The sharks of Protea Reef

The Sharks of Protea Reef

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!