| Date of Report: Monday, 6th February 2023 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Name: Arthur Cary
Email: caryaj@xsinet.co.za Phone: 076 3120417 The two main rivers on the KZN South Coast (Umtamvuna and Uzimkulu) are still running very dirty, due to rains in their respective catchment areas. This outpouring of dirty water on the outgoing tides, results in unfavourable fishing in the adjacent north and south areas, depending on the prevailing wind at the time. Despite this, fishing has not been too bad at times for local bait anglers. (Fly anglers have long since given up fighting the north easterly and south westerly winds.) Towards the middle of January, shad were being caught in many spots, where clean pockets of water could be found and in the first week of February, snapper salmon put in an appearance along the Sandspit in the Port Shepstone area. Local fishermen are taking advantage of this abundance, and are going home with buckets full of small snapper. While there is no bag limit on snapper, the overall bag limit of 10 fish per day, still applies, but there appears to be no control by any authority. KZN is going through the usual hot and dry period at present, so South Coast Fly Anglers have not scheduled any still water fishing for trout yet. The first scheduled trip to Matatiele or Kokstad, will probably be towards the middle of March. Club members have however, been successful in the cooler water of the Underberg areas, and have taken a number of small fish in these rivers. Local bass dams have been yielding good numbers of small bass to the fly. Many local farmers allow their dams to be overpopulated with small fish, in order to encourage young anglers to enter the Paddock Fishing Competition, which is held in early March. While there are undeniably big fish in the dams, the ‘little uns” don’t give the lunkers a chance. It begs the question, “If an angler hooks a small bass legitimately, and that fish is taken by a monster daddy bass and the angler lands the big fish, can he claim to have caught it on fly or was he fishing with live bait?” SCFA Club events for the next month are:
South Coast scene |
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