The recently opened Pumula Surf Camp is the talk of the town right now – Justy and Hayley Maisch have created a small piece of paradise on the KZN South Coast.
The surf in and around Pumula is world class and there are waves all year round. Winter is obviously the best time when sand lines all the point breaks producing beach after beach filled with perfect waves. Umzumbe, Hibberdene, The Spot…are but a few of the classic right hand point breaks that the KZN south coast is famous for.
Justin, also known as “The Fox” stemming from his competitive nature and prowess, is an advanced surf coach that will help better surfers surf better, and start beginners off from scratch. Pumula Surf Camp’s close relationship to Wedge Surfboards and Maisch Fins mean they have the best possible equipment for you to rent or buy.
For more information on surfing on the south coast, accommodation and packages…
Are those that are in it for the money. And here in good old Mozam, that’s how it all works. Not to say that everyone in the force in 3rd world fascist Mozam is corrupt. But just get on the wrong side of our boys in grey or green or blue or purple, and see what happens.
A few examples…
All of a sudden, without warning, the main road into the market and the beach area at Praia do Tofo, became a one way – out. And so, trusting their GPS’s or experience of coming to Tofo before, many an unsuspecting tourist or expat came off their ultra long journey – only to be stopped by police, for coming down the centuries old main drag – the wrong way. So the force approach with a certain amount of vehemence at the outset (the aggression comes later). The fine is nominal, usually starting at about 10 000 Mets (R3500), and if you keep your wits about you and play along, you can get away with 1000 mets or so. Straight into the pockets of the diligent law enforcers. But if you argue without serious substance behind your argument…it’s a short walk to Casa de Branco (Jail), until you pay. Try it.
We had the privilege to meet and hang out with travelling surfers and adventurers Lucy Small and Anna Macauly from Australia a few months back, here in Praia do tofo. They were here for just a few weeks. But the Quantas jet that was supposed to take them home, had two empty seats, upon takeoff!
Yip, Lucy and Anna just stayed and stayed, soon to be joined by Hannah Cottrell, who also just stayed and stayed. Teaching surf lessons and playing live music (Hannah) – living the dream.
TALES OF A TREEHOUSE PIC:HANNAH COTTRELL
Lucy writes for Saltwater Pilgrim and her blog can be found here…
Pent up in a fancy hotel in Johannesburg – one of those places with excellent service from friendly men in waste coats and those fancy trolleys they wheel everything for you on. Awkward music in the elevators and an overpriced 24-hour room service menu.
Quite the contrast the the entirety of the last six-and-a-half months.
Looking through photos from my life in the motherland, that sickly happy-sad feeling of nostalgia creeps up. Oh, so happy it happened, oh, so sad it’s over.
With the proliferation of sharks on Protea Reef off Shelley Beach, catching and releasing them has become sport. Here the Must Byt charter operation crew prepare to release a bad tempered old Tiger Shark – healthy and ready to entertain the many divers, who get up close and personal with them, on dive trips and in cages. (c) Must Byt
The Sharks of Protea Reef: A couple of decades back, the late eighties – Protea Reef off the KZN South Coast, teemed with fish. The ‘couta were wild and came through in huge shoals. Yellowfin would get in the way all the time. A live bonnie was a cast away anytime. Kakaap and kingfish swam around under the boat. Rainbow runner flashed through. Ah! The memories. What happened to those idyllic fishing times, is still open to argument – the foreign trawlers and long liners we all know have been – just out there – or us – the recreational and semi-commercial fleet of the day, interfering with nature.
Not that fishing on Protea Reef is any slower these days, chuck a live bonito out on the southern pinnacle and see what happens in 5 minutes. The only major thing different these days, is that it’s 90% chance a shark is on the end of line. And if it isn’t, whatever stole the bonnie away from the marauding pack of testerone laden sharks, is now the new live bait!
Many reasons have been profferred for this massive shift in fish demographics on Protea. There a few factors – starting with some bright guys using chum, to attract in huge yellowfin tuna, and hook them with single hooks. Amazing fun on all tackle, and many great and record catches were made back then. The deeply instilled drive to wear our province’s colours motivated a fleet of ski-boats – hundreds in fact, to compete, and there wasn’t much more fun thing you could do, that be invited, as a club or province, to compete against one another, in yours or fresh new waters, around the country.
And then there were the money comps. With fully rigged brand new ski-boats, as first prizes. This was a time where you could live of your winnings. The Rand still meant something. Petrol wasn’t even expensive. One fish could pay to fill all your tanks, the rest was poured eagerly back into the boat and tackle. Some guys reached epic heights in their commitment to the “sport” – gold reels, roller guides, new line every outing…it was fever pitch on the ski-boat scene. We even had a license to sell fish, as semi-commercials?! Heaven!
