Sport Fishing Adventures South Africa Report

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I like taking people out fishing, because it releases their inner child, and in doing so keeps my inner child alive - - - Mike Laubscher

Hello Everyone,

I was so busy marketing my Mozambique trip that I did not get a chance to do a newsletter for February, so this will be a doubled up newsletter covering January and February.

The whole December and January season had a lot of heavy rain which was at least 30% above the average for the last 30 years, and this off course affected the water quality with the rivers overflowing, and the in shore water temperatures were also much colder than usual, making our summer season shorter than usual, and adding to that a lot of missed bookings especially for January mad it a quiet summer season, I don’t want to complain about the rain as I know that many areas especially up North really needed it and I am sure that the farmers are very happy and will have a bumper crop season this year, but it did make it tough for us fishermen.

February was off course a lot better, with not too much rain and overall we had some good catches this year, and we had a really hot spell for 2 weeks and the warm currents came close in.

There has also been a lot of up roar in the sport of fishing with Vertical Jigging being banned in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park (Formerly the St. Lucia Wetland Park) and to clear up any confusion this will be Mapelane, and from Cape Vidal right up to the Mozambique border. 

The reason for this is that vertical jigging is hurting the bottom fish populations which are protected in this sanctuary area. There is some controversy about this and the tackle industry is challenging this decision in court as it was made without proper investigation, so there might be a change.

Marine Conservation Management (MCM) is proposing and increase in fishing licenses of up to 600%, and this has been met with stiff opposition form the fishing fraternity, where many have threatened to boycott it and MCM’s response is that should this happen they will ban recreational fishing completely. What they are trying to do is wrong and unconstitutional, and due to their bad management of their existing funds whilst nothing is being done for the angler. Many anglers simply will not afford these license fee’s and this situation is most likely going to create an increase of poaching and turn many anglers into criminals, whilst a fishing license in itself is not that expensive, it is all the bait licenses that make it expensive, especially if you are buying them for your whole family, if this should happen there will be a large drop in anglers which will affect the economy, and according to recent research recreational fishing in South Africa is bigger than Soccer, Rugby and Cricket put together and so this could be devastating to our country should they go ahead with this. I do not advise that you boycott the new rules if they go ahead, but rather support the guys who will fight this on all our behalf as it will not be accepted and left there----Mike

DEEP SEA FISHING
We have had some really good catches off Durban landing many Dorado all taken mostly on shallow run Rapala’s this year. We had a really good run with Yellow Fin Tuna in very deep waters also taking Rapala’s and small Kona’s, and there was one day that we caught so many that we had to stop as we could not fight another fish. The Tuna were not huge, but great fun on light tackle and averaging in the 4-5Kg (10lb) range.

We caught some HUGE Eastern Little Tuna on Vertical Jig, one of them breaking the current SA Record by 1.1Kg weighing in at 12.1 Kg. We also had great fun catching many of the smaller ones on light spinning tackle which is great fishing as they really fight hard.

We hooked into a huge Marlin which striped us off all our line on the light tackle in a matter of seconds, and we saw a Great White Shark of around 6m long estimated at 1500Kg.

As always we had some good fun catching some Sharks with our best being an estimated 150Kg Black Tip Shark.

The flying fish were thick this year, but they were small, there was also a lot of giant jelly fish around and a lot of blue bottles.

TIGER FISH FISHING AT LAKE JOZINI

We have done no Tiger Fishing since November as the waters have been too dirty, we have a trip coming up in April and the lake is now ready for fishing with March to July looking good. Book one of our trips, and have an awesome getaway in stunning surroundings.

BASS FISHING

I have not fished that much for Bass this summer and the few times that we did go the Bass have been small. Most of our Bass were taken on Topwater and Senko’s, and I took my nephew Mathew out and he managed a new Personal Best for himself.

As always we get good catches at Inanda Dam, but a recent trip to Midmar for the BETT was a fishing trip I would sooner forget with only 2 little Bass produced for 8hrs fishing.

SALTWATER ESTUARY FISHING
We fished a few times in Durban Harbour where we caught some small Grunter, Stumpy and we had a good run with the Game fish catching several Sea Pike (Pick handle Barracuda) and Yellow Fin King Fish.

We did a trip to Kosi Lakes where we got some awesome catches of large King Fish including GT’s, Springer and some great Sea Pike. Kosi lakes is an awesome place and because it is in an un spoilt area it is a beautiful to fish. I love this place.

You need to start looking at Booking your trips from September this year for the prime season to target these great fish.

Nikao Fishing Adventures 
catchmorefish@fishingadventures.co.za 
www.fishingadventures.co.za

Edited by Fishing Adventures - 05/Mar/2010 at 12:15am