Bass
The KwaZulu-Natal Y-bass tournament held its third fish-off out of seven for the season at Inanda dam in Hillcrest recently.
Prizes are awarded for heaviest fish and heaviest bag. The top 10 qualifiers will fish in the final at the Goedertrouw Dam in Eshowe later this year.
During the year points are accumulated for fish caught, weight, and attendance.
The first event was won by Bryan Leppan and James van Rooyen from Bass Warehouse in Hillcrest, while the most recent one was won by Protea angler Carl Gutzeit and Johan van Rooyen from Rapala.
Manus Erasmus and Thys Hoffman, fishing for Team Luckys and representing the South Coast Bass Association, finished 16th at Inanda, improved their standing from 41st to 36th out of the 54 teams.
Thys caught a bass of 1.6kg and Manus one of 1.4kg.
Interestingly, Thys recently landed a bass of 4.1kg at a club fish on a private farm dam. This is the leading fish for the year and will be difficult to beat.
Deep sea
The return of the north/south current last Saturday provided some hectic deep sea angling, with five marlin strikes being reported and two fish being boated.
The sea at The Hole, some 4 kilometres deeper than Protea Reef, was alive with skipjack tuna and tuna.
Obviously these huge shoals attracted the marlin and, with water temperatures of around 25.5 degrees, conditions were perfect to target these magnificent fighting fish.
Fish were hooked by Awesome Charters, Tyde, Viking Charters, Mustbyt and The Tackle Box 1, with only Mustbyt and Tackle Box 1 managing to successfully boat their catch.
The fish on Mustbyt weighed 111kg and the fish on Tackle Box 1 were 80kg. Viking Charters also managed to boat a wahoo of round 22kg.
The couta, however, have been really scarce and with the Hibberdene Couta Classic scheduled for this weekend – and with a boat of around R500 000 up for grabs – skippers are pulling their hair out trying to decide where to fish.
The area is from Durban Ski-boat Club to Port Edward and the only area that has been consistently producing couta is the upper south coast and Durban, so it is going to be very interesting to see what, and from where, is brought to the scales.
Fortunately, there is good weather predicted for the weekend so come along on Sunday and enjoy the weigh-in and prize-giving.
There are still some good-sized tuna around. Darren and Glen Poole, fishing on Darren’s boat Jabula, boated a fish of around 25kg.
Apparently the divers have reported very little shark activity on Protea, so maybe this is why fishermen are able to get these better sized tuna to the boat.
League
The second round of the KwaZulu-Natal Coast Anglers’ Union Champions League was fished last Saturday afternoon between Margate Pier and Splash Rock at Port Edward.
With six days of easterly winds blowing prior to the competition expectations were not too high.
However, the hound sharks made an appearance and some good catches were made with Palm Beach’s High Rocks producing probably the biggest weight.
Full details will be provided in next week’s report.
Anglers fishing off Whale Back in Ramsgate also had some good sport with a good-sized diamond skate and some hound sharks being caught on Sunday evening.
Port Edward
Shad are coming on the bite, but at different times. Most are still on the small side. Anglers targeting bronze bream are yielding some nice-sized fish at various rocky outcrops as well as other species, such as blacktail (some over 1kg), stone bream, baardman, cavebass, rock cod, and banded galjoen in the same areas.
Fish certainly have been on the bite and over the weekend teams fishing these waters weighed in many hound sharks, hammerhead sharks and other smaller species.
Water temperatures have become much colder and could be a reason for this but also the fact that many anglers were active as well would be another reason.
Tide Table
April
17 04.45 17.02
18 05.18 17.37
19 05.54 18.16
20 06.34 19.03
21 07.25 20.06
22 08.40 21.44
23 10.35 23.35
