Coast KZN

It was all happening last week. First of all, shoals of sardine appeared on the South Coast, then a cold front moved up the coast bringing with it heavy seas plus some rain and cold weather. Fortunately the heavy seas had moderated nicely by Wednesday and the storm surf helped to clear some of the sand that had built up during the summer.

This year’s sardine run has so far been a really good one with a number of nets bringing sardines ashore along several of the South Coast beaches. The asking price for the first crates of sardines was as high as R1,000 but the price rapidly dropped as more and more sardines became available.

A lucky local angler managed to catch a few sardines of his own when he found a small pocket at Genazzano and a couple of throws with his cast net resulted in a couple dozen sardines. The netters will no doubt net sardines again this week and pockets of sardines will probably be seen passing by locally.

Anglers had some fantastic fishing among the sardines with plenty of big sharks being hooked and landed after tremendous battles lasting several hours. Some of the sharks weighed as much as 300 kg and anglers were advising others not to try for these monsters unless they had the correct tackle because they would definitely be smashed up in seconds.

It was good to see anglers returning fish alive to the water so that they could live to fight another day.

A number of big edible fish were also caught and I saw a photograph of a shad that looked to weigh around 6 kg or more. A deep sea gamefish angler boated a couta that was said to weigh 50 kg and that is some crocodile. There were plenty of big tuna as well and the anglers were saying that fishing was really hectic at times.

Even the bottom anglers boated some big fish in the form of musselcracker, big rockcod and even the odd copper steenbras. Shad anglers have been caning the shad down south, especially at Margate pier. I am not sure whether anglers are sticking to the legal bag limits but when the shad are “going mad” anglers tend to forget all about bag limit.

There have also been some nice kob or salmon caught as well, plus several big garrick taken on spoon right among the sards. Anglers fishing the rocky South Coast spots have found plenty of copper bream plus some big blacktail and even a few sizeable lantern bream on the bite.

A few small shad were caught early one morning at Eastmore at Umhlanga Rocks then the very next morning the mob arrived. The word was out that shad had moved inshore. Since then there have been a few more very small shad but on the whole, the fishing has been quiet with most of the crowd returning home empty handed. Other shad angling spots have also been quiet and the same seems to be happening locally.

The guys fishing the rocky outcrops seem to be faring better than anglers fishing sandy beaches.

Anglers should keep a lookout for any sign of sardines in local waters this week and this could be when the fishing improves.

Deep sea anglers managed to launch later in the week and I believe that a few couta were caught at La Mercy and Umdloti but sharks were a problem eating most fish that were hooked. Anglers fishing the deep sea bottom reefs also managed a few decent fish but again sharks were a problem and on some of the closer reefs, the barbel were thick.

During lockdown, many people are driving to the beach to walk along the promenades. Regular anglers tell me they can foresee this causing fights over parking between residents and anglers once fish come on the bite more regularly. At present most of the recognised parking areas are full by first light.