Getting HOOKED
IN KEEPING with the approaching festive period, both shorebased and deep-sea anglers are making merry.
Here’s what was caught over the past week:
DEEP SEA:
The summer game fish have arrived in their shoals and many boats are returning with their hatches filled to the brim.
The waters off the North Coast are where you want to be. Catches have included tuna, wahoo, dorado, sailfish, kingfish and marlin. Most of the catches have been on trolled plastics.
The sea off Durban has been producing a number of tuna. Dorado have also moved into these waters. Bottom fishing charter boats have been returning with good catches of reds and rock cod during the day and daga salmon and geelbek at night.
There’s also tons of tuna, wahoo and the odd couta on the South Coast
DURBAN HARBOUR:
There are lots of springer around. Although not the nicest fish to eat because of the number of bones, it gives a great fight when hooked.
There were also kingies around for the guys throwing out lures, and some smaller grunter, which took cracker shrimp baits.
ROCK AND SURF:
Anglers fishing on the North Coast have had their fair share of back-breaking pulls from non-edibles.
There were also some large edibles coming out, which included some impressive giant kingfish and some larger kob. Hlobane and Mtunzini were the places to be for some great fun. Large fleshy baits worked best here.
The waters around the uMhlanga Lighthouse have been consistently producing grey sharks at night. Mackerel heads have been the bait of choice. A 6/0 circle hook is recommended.
A 9kg garrick was caught from the Virginia Beach pier.
There were some decent edible fish for the taking on the South Coast. There were good catches of kob in the vicinity of the river mouths. Paddle tails worked better than baits. Other species caught along this coast were shad, pompano, bronze bream and garrick.
There were also a fair share of non-edibles caught here. Sand sharks were caught on redeye baits in deep water points.
Send any info about fishing, fish caught or competitions in your area to mike.pereira@kingfisher.co.za
Until next week, tight lines!