This last weekend produced some lovely fish despite the continuing   north easterly wind.
 the hound sharks have arrived in full force, orange rocks had them eating throw for throw the other day.
The harbour is still quiet from the water temperature drop, the north easterly wind cools the water and so the harbour has gone quiet.

Angling
This last weekend produced some lovely fish despite the continuing   north easterly wind. Kyle Simpson landed a mammoth Zambezi shark on Saturday; the shark’s measurement ratio put the weight as 277kgs. I’ll get back to that and some more exciting information a little later… but for now let’s get started down from the south coast.

Dean Pretorious tells me the hound sharks have arrived in full force, orange rocks had them eating throw for throw the other day. The kob have also appeared and so the edible anglers have something to target. The water has been too cold for the yellowtail on the wreck but apparently the “bottom” anglers have been getting some lovely reds and other nice bottom species off the boat. I haven’t heard any news from the upper south coast so not much can be reported there!

Durban has been relatively quiet, I’ve heard whisperings of pompano and grunter along the beach front area… most of these fish have been caught on sea lice and cracker shrimp. These baits are phenomenal when targeting edible species, generally fresh natural bait will always out fish frozen bait. Make sure you have you correct licenses though.

The harbour is still quiet from the water temperature drop, the north easterly wind cools the water and so the harbour has gone quiet. Well by quiet I’m referring to few grunter and springer, the kingy’s and pick handles are still there. There have been some snoek from the boats, still mostly small fish but fish none the less. Vetches area in particular has been producing big numbers of the small snoek on Monday and Tuesday, I even heard of two big couta coming out between them! Marcel Greyling from The Kingfisher had some fun the other day, he and Ron caught some nice couta and snoek. They lost one tunny and Marcel got bitten off by a massive couta at the boat on a popper. There are still fish around locally so we don’t have to travel too far! Plus with the cooler water there has been plenty mackerel around, so live bait hasn’t been a problem! Umdloti is still producing snoek and couta, but the couta season is still yet to heat up…wait and see what happens in March, April and May!  The colour line is miles out so if you intend to search for blue water then be prepared to travel.

There hasn’t been much else to report from the shore along the rest of Durban and the north coast…unusual weather conditions have made things rather quiet! Getting back to the exciting news from up north, there have been some diamond skates around. They haven’t come in huge numbers yet but I think we need to have some decent south westerly winds first, then 2 days of hot north easterly conditions. But they have started to trickle in. I made a charge up to Mtinzini late Sunday afternoon and landed one nice diamond and lost a Zambezi. Nirosh saw most of his braid disappear into the horizon when he also hooked into a Zambezi!

On the Saturday Kyle got that beast of a Zambezi like I mentioned before and I heard of one other being landed. Several more zambezi’s were lost on Saturday and Sunday. They caught some brown skates and sand sharks in between. On the Sunday Alan Legg caught a Jarva shark in the 40kg range.

Just a little guideline for anglers when handling skates and stingrays, they are big fish and have no easy places to hold them. The only obvious easy place to hold them is probably the worst place to…and that’s the spiracles. These are the two holes right next to the eyes; they are basically the equivalent of the skate’s lungs. So as you can imagine, handling the skate’s body weight by its breathing apparatus is terrible for the fish.

The best place to drag a skate and sandshark is from inside the mouth, stick you hand inside the mouth and pull from the upper jaw. They don’t have teeth so don’t stress! But if you are using a double hook trace please watch out you don’t get a hook in you.