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Video: Evan Phillips baby GT and Chelsea Dog Attack Behaviour

Evan Phillips with his Umzimkulu Estuary baby Geet about to be released

Video: Evan Phillips baby GT and Chelsea Dog Attack Behaviour

In this video shot on a morning fishing trip on the Umzimkulu River – young Evan Phillips gets his baby GT. And we catch Chelsea Dog Attack Behaviour red-handed on camera.

Again!

A few pics of the Umzimkulu Marina, in Port Shepstone, where we are based at the moment.

The river valley woke up freezing this very wintery but beautiful morning. The offshore was coming straight off the mountains and it sure felt like single figures. So when the sun showed itself, departure came about. A nice full boat of fisherfolk. David Phillips and his wife Robin. Evan. And little lady Jordan who took on camera duty all dressed in pink! We also had Arno from Fishin’s Cool Fishing School.

So with three guns firing off the bow, and three in ambush positions out the back, we followed the far channel to the top, and right over the big hole area.

This has been a great place to fish over these past few months. Rock salmon, kob, perch and kingfish of all species have been patrolling here.

Soon Evan was bending on his beautiful little baby GT. Who put up quite an argument or was just acting real good for the camera.

When the fish finally came to the boat, Chelsea Dog leapt out of her own ambush position! But Dave was too quick and she retreated in disgust. Dave got the hook out easily enough and Evan was soon posing. And then justly released the absolutely dashing young GT back into the wild. After a quick lecture about that Halco Sorcerer in Jelly Prawn outfit.

Enjoy the action…

You can buy that guy right here. Both Dave and Johan Wessels independently vouch for this particular model and colour. And I can attest to its effectiveness – we have lost all the ones Johan left for us on his last trip! Actually it was my Dad! He has been tangling with rock salmon and all sorts of bad mannered lure thieves that been lurking around here lately.

A very toothy barracuda eyes my dredge teaser in the Umzimkulu recently. This footage is shot with our new GoFish cameras. Get your own using the link at the top or bottom of this page.

The Umzimkulu Marina has a few open slots still. Weeks and weekends coming up. Please get in touch to arrange your dream estuary fishing experience. For you, your friends or you and your family – this place is great fun – safe – and there really are some good fish be caught. And released. We practice tag and release wherever possible and only take a fish for the pan, in extreme circumstances.

You can get me Sean on +27793269671 or on umzimkulu@gmail.com to get the ball rolling. We have boats for charter or for hire. Self-catering chalets right on the river.

And plenty fish to catch.

And release!

We are Facebook here and we run a kicker YouTube channel right here.

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So this is where our sards go!

Hands off our Sardines! Trawler watch. Keep these destructive forces from our waters

So this is where our sards go!

I was researching a keyword clash with some of my SEO pages and I came across this post we did in June 2017. It wasn’t a particularly good year for the wards that year. And the pundits were being merrily goaded on by me as I also felt bereaved of the shoals of sards we so impatiently wait for each year. But the post is extremely pertinent as it backs up the visual evidence and AIS tracking showing Chinese and all-sorts of vessels stealing our sardines.

And selling them right back to us!!!

by Sean Lange, June 2017….

Well I don’t know how I got onto this dude’s mailing list, but every week or so, I receive a circular, offering me bulk sardines for sale? Perhaps the morons phished my details from The Sardine News – perhaps they think I deal in sardines ha ha!

I am not sure of the details of the catches either, details are sketchy to say the least, each time. But the list below sure reads two grades of sards for sale. One for bait, and one for canning. And a bunch of other forms of seafood.

Where these sardines are coming from, is anyone’s guess…but we can’t help but feel, that if fishing is going on all over the world, at the scale that reads below, no wonder we are running clean out of fish. And these just could be, our own sards?! Taken from our waters, way out deep, as they head their way towards our coastline. Way out of sight.

Never detected.

Then the fact is, that even if we spot a suspicious vessel, there is nowhere to report it?! (Read all about that here) And so speculation that foul play is underway, is rife. Many suspect our government is selling out on our quota system. Allowing foreign vessels to operate in our waters.  Zuma style corruption runs deep, into every department and level of government.

And if they all thought they could hide the Gupta nuclear bullshit from us, what else did they hide already?

Enjoy the read…

Dear Sir,

Good morning.

We now have several containers’ ready products as below, please kindly advise, thanks.

#13 Agentina Squid 100-150g / pc Processing Material

Product Name: Frozen W/R Agentina Squid for Processing Material purpose

Specification: 100-150g / pc, BQF, Light Purse Seine, Sea Frozen

#12 Black Squid 80-150g / pc Processing Material

Product Name: Frozen W/R Black Squid for Processing Material purpose

Specification: 80-150g / pc, BQF, Light Purse Seine, Sea Frozen

#14 Frozen Crab Meat

Product Name: Frozen Crab Meat  (Winter Crab)

Jumbo Lump, 1lb./bag; Lump, 4lb./bag

#15 Frozen Seafood Mix

Ingredients: Squid Rings/ Tentacles/ Strips/Cut/Head, Octopus Cut/Strip, Baby Octopus, Mussels meat, Shrimps, etc.

