Careful planning required for fishing success in September
ANGLING prospects don’t look good for this weekend as we will have a prevailing easterly throughout and rain expected tomorrow for the best part of the day.
The water temperature is just below 18C° in the bay, with the warmer water considerably closer to shore than a few weeks ago.
This is encouraging for the deep-sea anglers who can benefit as soon as the winds subside, allowing the boats to venture out in the week to come.
Unfortunately we are in our windy month with only a small window period of opportunity for success. Careful planning, however, is paramount.
Angling has not been great this past period, but a lot of small fish have also been caught.
Some of the notable fish that have been landed are a few bellman, or baardman as they are better known, along with a 155cm kob caught by Ashley Martin, and a white steenbras of 86cm landed by August Miessener.
Baardman are good eating fish and are caught mostly on blood worm.
They have a habit of picking up the bait and swimming in close with it.
They do not race off like many other species but rather surprise the angler that there is a fish on the line when you see the line drifting off at a tangent.
Retrieving the slack suddenly reveals the fish on the end.
It is definitely not the most exciting fish to catch – however it makes up for this on the table.
The name baardman became common as the fish has a little tassel on the lip of the lower jaw resembling a small “goatee or bokbaard”.
It is rather disturbing to hear reports of fish restricted to a closed season being caught, especially in a formal angling competition.
Last weekend, eight copper steenbras were brought to the scale and weighed in an organised angling competition in Kwa-Zulu Natal.
Surely the organisers of such a competition should be aware of the regulations and make the rules clear in their competition format.
This may be an isolated case, but such transgressions do not make sports and recreational anglers look good in the eyes of the policy makers – especially in the case where this particular species has been in the spotlight.
We are bound to lose this species and might not even see a season open for them again.
Coming up on the angling calendar is the Gamtoos 1000 at the end of the month.
This is a competition of many a years’ standing and I believe it has run consecutively for about 30 years now.
More information on this event can be obtained from local tackle shops and angling clubs.
Low tide is at 7.01am tomorrow and the moon phase is just past last quarter (waning and descending).
New moon is on Wednesday and the angling prospects look good for Tuesday morning as the west begins to blow.