third place.
Port Edward
In just a couple of weeks, shad season will be open again and many more fishermen will be seen on the rocks during the early mornings.
Shad fishing does bring more fishermen out and one could say that the bulk of fishermen are there for the shad.
In the meantime, bronze bream fishing has yielded a number of good-sized fish and people targeting this species have seldom gone home empty handed.
Calm seas have enabled fishermen to wade out to open reefs during low tides and it’s these spots where the catch rate of bronze bream is always higher.
Catches of brusher are also very possible and it’s always a huge surprise when one of these ‘gladiators’ attaches itself to the line of an unsuspecting angler using light tackle targeting bream.
On the weekend Port Edward was a hive of activity with bass fishermen taking part in the annual bass classic held here. A number of good-sized fish were caught, including one of 4,1kg.
(News by Mark Bennett, Tackle Box and Terry Nel, Tackle Net).
Tide Table
High tides
November
14 01.23 13.46
15 02.07 14.24
16 02.45 14.58
17 03.20 15.30
18 03.53 16.01
19 04.24 16.31
20 05.23 17.29