Glazing: 0-20%, Package: 24 *1 lb.

#1 Sardine 6-10 pcs/kg Market / Bait

Product Name: Frozen W/R Sardine for Market / Bait purpose

Specification: 6-10 pcs/kg, BQF, Light Purse Seine, Land Frozen

#2 Sardine 6-10 pcs/kg Canning

Product Name: Frozen W/R Sardine for Canning purpose

Specification: 6-10 pcs/kg, BQF, Trawl, Land Frozen

#3 Scad (Horse Mackerel) 8-10 pcs/kg Market

Product Name: Frozen W/R Scad (Horse Mackerel) for Market purpose

Specification: 8-10 pcs/kg, BQF, Light Purse Seine, Land Frozen

Kindly let us know the name of your destination port. More products information including pictures and price will be sent according to your respond.

Thanks and warmly regards.

And there it right there, once again, showing quite clearly, that if it were not for the Chinese boats being apprehended and sent home, there would have definitely NOT been so many sards as there are this year.

And it has only just started!!!

Sardine activity 2020 by OJ
Sharks in the shorebreak during sards season 2020
Sards being netted on the KZN South Coast of South Africa
Sards for sale!
A bumper sardine run 2020 leaves some unanswered but relevant questions about our annual sardine migration and who gets to harvest and who are in lockdown
Sardine action sardine run 2020
Mature Tiger Shark released with satellite tag swims away

A big thank you to OJ Communications and her efforts to bring us the amazing imagery of the local photographers best sardine work of 2020. Justin Klusener features prominently, their pics are all credited at original publication on The Sardine News.

We are on Facebook right here, we run an action-packed YouTube video channel right here.

By The Sardine News

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So why do the sardine shoals not come at all some years?

A bumper sardine run 2020 leaves some unanswered but relevant questions about our annual sardine migration and who gets to harvest and who are in lockdown

So why do the sardine shoals not come at all some years?

So why do the sardine shoals not come at all some years?: Well I got a call from Mr Adam Kamdar of Township Hyper yesterday evening. Great dude and really in the know in the fishing scene.  I had guests and dogs and things going and I could hardly hear, but his question went along the lines of…

“Sean, do you think this Covid thing was the cause of the bumper sardine run?”

Well ok that pushed just about all my buttons, so here is the full answer Adam…

AIS

AIS is the theme to this quasi-sardine report compiled as a result of the big question Adam has posed.

You can download an AIS App to your phone. There are many and they are free for the most. They show you, where the big and ugly fishing trawlers are. Right on your phone!

AIS.

Automatic Identification System. A great effort, and if everyone played along, saves lives (collision avoidance), and sealife (real-time tracking data to catch poachers fishing illegally).

BUT.

And this is a big BUT.

If you are a poacher, you can turn your AIS transponder, right the hell OFF! With a switch!

So this is how they do it then. When pair-trawling (the most destructive of all the illegal fishing methods), one of the collaborators, turns off. Easy as that. If the fleet ventures, in a group (read commercial fishing high-tech armada), then as they get near protected waters, one or two of them turns off, and enters the forbidden zone.

This happens ALL the time. The Sardine News tried to start a trawler watch to log sightings of suspect activity – but there is so much of it, that we got bogged right down right as we started. This was in Mozambique where these ugly boats are literally EVERYWHERE now.

Sardine Run 2020

Whilst we were imprisoned in lockdown thanks to our sheep governments interpretation of convid19, the Chinese/Japanese/Whoever fleets were plying the waters the whole time! Where? Slap bang on the sardine migration path. The AIS charts looked like a rugby scrum.

No photo description available.

And if you have been in St. Francis this time of year, any year, you can smell the sardines from the harbor for miles around. Go sniffing around there for yourselves. Huge loads of sardines. Wonder where they go? And whose were they in the first place?

Whoever they are and wherever they are from, they are ALL rigged with the latest in navigation and depth-sounding equipment. Utilising sonar pulses pumped out by a high-powered transducer, they can detect and chase a shoal of sardines 12 or more miles away! And with their huge capacity and tethers to a mother ship lurking around the area somewhere, that is also a factory ship – that drops CANNED sardines off at the wharf – what chance does the public ever have of getting their share, in the usually slow years of sardine running?

So…

Did Convid19 affect the sardine run this merry 2020?

Nope. It’s a bumper sardine run like we always dream of. It’s beyond perfect. The gamefish have arrived. Sharks are getting their teeth pulled. The weather is fantastic and ecological patterns are in place. Those pundits that complain year after year are completely silent.

Only. They just don’t get it.

AIS.

Shows that there were fleets of fishing boats fishing, directly in the path that the hapless sardines take right now during this sardine run 2020. Whilst we were in lockdown, there were commercial fishermen out there loading up! Enjoying a totally illegal, totally unnecessary lockdown, and infringement of our basic human right to freedom to fish as well!

My answer then is this. These boats remove the exact amount of tonnes and tonnes of sardines missing on our beaches – with this migration – each year. Only this time, there were just so many they couldn’t catch them all.

“Our” sardines?

Another interesting question.

