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Fishing Report - 28th December 2007 |
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FISHING REPORT - 28th December 2007
Christmas has come and gone and anglers can look forward to the New Year. Angling conditions have suited shore based anglers lately as light to moderate Easterly Winds have for the past few days blown consistently which makes for ideal angling.
ROCK & SURF - South Coast
The Umkomaas stretch has performed well over the past few weeks and is still yielding good results. Small shad are being caught in the vicinity of the river mouth as have shoal kob and some better size grunter. Those anglers targeting big kingfish should persevere on the North Bank area with live shad as these big predators are still around. Inedibles such as sand sharks and a variety of skates have also been biting well and the odd really big honeycomb ray has also been landed. A little further down the coast with the Bazley to Mtwalumi stretches in particular, there has recently been a lot of black fin and spinner shark activity and a lot of these fish have been hooked and lost. A very big black fin was recently fought for about two hours in the Turton area before the fish was eventually lost.
ROCK & SURF - Transkei
Now that the easterly winds are back, excellent reports are coming through from the Transkei. Campbell Shaw, Andre Ludke and Dave have been at Brazen Head since last week Saturday and have had some excellent angling. Their catch has included fair sized hammers, large grey sharks, garrick, kob, huge shad and some pulls stripping reels to the drum. Brendon Poole, and two mates are going to Brazen head today to take over for the next couple of days so hopefully the good catches continue and reports will follow.
ROCK & SURF - North Coast & Durban Area
The Durban area is also fishing well with a lot of shad about. The Beachwood area is also producing a variety of edible and in edible fish recently and the same can be said for almost the entire KZN coast. Anglers fishing the Zululand beaches are now having some great angling as the much expected butterfly rays have now firmly entrenched themselves on this particular stretch of coastline. The main areas for them now are the Port Durnford and Amatikulu areas. The Tugela North Bank can also produce some good results at this time of the year.
SKI BOATS
Ski Boaters have had a wonderful start to the game fish season as a lot of mainly dorado have been caught all along the coast. The Aliwal Shoal and Protea Bank areas are still producing steady results with couta, kingfish, tunny, wahoo, dorado and sailfish making up the catch at these venues.
With sea conditions improving slightly on Wednesday, the boats were once again able to launch from Shelly Beach. Pieter Kritzienger fishing aboard Gert Engelbrechts boat "Brave Heart" landed the biggest marlin to date this season, a whopper of 191,9kg. This fish was caught on Deep Hole, just offshore of Protea Banks. The best catch so far however must go to Greg Del Flippie fishing off his brand new boat. He caught a bonito on a perks spoon and when the fish was at the boat a 60kg marlin decided it was meal time. Some 1½ hours later on a spinning stick and a Daiwa BG60 the fish was boated.
Fishing on Sunday morning was limited to a couple of hours before the east began to blow, but boaters that launched early were again rewarded with some good quality fish. Kevin Oxenham skipper of Fawny Cat Charters returned with a good sized tuna weighing in at 16,5kg, with the fish of the day being a marlin caught by Lucas Schutte on Awesome Charters, fishing for dorado on the backline just off the Shelly Beach ski-boat base.
With water temperatures now around the 25 degree mark and the colour a dark purple the marlin seem to be about with daily hook ups now common. It’s just a matter of time before the dorado re-appear and the game is on.
FISHING SKIS
Fishing off the Ski's has also improved drastically with the good conditions. Pete Theunissen and Darren Raath headed off to Scotties and were rewarded with a good sized couta each. Darren’s fish weighed in at 9kg and is now the leader of the paddle ski couta division of our Compo. An unknown paddler caught a dorado and kingie off Stebel. Couta are now being caught on both North and South Coasts, although not in great numbers but at least we know they are around. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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