KZN estuaries alive with fish

KZN estuaries alive with fish

KZN estuaries: What a weekend! 3 for 15 on rock salmon. A shoal of baby grunter. A couple of small koblets. Some outsized perch (by Marius at Spillers). A massive eel. And one zambezi sighting!

Bait

Buckets of live baits. Prawns and mullet. Only on low tide though, and quite often they disappear completely. Not easy but our little aerator works great and we kind of never ran out the whole weekend.

The cast net never stopped working!

It was young JJ Gallagher’s (featured pic) birthday down at the Umzimkulu Marina, in Port Shepstone. He had a crew of fishing mates join him down on the estuary. It was a lot of fun with kayaks, houseboat and us all getting in on the action.

Conditions in the KZN estuaries right now

The rivers are all in perfect shape right now for the rock salmon and kingfish (greenspots and GTs) to return. They are wide open and flushing with the tides beautifully. Especially on these massive tides, that the current super moon is delivering. Many top-water smashes were going on all during the weekend and although none of us caught one, the general consensus is that they were top feeding kingfish.

We were catching perch and the odd rock salmon, in the mud even, as the salt started creeping back up the river a month or so ago. The barbel have luckily left for home, but we still have the odd eel to content with. Some real monsters at a metre or more!

Small kob have found their way into the estuaries too. Great tag and release candidates and enthusiastic enough to take a live mullet or a well-placed and well-worked lure. The kob favour the deeper channels.

KZN estuaries on for rockies right now!

But it was the rock salmon that had all our attention this weekend. Some huge trees fell off the cliff during flood conditions a few years ago. And they are perfectly positioned sticking right into the depths of the main channel under the mountain. And man-oh-man are they holding fish.

The birthdaying teenagers drew first blood with a spritely 1.5kg sized rock salmon. They kept this one for a birthday braai planned for Sunday. Then the mayhem started and fish after fish dealt out various degrees of punishment. Three of the fish actually bit the kids leaders through. These guys are actually veterans in this corner of the woods. With real tackle and leaders. And yet the fish were having none of it.

This went on for session after session. Loud stories echoed from chalet to chalet all afternoon and evening!

Scotty!

Then it was the turn of visiting angler Scotty Roebuck. We had been trolling lures up and down past the teenagers when Scotty picked up my casting rod, fitted out with a Dirty Prawn bucktail by Evan Phillips. He expertly flicked the bucktail between the trees and next thing – bang!

And this was a real fish, it went straight for the obstacles! But the seasoned fish-fighter Scotty put the brakes on and turned it with the 30lb braid. Mandatory tackle around here. The fish fought mean and dirty, trying to escape under the boat and all sorts of things.

But Scotty got his rock salmon! Not one of us had a phone with us so no pics. But man oh man memories!

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