A record catch and some shark tales
There's a growing belief that there could be a decent sardine run this year.
THE past week has not produced too many spectacular results, with the tuna fishing providing mostly small-sized fish.
It has been noticed when boats are offloading these fish that many of the fish are in fact undersize.
The minimum size is 3.2kg, so let’s try and be a little more conservative and return these juvenile fish to at least reach a decent size.
Sharon Bennett, fishing on Too Chaotic returned with two good yellowtail and some nice-sized bottom fish last week Thursday.
Meanwhile, Jacques Olivier, fishing on Too Tight, boated a good-sized couta of around the 30kg mark on Protea Reef.
Jono Hunt, skipper of The Tackle Box 1, returned on Sunday with two dorado, which is completely out of season for these fish, but with the water temp at around 24 degrees it just goes to show that anything is possible.
Speaking of dorado, Hugo Voigt and his family have just returned from a very successful trip to Mozambique.
On one of the days, they caught a dorado by hand as it washed up onto the beach.
Apparently a large shark was spotted in the area so presumably the shark chased the dorado onto the beach, which was greatly appreciated by the Voigt family!
With the winter months approaching and the current starting to slacken off, the focus offshore will start turning towards bottom fishing, with the target species being geelbek, musselcracker, rock cod, Englishman and Scotsman.
These fine eating fish all have bag limits and minimum sizes so please ensure you are aware of these.
Rock and surf angling has been a little quiet, but it won’t be long before the winter migration starts and we start getting shad, garrick and kob.
Visiting angler, Koos Gous, has found himself a little honey hole that he is understandably not willing to reveal and has been having great sport catching kob of around the 3,5kg mark on dropshot.
He caught 13 on Saturday at about 1pm, which were all duly released, and then had a nice 5kg fish on Monday morning, despite the howling westerly wind.
These fish were all caught on the bright pink and white paddle-tail.
At this time of the year, the general conversation among anglers always revolves around whether or not we are going to experience that great migration of sardines.
Those in the loop believe that this is the year, with fish already moving up the coast, very close inshore.
With an abundance of red eye sardines already moving up our coastline let’s all keep fingers crossed that this year we will once again have a decent run.
Reports from Port St Johns are that some good catches of garrick and grunter are being made in the river, with plenty of shad all along the Transkei coast.
Port Edward
The Port Edward and surrounding areas have been busy with fishermen over the long weekends with the fish coming out including kob, kingfish, rock cod, houndsharks and shad.
Kob from the casino beaches were all small with one of 6kg from Splash Rock. There was a 5kg kingfish from casino beach and a 6.1kg rock cod at Palm Beach, which is a new South African record for rock and surf.
At times, shad have been plentiful, although small, with most not making size and fishermen having to return them to the sea.
With plenty of bait fish in the water, signs are encouraging for a good fishing season coming up. Hopefully we will have a decent sardine run.
Last year we never even saw these fish along the coast and only remote small pockets were reported over the whole KwaZulu-Natal coast.
There are various theories for this, one is that the sardines are being reaped by trawlers at the start of the run and not even making it up the coast.
In days gone by, the armed forces used to patrol our waters and kept illegal foreign fishermen out. Does this still happen?
Report by Mark Bennett (Tackle Box) and Terry Nel (Tackle Net).
Tide Table
High tide times
May
08 10.47 23.39
09 12.15 – –
10 00.42 13.09
11 01.27 13.50
12 02.06 14.26
13 02.41 15.02
14 03.16 15.37