Then the South African event organisers and sponsors started hosting competitions on n even bigger scale. Launching was allowed anywhere legal, and the water fished stretched from the north to the south coast. They were some of the biggest fishing events ever held in the world. The fly pasts at some of these events flipped smaller boats in their wake!
Since Protea was always a hot spot, and more often than not, produced the boat winning fish…a lot of us started to pour 5kg after 5kg of frozen, chopped and crushed up, beautiful fresh sardines, in the quest for a boat winning yellowfin tuna. The sardines weren’t even expensive!? A boat would often launch, on a competition day, with 10 x 5kg boxes, all to be chopped up and tossed into the water. This makes the chum slick. And a good crew, on a good day, can make a chum slick work for miles. Starting way up Protea, the skipper projects a drift over the pinnacles, north and south. The trajectory is dependent on many things, but connect the dots and it’s all hands on deck. As you start, you may even pick up a fish with the first few handfuls of sardine – straight away – since they follow the boat. This is great – because once you get the first few fish interested, others feel and hear the commotion and come in from all sides. The trick is to feed the chum line. A chunk every two metres, and some crushed up guts and head in between, tying it all together. Stop the chum line, and it’s back to step 1. Get it right, and it’s hours (depending on the drift speed) of fishing chaos.
Then came the sharks. Now come the sharks. The overall size of the combined chum trail we all threw, eventually extended hundred of kilometres. In a four day event, a few tonnes of beautifully fresh and tasty sardines went overboard. The chum slick eventually sent it’s oily message right through the Transkei, calling them all in. And they came. Like a spectacle akin to the sardine run. They were everwhere. Marauding packs of not just Zambezi’s, but huge hammers, horrifying copper sharks (bronze whalers), ugly ass tigers, and beautiful whites. It was chaos, we stopped catching fish on light tackle completely – the entire light tackle league collapsed in a heap, and we all went back to 50 pound Maxima green – minimum.
The Sharks, like in the rugby, took over completely. We were taken to the cleaners. Rapalas at R100 each disappeared out of our tackle boxes at an financially crippling rate. We lost so much line, tuna hooks, live bait traces, lures…murder on the high seas. Most of the boats just stopped fishing on Protea. Launches were right down, so were catches.
Today, if you dare go fishing with chum, it starts out much the same as the old days. A fish or two straight up, but as soon as the sharks smell the sardines, they home in. As cognisant as any other wild animal, the also obey Pavlov. The chum slick is like a dinner gong going off. They move in and circle and weave under the boat and as soon as a hapless tuna swallows a bait, it’s swimming is impeded and bang a shark has him!
The flipside is that catch and release shark fishing has become a part of fishing on Protea Reef and the sharks themselves, quite a tourist attraction. There are just so many out there. We hope that they will soon realise that conscientious anglers have volunteered to stop chumming on Protea, and that free lunch is going to more hard to come by, and that they will move back into their old feeding patterns and areas they came from.
In the meantime, divers flock from all corners to swim among the sharks, you can even cage dive with them nowadays!
A shark cage boat waits for a gap on it’s way out to Protea Reef and it’s toothy inhabitants (c) thesardine.co.za
Amped on the South Coast: The Sardine Newspaper is the culmination of many projects over the years, and went under successively different names. At a stage we called ourselves SurfTV.co.za, a fantastically successful name, but was stopped in it’s tracks, due to copyright issues with SurfTV.com.
Guy Bishop, one of our first cameramen when we were operating mainly in the Western Cape, joined us on this experiental road trip, with the Nicholson brothers, Simon and Peter. Starting in Cape Town, we toured up the East Coast to Durban as a team. Both Nicholsons are absolute rippers, and ambitious enough to go up against the ‘Zag, with their publication named Amped. It was a good effort but petered out fast in the face of such stiff opposition and the worldwide economic downturn.
Guy shot this rad behind the scenes video and put together the great edit, on that trip.
Watching it brought back many memories – faces including Q.J., Simon and Peter, Davey Weare, Gary Maisch, Andrew Banks, Carl Roux, and of course Roosta and Badger – the main SurfTV riders back then. We were on a program visiting schools throughout the country telling them that they can chuck school and go surfing. Simon and Peter made quite an impressive duo back then – flying high as sponsored surfers – and I think we got many kids out of school and onto the beach, with that effort. It was a wierd old time, Jordy hadn’t even decided to be Jordy back then, and he wasn’t even invited on the trip?!
