Slight dip in fishing as winter sets in
AS WINTER gains momentum there are still fish to catch. One often has to change tactics to entice a bite but when you do, it is rewarding.
The fish haven’t stopped feeding completely but don’t feed as much as they usually would in the warmer months. There is always a dip in the fishing as soon as winter starts, then it begins to pick up slowly again to the point where one would catch fish on most outing.
Fishing at Shongweni Dam over the past week hasn’t been too bad. Most of the bass caught have been in the shallower water in the day.
Surface lures and jigs being bounced across these shallow banks prove to be most successful. A Thai stick moving as if it’s in distress on the outskirts of these banks and or around/near water grass and reeds have also been very successful throughout the day.
The bass fishing at Midmar hasn’t been too bad either and reports wZZ NLQJILVKHU FR ]D been very slow the past few weeks but starting to pick up again very slowly.
Albert Falls Dam has slowed down a bit since last week but that hasn’t stopped anglers from taking a drive down and having a cast. Most anglers brave enough to endure the colder weather have been rewarded with some beautiful specimens of carp.
Jozini Dam continues to disappoint most anglers, with very few tiger fish coming out.
Jan Korrubel from the Fish Eagle reports that the trout in the Midlands are on their game – and have had quite a work out over the last month, with an event every weekend to date.
The biggest fish so far – 63cm (along with fish of 61 and 60cm) – came out in the Boston Fly Fishing Festival, followed by fish of 58cm and 56cm in the Corporate Challenge.
We see the fish having a wee break for the next couple weeks, before the third leg of the Corporate Challenge on the weekend of July 20-22.
On the salt side our local water has seen quite a bit of action with a few blackfin sharks coming out as well as stumpies on the beach front. The black fin have been coming out on grunter heads and the stumpies on sealice. Warner Beach has had lots of small pockets of sardines with quite a few snoek and garrick coming out from the surf on plugs and spoons. There have also been a few nice kob coming out on live bait and dropshot.
Umkomaas has had some big kingies and kob as loads of bait fish in the deeper water have been coming in closer and closer. Live bait in this area has been golden as most of the fish have been coming out on live mullet, live shad, live karenteen and live blacktail. In Pennington lots of sardines, gannets have started to dive in the deeper water, while snoek, kingies and garrick have been coming out spinning as well as a few grey sharks. Diamond rays have been coming out almost every night. Blackfin have also been coming out on small swim baits and live bait.
Port Shepstone to Splash Rock has seen some nice kingfish coming out, kob and cat face rock cod have also been coming out on sardine baits and small live baits. Shad have been coming out during the high tides.
Fishing in the harbour the past week hasn’t been too bad either. There have been some big perch coming out on small live baits along the rocks at Bat-centre as well as a few small kob.
There have been a few torpedo scads coming out on small bullet spoons and small sprat sticks. The few kob that have been coming out on spinning tackle have been on S-bend spoons and 4 inch paddle tails in white, gold fish and red mullet.