There is a lot of bait available for anglers at the moment.
Natal sardines, red eye sardines and mackerel have all been netted in quantities recently, giving anglers a choice of bait for both surf and offshore fishing.
This year’s winter was mild with not too many windy days, but with August approaching that is likely to change.
The winds will come and anglers will have to plan their outings according to weather predictions.
Local anglers found the fishing a bit patchy in the surf last week. A few garrick and some shad were caught but catches were said to be disappointing.
Pennington proved to be the area where the shad were congregating. Some decent sized fish did make an appearance but many were undersized and not worth the time.
Anglers fishing at night continue to catch some nice salmon or kob, with several dagas found in the surf. Stumpies are also still on the bite.
Fishing at night continues to be risky in some areas with more reports of anglers beng robbed of equipment and personal items, this time on the South Coast.
These days anglers form a party of four or more when fishing local areas at night.
It is early days yet but there have been reports of sizeable grunter having been caught at St Lucia, so there just might be an early grunter run this year.
A number of salmon have also been caught there recently so a weekend trip to St. Lucia could be productive.
Offshore anglers fishing the backline continue to catch decent sized snoek but anglers are shy to share information about the location.
Snoek have been around for some time now and reports indicated excellent catches at Cape Vidal and Richard’s Bay.
Backline anglers are being kept interested by garrick along the Tongaat River mouth stretch, a few in the Umdloti area and also a number from the area stretching from Umhlanga Rocks down to the Umgeni River mouth.
Last year was rated as an exceptional garrick run, and so far this year’s season seems to be just as productive.
The skiboat guys have been having a really good bottom fishing season with excellent catches out deep when conditions allowed.
Most of the inshore reefs seem to be producing good catches.
Daga salmon are spread over a wide area with some reefs producing half-kob as well, and out into the deeper waters geelbek salmon are becoming more numerous.
The shallower reefs are also fishing well at times with salmon, rubber lips, lantern bream and even the odd big rockcod caught recently.
At times there have been a lot of barbell and peckers to annoy anglers but that is normal for this time of the year.
Flyfishing guys should try to get down to Blue Lagoon and fish in the river mouth on an incoming tide.
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