EXCITEMENT is building ahead of the annual Shelly Beach Ski-boat Festival, which starts this week, and is again sponsored by Mallards/Mercury.
The talk is all about the R100 000 prize for the heaviest game fish. It will certainly make the daily weigh-ins more interesting.
Some small tuna have been caught off the boats and apparently there is quite a bit of shark activity.
One boat lost six lures on one day, and seven the next. Very frustrating.
Otherwise, fishing seems to have been a little quieter than last week, with not as many shad on the bite.
That’s mainly because of the westerly wind, but there have been a lot of garrick around. Some were caught at Orange Rocks, using live bait.
There have also been a few big ignoble kingies around in the 20 to 30kg region.
A nice kob was caught off Uvongo pier while fishing for shad. It looked to be around the 7kg mark, caught on very light tackle.
With the cold snap, and reports from the Transkei, there’s hope we could get some sardines soon.
Latest news from Mike Anderson-Reade of KZN Sharks Board was that pocket shoals had been spotted about 150km south of Port Edward, near Coffee Bay.
Gareth Olivant caught what seems now to have been a copper shark off Lupatana near Port St Johns last weekend.
“It is very difficult to be sure as the finer features that we need to look at like inter dorsal ridges and so on are not visible in the picture. It is one of three species – a copper shark, dusky shark or blacktip shark. My best guess would be a copper shark especially at this time of the year,” said Mike Anderson-Reade.
It took Gareth around 90 minutes to land and, at the end, he needed the help of his good mate James Hastie.
“Never had an experience like that before,” said Gareth. “The body was sore and broken at the end.”
It measured 1.98m and weighed in the region of 110kg. After a quick measure and photo, the shark was returned to the ocean.
Tide Table
High tide times (Best fishing times)
June
30 12.21 ——- (05.38 to 06.42)
July
01 00.53 13.28 (06.45 to 07.49)
02 01.51 14.22 (07.39 to 08.43)
03 02.41 15.09 (08.25 to 09.29)
04 03.25 15.52 (15.20 to 16.24)
05 04.06 16.31 (15.59 to 17.03)
06 04.44 17.09 (10.24 to 11.28)
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