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Submitted by: Sean Lange
Report:
Seal Point local surfer and angler Michael Hill reported in today that he saw the biggest Great White shark imagineable, cruising the shallow reefs behind the breakers, at Seals today. It was whilst Michael was fishing off the Wild Side under the lighthouse that got to see this beast of a shark. Mike reckons the dorsal was as high as his waist, if he stood next to it, HUUUUUUGE!
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Meandering across to Seal Point from J-bay, through the pastures and fields of green, accompanied by Brucifire, a few surfboards and some fishing rods…we drove past a crew unloading their boat, after a trip to sea at Seal Point, and pulled over. Since I am down in the Cape distributing and promoting Mydo Lures, I was hoping these guys would recognise the Mydo’s for their versatility and adaptability, and try them out in these waters.
It turned out to be Sheppy boy Mark White, now living in St. Frances. And he had just returned from a dive. Greetings were exchanged and soon I had the Mydo lures out on the table and Mark was ogling with enthusiasm. Mark had worked with by brother Marc, in the Natal Sharks Board, and is one of those…
After dropping a liberal helping of spoons and luck shots on the table, Mark pipes up – “Hey Sean, do you want a fish?!”. Ha ha ha, here we go again. But I nearly fell over when he hauled out a beautiful Red Steenbras, or Copper, as we call them in Natal.
Diving on his own, in 60 feet, Mark had an amazing catch of fish – all the right ones too! Baardman, reds and one Red Steenbras. You see, it’s not just the fact that these are almost the hardest fish to shoot in the world (they really like to hang out in deep water), they are also one of the most delicious!
And so it was, that without casting a line, we had caught another fish! Thanks Mark White!
Hell, these Mydos work!
And so, we have another Catch ‘n Cook series instalment for you…the rare and fabled Red Steenbras!
The fish may have gone 6kg’s, and was a cinch to fillet, leaving us with two huge slabs of white flaky fresh fish to play with. And a skeleton and a head – which were quickly popped into a huge pot and boiled up. When the fish was falling off the skeleton and the head fell apart, we removed as much of the meat as we could, and then strained the rest through a colander, into the same pot. Then we fried onions, peppers and garlic to golden brown, and chucked that into the same soup pot. And that cooked away on a slow boil.
Our hosts in J-bay, Dr. Kurt Mariano and his wife Noma, at JBay SurfView, are very health conscious people, and so we decided that, alongside the fried fish I was planning , we would also grill a chunk, using much the same method as that of when we cooked the kob we caught (ha ha) last week.
The rest of the fillets were cut into 1cm thick cutlets taken across the grain.
Noma had some Tempura batter, fresh from Thailand, which is simply a healthy version of the batter we make with regular white flour. She also had some exotic nut oils which we mixed half with butter and got the pan up to heat. Leaving the cutlets soaking in the Tempura (which featured added flavour of Italian Herbs and Spices and anything else I could find in the spice rack – but no salt), they were fried one by one in a light layer of oil and butter. Very light, this is NOT deep frying.
The soup was prepared by boiling the huge head and skeleton, for a half an hour. Manually removing the chunks of meat from the head is time consuming and hot work but there is no way around this task. Eventually, when you have gotten most of the meat into a new pot, you can strain the remains through a pasta colander, also into the new pot. In the meantime, onions, peppers, garlic and all those nice things were glazed in a bit of oil in a hot pan. Add this fry up to the new pot, and start to simmer – the longer the better. In this time you can taste test and twist the flavour the way you like it. Chilli is a great partner to fish soup, so we opened a tin of seshebo like chillied up onions and tomatoes and bombed that in too. The secret ingredient – a piece of orange rind…just chuck it in whilst cooking. Salt is almost necessary in this broth, but there is no need for MSG!
The grilled fish was done exactly like the kob we cooked here last week, that story is here.
Noma had prepared salad and mashed potato, and all the various dishes from that one fish were laid out for devouring.
Salt added to flavour, a glass of white wine and…what a meal!
Grilled, fried and souped – Red Steenbras!
Sean – “Ok, the touchy bit…Red Steenbras are endangered!
Red Steenbraas have been classified as endangered before, but all of a sudden, limited catches are now allowed again. Very limited. One per person per day, and over 60cm. Responsible people are keeping an eye on the stocks, but since they were reduced to endangered levels before, are proven sensitive to over-exploitation. It’s a fantastic fish to “Catch n’ Cook” but not so clever to buy and cook, or eat in a restaurant. Check out Sassi’s report on the vulnerable Red Steenbras. Sassi are affiliated to WWF and are a cool bunch of peeps really dedicated to preserving fish stocks.”
Kob is a mainline buzzword here in Jeffrey’s Bay. Everyone wants one. And I can relate to the regiments of retirees enjoying the bountiful waters this place has been blessed with. On any afternoon, down at Kabeljauws, there are anglers standing proud, fishing all sorts of rigs and baits, waiting for a delicious kob for dinner…
It was a Sunday version of one of these days, the sun was out, light onshore, bathers, surfers…and us…
We pulled up to an empty Kabeljauws carpark mid afternoon. But soon vehicles, some out of mad max and adorned with rods and reels of huge proportions, rolled in and surrounded us. Massive coffee grinders everywhere.
Brucifire had conjured up some squid baits for us from somewhere, which hardly compared to what offerings some of these guys were sneaking out. Cracker Shrimps. Octopus. Red bait…
Our first casts found a shoal of smallies just before the surf zone and soon we were hauling in blacktail and small silver bream things. Our 10ft rod soon had a silver bream out the back and Charl proceeded to haul out smallies, puffers included, and chuck them back, while I settled in. By now, we had camps either side of us. The couple to our south had a trolley-like magody that expanded out into a professional fully fledged bait station with rod holders and all!
