South Coast Amberjack

South Coast Amberjack

The hard hitting south coast Amberjack hang out in the deep water along our continental shelf. Ferocious fighters and voracious eaters they will devour an entire live bonito no problem. And then it’s really on! Relatives of the formidable yellowtail they fight hard and dirty, often taking you into the reef. And when you finally work him to the top, he goes straight back down to the bottom again!

They are big fish these amberjack – the biggest recorded unofficially went over 100kg’s! The offficial world record stands at 70kg’s. We get them up to around the 50kg mark but we can only imagine and speculate about the ones that have gotten away. Even a 20kg Ambo will stretch your arms a while!

The three species so closely resembling eachother – Seriola Lalandi (Cape Yellowtail), the Amberjack (Seriola dumerili) and the Tropical Yellowtail (Seriola rivoliana), have caused confusion for aeons. In fact, the world record for Cape Yellowtail was actually an Amberjack and was re-recognised as such, a few decades later.

It was caught by Ray Bannister-Jones off Hibberdene, and weighed 58.5kg’s!

More yellowtail and amberjack stories on thesardine.co.za here…