Fishing Report 1st May 2010

With the winter kicking in however the numbers are thinning and leaving behind some milkies and spinners.
Upper south coast is still producing some nice blacktip kingfish from the shore, Isipingo and the bluff being the more dominant produces. Mostly these fish have been targeted with live bait.
This last weekend a very well organised and attended Durban Ski boat competition struggled for fish due to some rather adverse sea conditions.

Angling
It’s that time of the year where the weather is the best but there isn’t enough time to make full use of it because of short daylight hours… Rather Ironic! There is however a chill in the air every morning as the cool air from the mountains descends towards the coast to create the winter “land breeze”.

Amongst many other things the land breeze sparks seasoned anglers excitement of the possible sardine run to come. There have been confirmed sightings of pilot shoals of Natal Sardines in the Transkei area. So fingers crossed we will hopefully be in for a much deserved bumper sardine run.

Getting back to the present fishing situation…
From the shore the Port Edward area has had a great hound shark season with some evenings producing bites on every through. With the winter kicking in however the numbers are thinning and leaving behind some milkies and spinners. Allowal Shoal continues its amazing wahoo and yellowfin season and catches of some trophy fish are still filing in. The bonito are there in the millions and so the game fish are following. But like any where, it can be very “hot / cold”.

Upper south coast is still producing some nice blacktip kingfish from the shore, Isipingo and the bluff being the more dominant produces. Mostly these fish have been targeted with live bait. Off Durban there have been some couta around with few bonito but in general it’s been quiet. The Snoek have however turned on…

Paddle ski’s and ski boats
As I drove across the Umgeni river on Thursday I saw a wonderful sight, paddle ski’s and ski boats circling a tight area! That can only mean one thing, they were catching fish!

From the shore locally there have been some nice grunter and stumpy with the occasional pompano. With summer ending and winter knocking on the door the inedible sharks and skates are disappearing rapidly. Raymond De Bruyn and Lloyd Pereira took Heinrich Brussow and some of his friends fishing at Umdloti on Tuesday. Several big baits were dropped off using the aqua cat bait dropper but only a couple small greys were caught, a few laughs were had though!

Further North has been quiet and I haven’t heard of much. The big kob should start coming in at Tugela and the Garrick should start to trickle through from the south coast moving up north. If you have any intentions of targeting very large couta now is however the time, big baits and some dedicated lengthy sessions could produce your personal best couta. If you however doubt your capabilities then pop into the kingfisher and attend the free paddle ski clinic. Well that’s it for this weekend, hope you enjoy a fish filled weekend…

Durban/Port Edward Ski boat club

This last weekend a very well organised and attended Durban Ski boat competition struggled for fish due to some rather adverse sea conditions. This weekend the Port Edward Ski boat club will be hosting another couta competition, and if the catches are any where near last years we can expect some phenomenal catches. Norman Jones was “testing” the waters there on Thursday and landed a couta of 23kgs (amongst others).

The results for Postal Round 3
The results for Postal Round 3 have been posted on the Union’s Website. You will notice that Dave has added two extra reports. Check out their website. www.kzncau.co.za


Hier Gaan Ons Alweer
We would like to let you all know that, "Hier Gaan Ons Alweer" is starting to air on Wednesday evenings at 19.00 on Kyknet, channel 111, with six rebroadcast during the week: This entertaining TV series will run for three months, April, May and June. "Stywe Lyne / Tight Lines” are doing a series of articles on this fishing series. Petri de Wet and Takkie Branford from HGOA are on the cover of the April edition of Stywe Lyne which also includes their first article. Petri and his team fish all over Southern Africa, fishing in salt and fresh water and will be fishing with The Kingfisher products, reels, rods, lines lures etc.

ESA fishing shows on TV
Don’t forget to watch the action packed ESA fishing shows on TV. These shows feature both saltwater and bass fishing and are aired on Super sport 1. The ESA Saltwater show will be broadcasted weekly on Thursdays between 19h30 and20h30, and the ESA Bass show will air weekly on Tuesdays between 19h00 and 19h30.

Episode 18, 29/04/2010. Watch as the Ray and his guests catch an array of interesting species in LBSA. Be sure to catch this episode of DSSA as Clive hooks a zambie off a wave runner. Watch as the OSSA team land marlin.

Episode 19, 06/05/2010. In LBSA watch as Ray catches some record breaking fish. The DSSA team targets fish in Port Edward while Mark in OSSA says goodbye to his beautiful extreme destination, Kenya.
”The Ray de Bruyn bait encyclopedia”, NO MORE SECRETS
Raymond de Bruyn from ESA extreme sports angling recently released a very informative bait presentation guide. This reference book contains some proven bait presentations with large full color photos with very easy to follow steps. Volume 1 covers baits made using Sardines and includes some very useful information on collecting and preserving your bait. This series of reference books will comprise of 12 issues.

There is some fantastic information available in this series which is called
”The Ray de Bruyn bait encyclopedia”, NO MORE SECRETS, and in this series he has done his best to share his vast knowledge and cover many secretive fish catching bait combinations. Collect the entire set and store them in the file which will be available with volume 6 for easy reference.