Fish Eagle: Blatant disregard for shad size limits

Officially we are now into the season of spring and well on the way to summer once again. The temperatures remained cool for most of last week because of the persistent light to moderate southerly winds.

At the weekend, anglers awoke to cool and calm weather conditions even though there was some light rain through the night, but unfortunately by the afternoon a fresh to strong south wester was blowing that just increased the swell that had begun building on Friday.

Angling conditions were regarded as tough on Sunday morning but prospects for the week to come were encouraging.

Although surf angling has been improving, catches last week were a little disappointing and I suspect that this was mainly because the tides were against anglers during the first light periods.

Tides were mainly low but there were a number of shad caught, although many were undersized. Some lucky anglers managed to catch a few correctly-sized fish but unfortunately, the small fish were not returned live to the water again and this is a bit of a worry because this habit seems to be on the rise.

The limit size and catch were set because the shad were being over fished and the numbers were dropping dramatically.

Although the law did not bide well with some anglers, the years of policing the coastline did ensure that the shad population grew.

A local angler was saying to me last week that the shad were late this year but I reminded him that it was just the small china shad that were a bit late.

The china shad, also called green shad, that move up the coast during October and November are much smaller than the shad that arrive during October, which are called blue shad, that move up the coast specifically to spawn.

This was the reason why the ban was put in place, to try and protect the spawning fish.

The ban did help but did not stop all the illegal catches and if last year’s reports mean anything, the problem has increased to the point that some anglers totally ignore the ban over October and November.

Unfortunately, there have not been any reports of any large daga salmon being caught locally and although a couple of garrick have been caught, the run remains disappointing from the beach.

It may be because not many anglers fish during the periods of darkness because of security problems and this being the reason for the kob catches being scarce. In the case of the garrick, I have seen a few anglers persevering during the day, but for some reason, catches are low.

Other species that should be on the bite at this time of the year are the stumpies and although I have heard that there have been a few caught, I have not heard of the outsized fish that sometimes are caught.

For some time now the big brusher that normally appear in local waters have not been seen.

There are those hardened anglers that frequent the rocky outcrops during the winter period and they persevere for species such as copper bream, big blacktail, stone bream and at present, the elusive karrenteen.

The guys have said that fishing has been okay at times but no real fireworks. Mostly hard work.

The few anglers that fish for crayfish at night say that times have been hard and they blame the sand that has built up over the past few years.

They are now eyeing the latest sewage spill in the Umhlanga River.

The last time this happened, the mouth was opened and there was a large loss of marine life put down to some sort of plankton poisoning.

Offshore angling seems to be in the doldrums at present and I have seen very few anglers launching their craft into the surf.

Normally at this time of the year, offshore anglers would travel up from the Durban area to fish for garrick at the Tongaat River mouth but so far this year, nobody has been fishing the area. There would normally be a few surf ski anglers launching from Westbrook beach but at present, nothing.

This can only mean that the offshore angling is pretty quiet and the guys who are catching fish are the ones travelling deep, searching for the geelbek kob. Even those guys are being hassled by sharks eating their hooked fish.

Sealice

Download The North Coast Courier mobile app, now available free from the Apple iStore and on Google Play, for IOS and Android phones.