There was a young romance going on to our right as a young guy was teaching his girl to surf just behind the mid-break in the deeper channel. And to our left were a huddle of bathers, basically 10 metres up the beach from us. There was the mid break we were fishing over, a deep channel and white water fading in from the outside sets.
Ideal for…you know what…
Bang I felt something and as looked at where my bait might be just before the breakers, a wave lifted and through the wave I saw it. Shark! As it lined up and hit my bait again! The bathers were 10 metres away! I forced fed him a bit and struck, and there I was, standing on the beach, into a decent sized shark, right down from where I been surfing all day!
By decent I mean over a metre and as soon as I had him close, I just pulled and luckily the shark let go and I got my hook back and all. The smallies had gone quiet now so without a live bait, I grabbed my beautiful new spinning stick with 20lb braid and let fly with a karanteen type rig to try snag another livie. The squid bait was proving to be the flavour of the day and all of a sudden I got a heavy bite and was vas. But this fish gave some resistance. It dogged around the waves while it worked out that it was hooked, and then just screamed off out to sea and up the point towards the surfing couple. I stopped it after a few minutes, being loaded with new braid, but soon had my doubts and the pressure increased to more than what my little hooks could take. The fish would stop and let me turn it’s head a bit, fee what I was doing, and just say no. Adamantly NO. And he would peel off 10 or even 20 more metres, until sadly, my audience was disappointed when the tip went slack and the hook came back straight as an arrow.
Wow, we were having fun!
Then the smallies came back so we got a few blacktail, in case we couldn’t find a kob somewhere, for dinner. We had promised Noma and Kurt of JBay SurfView fish for dinner!. Obviously I got one live bait out back as soon as I could, a slightly smaller fish, and no sh$%^t, three minutes later I was into another really large fish.
My little 10ft Assassin and 30SH were buckling under the strain as this much bigger shark gave me the gears. But I have no time for sharks really and Charl point blank refused to go and get the fish out for photos, so when it was close I just pulled and once again, got my hook and trace back (amazing leader material that old style Maxima green).
We had fished out everybody around us and with our little pile of blacktail headed back to Chelsea and Bruce waiting patiently for fish dinner, in the carpark. Bruce didn’t scoff at the small fish, but there were a few chirps.
So we headed back to town to shop, Charl and I left Bruce and Chelsea car guarding, and went in. When we came out, there was a crowd around the car as Bruce was showing off our Mydo Luck Shots to a local angler he knows – to startling results. I told the guy, Morne, a well know hot shot angler in these parts, that he could have a few lures. His face lit up and he opened the back of his bakkie and presented us with a freshly caught kob he had nailed on paddle tail at a secret spot of his, just before!
We got home to a standing ovation, cooked the fresh and delicious fish as follows:
Firstly, we had to remove the head and tail to fit in the baking dish, after it was cleaned and scaled.
Then we made a concoction up of all sorts available in the kitchen that afternoon. Grated garlic. Lemon juice. Finely chopped onions and green peppers. A little soya sauce. Some sweet chill sauce.
Incisions across the breadth of the fish were then filled with this concoction, both sides until it was dripping and then wrapped in a single layer of foil and the rest of the juice poure all over it.
Into the oven at a nice 200 or so, and leave it be!
30 minutes in and we turn the fish (bigger fish, longer cooking time), and give it another 20 or so.
Serve!
The meat falls off the bone in chunks formed by the deep cuts across the fish.
PS the next day, this same fish, mixed with finely chopped onions and mayonnaise had us biting our fingers off!
Jbay comes alive! Before the sun was up, the count reached 100 clones/clowns all out there. With so many guys grappling for the sets, it could easily be that many of these clones never even got one wave through the session?!
This clip was shot during last weeks swell, a week after the Fanning incident. It goes to show how freaky it was that a white swam into Micko’s leash, when he was the only dude out there! If that same white was there during this session, he woulda gotten tangled up in all those leashes and drowned?!
Port Elizabeth – His family thinks he’s crazy, but Port Elizabeth surfer Josh Enslin is determined in his bid to smash the Guinness World Record for the longest surfing marathon. The current record, set by Ben Shaw (USA) is 29 hours 27 minutes and was set on 30-31 August 2014.
Enslin’s attempt is set to take place at Pollock Beach in Port Elizabeth, and the waiting period for the attempt is going to be the month of November 2015.
“I am stoked to give the World Record an attempt,’ said Enslin. ”It would be rad to have the World Record Title on our South African shore line.”
There are a variety of things that come into play with such an attempt, with dehydration, fatigue, sharks and hyperthermia just the start. Still, Enslin is gung-ho on the attempt.
“I am super excited, anxious and nervous all in one,” said Enslin. “The oceans’ elements play the factor here. It will be all about keeping a good balance but that’s hard when mother nature is in control. I have nothing to prove to anyone, this is just between me and the ocean and my longest surf session ever.”
The attempt is not only about personal glory, but also a charity drive for a number of worthy causes in and around the PE area.
“The other aspect to the event will be a massive donation drive alongside the record attempt,” said Enslin. “We will be gathering and donating old surf equipment and old wetsuits and blankets and canned food that Cyoh Surf Club will donate to underprivileged surfers around our surf community, and we will be donating blankets and canned food to the street children of Port Elizabeth.”
The support for his World Record attempt has been massive thus far, and Enslin would like to thank the following for their support:
My Fiancé/Mom/family and friends/Billabong/Red Bull/Cyoh Surf Club/VonZipper/Chevrolet/
