FISHING REPORT 24TH OCTOBER 2009

Angling
Prospects for the week end look favorable as the weatherman predicts some light winds and low swells. This should make for comfortable angling conditions and hopefully get some good results in. Over the past week the weather has been anything but kind to anglers but a few who did brave the conditions had some mixed results.

Grey sharks are slowly starting to make an appearance and quite a few were caught in the Scottburgh and Park Rynie areas. Reports from the Zululand and far northern Zululand are rather dismal due to unfavorable westerly conditions that prevailed in those areas for the past week or so. Things should take a different look up there this week end as Easterly winds together with much warmer conditions should put the big flatfish back on the bite.

Barry Tedder from the Zululand Shore Angling Association report that a week prior leading into this past weekends ZSAA common venue competition saw anglers catching some good size ragged tooth sharks, honeycomb rays, butterfly rays and brown skates lifting expectations high. Deon Hunter catching a nice raggie of 161 kg off St Lucia last Tuesday night. On the subject of butterfly rays, anglers along the Zululand coast line these past weeks from Richards Bay up to St Lucia have somewhat out of the ordinary been catching fair numbers of juvenile butterfly rays also known as the “Winter Diamonds”. Sometimes two to three fish on an outing per angler.

This as far as our knowledge dates back has never been experienced this far north of the Tugela River. Batty even caught a 32 kg specimen just north of Cape Vidal Bay. The fact that the water temperature has been very cold in the area for a while now could be a contributing factor.

Reporting on the past weekends common venue competition, the second on the Zululand shore angling calendar to date. Some 93 anglers turned out with the fishing boundaries being from 1st Bats cave at Mission Rocks to the Umfolozi river mouth just south of St Lucia. Weather conditions were favourable with NE winds prevailing and a reasonably flat sea, and with the word out that a few raggies had been on the bite saw many of the clubs making a decision to load the southern fishing area.

Unfortunately the raggie were not around and anglers had small milk sharks taking their expensive and well prepared raggie baits. St Lucia club took full advantage of their home waters and pull off a 1st and 2nd spot. St Lucia B team took top honours on 84.1 pts weight points followed by St Lucia A on 67.4 pts. Third place went to Umzingazi B on 62.6 pts. Top junior went to Brendon Andrews of St Lucia club on 11.9 pts, Top lady angler went to Heather Tiltmann of Umzingazi club on 4.8 pts and top master went to Tommy Sims of St Lucia club on 32.7 pts. Top senior angler went to Tiaan Nel of St Lucia club on 69.6 pts, including in his catch an outstanding honey comb ray of 47.2 kg also being the heaviest inedible for the weekend. The heaviest edible was a stumpy of 3.5 kg also caught by Tiaan Nel of St Lucia club. The competition was fished and based on a 100 % catch and release, an initiative supported along with the iSimangaliso Wetland Park authority to fish a competition in the park.

Much the same can be said for local conditions and reports of fish are far and few between. Some positive reports of brusher and bronze bream came from the Twini Ledge, Park Rynie and Sezella areas. Terry Nel from Port Edward informs us that the no fishing during the bad weather last week came to an end on Sunday when the weather cleared and some action took place at Splash Rock. A kingfish and a garrick also were landed there on Monday.

A lot of stone bream are biting in the gullies but other than that there is very little to report on but as the month progresses and weather patterns change there should be some good angling to be had. This week end sees the KZNCAU fishing the Common Venue Annual meet down on the lower south coast and with good angling conditions predicted some very good catches could be made.
Next week we will have the results and from that anglers should get a better aspect of what fish to target.

Niko Fishing Adventures
Mike Laubscher from Niko Fishing Adventures had some hot tiger fishing at Lake Jozini last week and sent in this report. “On my way to the Lake Jozini (Pongolapoort Dam) slipway whilst driving through the reserve area I came across a bunch of Giraffes and a herd of Wildebeest, I then met my guests at the slipway at around 14h00, and it was a blistering hot afternoon.
We then launched the boat and proceeded along the Pongola river section up to the train bridge. On the way we saw a huge crocodile walking on the bank towards the water, and we stopped and watched him for a few minutes; I think he is the one called the “Jozini monster”. There was a stiff NE breeze blowing and the water surface temperature was averaging around 23 deg. C.

