#FishEagle: Anglers bemoan poor shad season

The shad season is closed as of this week, until the beginning of December, and anglers agree that it was a disappointing season.

Although the north-easterly wind did entice some shad to come on the bite for old time’s sake early last week before the big respite, catches were poor mainly because of murky water in places.

As expected the rivers came down in flood last week and the winds spread the dirty water far and wide.

More cold weather arrived on Sunday and snow is predicted to swell the rivers again, so it could be a while before anglers see clean water again.

Anglers fishing the rocky areas did score copper bream again last week. These fish are plentiful along the coastline at present and catches seem to be increasing day by day.

Copper bream have appeared in great numbers over the past couple of seasons and more anglers are now catching these much sought after fish.

In the past it was just the most experienced anglers fishing the rocky areas who would persevere and found the bronzies quite hard to come by. At present the copper bream are widespread and are being caught at most of the local rocky areas.

The guys fishing for copper bream have hooked into some big fish that have “smashed them up”, which turned out to be brusher.

Although most of the brusher have been caught along the South Coast, there has been the odd good-sized ones caught locally. I believe whole ghost crab bait has produced the goods.

The rough water was perfect for the brusher and I’m confident more of these much-sought-after members of the musselcracker family will continue to frequent the local deeper rocky gullies.

Other species plentiful among the rocks at present are big blacktail that have provided anglers with some some good action.

At night, or during the early morning hours in the dark, anglers are still catching the odd big stumpie and salmon. Nice-sized grunter are beginning to become more numerous, so fishing in the dark is productive.

Unfortunately, the long-term weather report is not in favour of the night anglers at the moment as low temperatures, southerly winds and some rain is forecast.

Grey sharks are still a bit of a problem at times for those fishing for edibles, but there was not much news of the summer flatfish on the bite last week.

Offshore anglers fishing the backline areas continued to catch garrick last week. Apparently in some areas the guys are landing garrick with every bait in the water and many of these fish were released unharmed.

The excellent backline fishing seems set to continue for some time to come and the snoek are still providing some hectic action.

The bottom anglers continued to catch the usual red fish species, a number of different rockcod species and plenty of half-kob.

Bait is still not a problem and anglers venturing out at night are finding geelbek salmon jumping onto the hooks.

So far this has been a pretty good period for the offshore anglers as they wait for the gamefish to arrive.

The northern deep sea fishing grounds have also been productive recently and dorado are rapidly becoming more numerous, especially at Cape Vidal and St Lucia.

Snoek are also being caught plus the odd barracouta, queenfish and the odd sailfish strike. The water temperature is slowly rising and there are great expectations for these areas in the near future.

Sodwana Bay will become really busy as anglers prepare for the various competitions soon to be held, with the annual billfish competition topping the list.

Sordies is definitely one of those venues that offshore anglers have to visit sometime and it is unbelievable just how clean the water is up there.

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