Catch n release as we go! JP Bartholomew live from the Umzimkulu…
The Umzimkulu Marina was abuzz with the news that the JP Bartholomew was spending the weekend. JP, as our readers know by now, has an incredible track record, and seems to have a nose for the fish he targets.
So it was that JP and family’s weekend has arrived, and in less than 12 hours – take a look at how the pros do it!
We have today given JP a pack of MYDO LuckShots to use, so we can compare with regular drop snots.
One thing is for sure – the Umzimkulu is producing as it normally does this time of the year. And JP has conclusively proven, that even though he took three hours to get his first fish, the quality of the fish he catches, is worth it, so much more than fishing with bait.
Come and join us at The Umzimkulu Marina down in Port Shepstone, where all the fishing action seems to be these days (ha ha I am in Jhb!). umzimkulu@gmail.com for more information and package deal opportunities.
Catching kob in Port St. Johns with #1 Mydo Luck Shot
Catching kob in Port St. Johns with the MYDO baitswimmer head # 1 used as a powerful dropshot rig. These two are rigged the two different ways (see below), and with paddletails. Note the outsized hook on the orange plastic, for big fish and heavy tackle. The Orca plastic is rigged with the knot buried deep and a short shank hook further back in the lure. Choose your favourite hook!
The original #1 Mydo is turning out to be the choice lure in Port St. Johns as it’s perfect weight – 1.7Oz, and swimming action, works the waters at the mouth and in the surf zone, just right. Read on to find out more about catching kob in Port St. Johns.
The rig is adjustable and allows you to engineer the ideal swimming pattern for you, in the given conditions. The line is tied right through the middle of the baitswimmer head and through the eye of the hook. Using a uni-knot allows for the tiny adjustment needed, to play with the action. There is also a through the bait option – great for sticking a hook far back in the bait. Some plastic baits, like the ones with paddletails, need no adjustment really, they swim just so nice, straight and reliable.
But if you loosen the connection between hook and baitswimmer, and stick a split tail plastic on, you can get that thing to swim like a snake! It really is amazing to see you plastic dead bait darting through the water just like a wounded and fleeing fish would be.
The # 1’s are the budget line of the Mydo, and you get to buy them unrigged so you can choose and rig the ideal hook and leader combination for you. The #1’s come with a pin or without, the following are the adaptations of the MYDO baitswimming technologies, to various fishing applications.
baitswimmer dropshot head with pin: rig your nice soft strong leader through either of the available holes and right through the baitswimmer. Tie on your absolutely favourite hook, even a short shank will work great. Grab ahold of your plastic (anything from 3 inch to 8 inch – the hook just needs to be right for the plastic and prey), and get that hook in there. Bury the hook so far in that the eye of the hook goes right inside of the plastic. Now stick the plastic onto the pin, upright. With longer hooks, get the pin right through the eye of the hook, bend the pin over, trim it off with heavy duty pliers and off you go to the nearest river mouth. Now! The pin keeps the plastic in the right place – on the hook!
For short shank hooks, or when you want to rig a hook right in tail, keep burying the hook to where you want it. Put the nose of the plastic onto the pin, and stick a toothpick through the plastic through the eye of the hook, break off protruding ends. Now you have two anchors for the plastic, a completely flexible bait with the leader running right inside it, and a hook right back in the bite zone – far more hookups, no more tail-bite-offs.
baitswimmer dropshot head without pin: This is the other options (some shops sell #1’s without pins especially for this rig). Leader through bottom hole, up through eye of hook, back through top hole, and tie a uni-knot. Everyone should know this knot by now. Quick and painless, and very reliable. Use you own initiative for keeping the plastic on, when it eventually starts to fall off. I use cable ties. Toothpicks. Superglue. A slow bouncy retrieval for the kob, gives a totally different swimming pattern than a faster surface crank for the garrick. The Port St. Johns crew get their fish at a more medium pace, and when they change pace and bounce completely – that’s when they get the bang most times.
baitswimmer: the #1 was one of Brian Davey’s first patents, and all the other baitswimmers were based on this lure. Even at it’s size, it can give swimming lessons to the biggest shad, and even tames a bonito of a kilo or so. Amazing, considering how hard it was to swim those baits ,before Brian came along with his invention and rocked the fishing world. Walla walla, half beak and jap mack all started swimming upright and true – no more spinning baits. The Vaalies finally started winning some comps!
live baitswimmer: #1 baitswimmers are ideal for putting som order into your spread when dragging a bunch of errant little live baits behind you. The bit of weight just puts them away from the surface guys, and you can then play deeper with the #4 and #4 Mydo Baitswimmers safely under them. Running 6 or 8 livies takes some serious planning and execution, and the baitswimmers help you do just that
But here in Port St. Johns, shoulder to shoulder with the pro’s, I am stoked to report that everyone here is using #1’s with great results. Many kob so far, and many garrick. Getting photos out of the team is nigh impossible – they don’t want anyone to know where and what they are catching!
Click here for more about the MYDO Luck Shot #1’s and here to take advantage of our price promotion on MYDO Baitswimmer # 1’s.
Dealer enquiries to umzimkulu@gmail.com, there is a reward of a huge MYDO hamper offered out to for people who can hook us up with dealers, in their areas.
“The ever reliable Jason Heyne reports in weekly with a round up of KZN spearfishing news…this week is no different, some great catches and good photos, thank you Jason!”
Diving this week has been on and off with early starts required due to the north east picking up every day and this weekend will be no exception. The North East will steadily pick up Saturday and Sunday with the surf picking up and obliterating the inshore come Sunday. Best bet for a dive is early Saturday morning through till mid day Saturday. The best viz has been in and around the middle south coast. Garrick are returning now in shoals so stick to the shallows for a while to bag one. DUC Garrick comp is on tomorrow no weigh in after 4. Guys and gals please be careful where you park your vehicle on the north coast as cars are being stolen and broken into. Try not to stash your keys. As always dive safe and straight spears.
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:
Kob for dinner Jbay style…
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!
It’s been a great year for fledgling daga salmon up and down our entire coastline. I have seen them at this size (featured photograph) being taken in Maputo Bay and all the down into the Cape.
Kob fishing is the saltwater bass fishing it seems as they readily jump on a plastic bait, if well presented, and fished at the right time. They even look a bit like bass, fight like bass…but taste a lot better than bass!
These fish were caught on bait but there is a shot coming in later of another kob on a Mydo Luck Shot.
Stay posted!
Chief Mydo tester Brian Lange featuring with two nice kob caught deep in the Transkei somewhere.