We then moved further down river from the bridge to cleaner water and started casting flukes on drop shot jig heads towards the weed beds without success, and we then received a warning from the hippos to move away which we did with no arguments and started fishing on the point of the first bend and still no success. And so I decided that we need to fish in deeper water and went to the opposite side of the point by the cliffs where we got our first tiger fish on a pink fluke fished with a ¼ ounce jig head and a 2/0 hook. We continued down river along this section and managed to get a few more tiger fish all between 1.0Kg (2.2lbs) and 1.4Kg (3lbs). As the sun started setting the wind slowed down a bit and we had a golden hour where we got several smaller tiger fish, at about 18h30 on of the guys reels started to scream and a huge tiger fish estimated at around 5Kg (11lbs) leaped out of the water and even turned the boat around as it headed towards a tree standing in the water and wrapped up around the tree.

I manoeuvred the boat on the sneaker to the other side of the tree to try and get this fish landed but sadly the line rubbed against the tree for too long and parted. All our fish were released. We were staying at Tamboti Ridge, a lovely Bed & Breakfast which also has a self catering facility and is set in beautiful gardens on a farm not far from Jozini.”
Mike also took I went out a father and his young son off Durban. They launched at 05h00 from Durban harbour and trolled light tackle along the back line. The water surface temperature was averaging around 22 deg. C (still cold) and the day started with a moderate NE breeze, the swells were around 1.2m (4ft) Mike was hoping for some more king fish but never got any, they kept hooking up needle scaled queen fish (salad fish) and so went slightly deeper but there was so much grass and debris in the water and the lures were continuously fouling. Whilst near the back line they saw 2 pods of dolphins, 1 pod with about 12 dolphins and the other with about 8.

Mike decided to go out deeper and so they went to around 80-90m (263-296ft) depth and trolled over the old wrecks still with the light tackle, although the wind had settled down nicely Mike noticed a complete absence of birds. They then started getting eastern little tuna all in the 2-2.5Kg (4.4-5.5lb) weight and even got 1 double hook up. Mostly they were just getting one at a time; these fish are great fun and give a good fight on light tackle. They also saw some whales swimming out there and a logger head turtle. Mike then started heading North and as they came into around 60m (197ft) depth on the way to a reef all 6 lines started screaming, and there was only 3 of them on the boat they could only fight 3 fish.

Mike tightened the drags on the other rods and kept the boat moving forward. After they landed the 3, they then picked up the other rods and brought in another 2 fish, 1 rod had lost its catch. This was great fun and after some good fish fighting they had landed 5 fish. One of the eastern little tuna that they hooked up had a snake fall out of its mouth when it regurgitated and Mike has never seen this before. All of the snake’s pigmentation was gone from being in the fishes belly and it was white. They then did some fishing on the reefs and pinnacles in around 45m (148ft) still with the light tackle where we got some rockod, slinger and trigger fish. They also were treated to a fantastic display of 2 whales breaching. The wind shifted to a SW and started picking up and so they headed back at around 13h30 after a great days fishing.

Ski Boats
Generally Ski Boats are still much restricted to bottom fish in the form of mainly geelbek and daga salmon together with some good ‘reds’ and rock cod. As November draws nearer skippers will start changing their focus to the start of the game fish season and with some good reports of dorado already coming out on the very deep reefs off Durban, let’s hope for a better season then last year.
The guys at The Kingfisher are hard at work, sorting and pricing products for their annual sale of samples, demos and shop soiled items. Check out the newspapers towards the end of the month for further details.

Free Fishing Clinic
The Kingfisher hosts free Fishing Clinic’s on their premises once a month. These clinics are there to help beginners and experienced anglers to see what the sport is all about and how to target certain species of fish. It also shows anglers what equipment to use and also elaborates on safety. To find out more about these clinics please phone The Kingfishers sales staff on 031 368 3903.

Photo of Dean Pretorious and his bow mouth guitarfish landed at Splash Rock, Port Edward with his Poseidon HMG rod and Daiwa Saltiga 40 reel.