BUT, one thing is for sure, if not for the bumper numbers that this year has given, the sardines hardly ever make it past Port Elizabeth, before they are all netted and frozen.

So, that leaves us back at square one. We have NO voice. It’s time to get political. If not that, then at least investigative in that we need to know why these ships are allowed to be plundering our sardines.

Whilst we are in lockdown!

Almost sounds like a conspiracy in theory.

Adam, my good mate, over to you…

Stay up-to-date with The Sardine News covering the goings-on, during this bumper sardine run in year 2020!

We are on Facebook right here, we run an action-packed YouTube video channel right here. Please like and subscribe to our channel on YouTube if you would like to encourage us to pump out more and more video. We have done really well recently with some great video produced in conjunction with the Fishing Pro Shops Johan Wessels – chasing sardines down in the Port Shepstone area. We got out to sea twice and caught a bunch of gamefish in the surf zone, and in the Umzimkulu River Estuary. Click on over to our YouTube video channel right here. And please consider a Like and Subscribe. Thank you

By The Sardine News

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Yowser Award for Mzansipoli by Nando’s

Mzansipoli

Yowser Award for Mzansipoli by Nando’s.

Yowser Award for Mzansipoli by Nando’s: The crew that churn out blockbuster and after blockbuster ad, for Nando’s, get this week’s Yowser Award.

Statistics show that you most likely have seen it already. But if not, what a tactical marketing masterpiece you are in for!

The ad campaign is so successful, that it is spurning merchandise of its own. Literally an unheard-of marketing coup.

Ok watch the video…

When you’ve stopped laughing…

The stats are staggering. This is first-class work in an extremely tough environment. And proves, if anything, once and for all, that it’s all about content. Good content. Long-lasting. Full-up in every way.

See above!

Another take-off is that content items, each on their own, have the ability to pour good times on your brand, individually. And indefinitely. A good video or photo can do more good for your brand than your entire website or Facebook page – to one customer or group of customers. Each content item, therefore, needs to be top-notch stuff. And targeted.

Who knows? Next thing your viral video spurns its own merchandise line of products?!

Yowser! Is all we can say here at The Sardine News.

Check out our Marketing App store above or at this link…for more information on how The Sardine News can help you with software for your business.

It’s literally become imperative to have a YouTube channel or Playlist, in order to take advantage of the opportunities in video, right now. Please get in touch if you need help with this kind of work. We have been producing online video for streaming since the start of ETV, back in 1998! We know how to create easy serving streaming video and audio.

Contact Sean on umzimkulu@gmail.com or WhatsApp +27 79 326 9671 anytime.

Catch us on Facey at http://facebook.com/thesardine.co.za/

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The whale of Tsodilo Hills – Botswana

The whale of Tsodilo Hills – Botswana

The Tsodilo Hills. Far northern Botswana. Otherwise known as The Mountains of the Gods.

The Tsodilo Hills stairway to Heaven
This is the beginning of our rad hike through the Tsodilo Hills in far northern Botswana

We climbed the steep stairs following Thebe our eloquent local guide for the hike through the hills. Not knowing what to expect, the mountains opened to us with actual, real, ancient rock art paintings. San and Bantu. From different times though. And different inks!

The San paintings were 3000 years old. They depicted all the types of game. Eland were favourites. Rhino. Kudu.

We climbed further and more of Tsodilo revealed itself. Thebe stopped us in an ancient village settlement, and pointed out artifacts and relics from thousands of years back. One of the rocks on the path had polished grooves rubbed into it. Thebe explained that the San people believed that the cattle, now so prolific and destructful, had come down from heaven and hit the earth running on this exact rock.

Thebe then stopped us at a well. A very important well he says, that all creatures could use, without fearing harm from the cats. Lions. Leopards. It was a place of peace, and an indication that wild animals and humans could live together. It was now dried up due to cattle and land degradation. Moving on.

We came to the summit and were greeted with as much Africa as the eye could take in.

Then cave to cave, as we studied more rock art. The immensity of 3000 years slowly setting in. We also found some Bantu art. But they pictured cattle only.

Our guests enjoy another African vista in northern BotswanaCameron Johnstone from Darwin in Oz, and Roland Vernooi from the Netherlands hanging out with Thebe of the SanMore rock art in the hills, by the ASan people, 3000 years ago.The whale of Tsodilo Hills, with friends.

We got down between the two hills, the male and female, and into a beautiful grove of fever and other indigenous trees. A kudu bounced out in surprise.

And then…a humpback whale! And a penguin! Definitely not in proportion. We are thousands of kilometres from the ocean?!

Luckily our well informed Thebe had the story and it goes like this.

The Namibian coastline is directly to the West of the Tsodilo Hills. And the ancient San, with their survival instinct and abilites, were able to make the journey! There and back! And in order to educate their offspring as to what they saw and learned, they drew the whale into the huge rock.

Tsodilo Hills Rock Art
Tsodilo Hills Rock Art

This was one of the ways with which the elders passed their hard earned knowledge down through generations.

The Sardine Team is heading back into Botswana for September. On our way past the Okavango Music Festival 29 August, if anyone needs a ride, get in touch on umzimkulu@gmail.com.

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