Joey Chetty, Michael Govender and his nice catch of a 12kg yellow fin tuna, Angie Naidoo, Brian Lange and Christopher Naidoo after a rough outing to Protea Reef, this morning.
This time of year the condition of the sea can be disagreeable but the winter game fish season is underway and the roving fish seem to like the big swells, winds and currents. In fact this tuna jumped on the lure a few seconds after it was let out…
With a spate of great catches, the Umzimkulu River has come alive with crystal clear water bubbling with live bait and predator fish. And it’s been fishing with artificials that’s been producing most of the variety. Bigeye Kingfish, Oxe-eye Tarpon, Rock Salmon and a few that got away…caught and released on imitation rapalas and Mydo Luck Shots dressed with tiny paddletails. Both in white.
And check this out…
Marius Awcamp has encountered more sharks fishing down at Spiller’s Wharf, and check the pic of a perch bitten in half, by what can only be a Zambezi, found floating down the river. A shore angler had hooked the perch and whilst fighting it, the shark came in and grabbed it. They both held on – the perch stuck in the middle, until the line broke – the shark must have swallowed down his half and left the other?! Another angler’s big kingfish was taken at the Block by a “big dark shape”, the same “big dark shape” having being seen lurking around the river mouth area a few days before the incident.
Ian Logie has been getting his bag of fish each time, and lost a big garrick as it twisted his line around his anchor rope, just before dark a few nights back. Marius lost a big salmon right at the slipway at Spillers…and on the whole it’s been great. It would be even greater if so many anglers would just take their rubbish away with them and not leave the banks and fishing spots littered with plastic, bottles and all sorts.
Note: Due to technical problems encountered over the last month, a few thesardine.co.za posts have been replaced by this more comprehensive roundup…
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On a barge ride full of tourists from Mantis ‘n Moon Backpackers in Umzumbe, we stuck two lures out and in the darkening evening the imitation rapala screamed and in the distance we could just make out a violently jumping very fast and acrobatic fish. Garrick was the first guess, until the unmistakable flurry of a tarpon tail walking came clear. Oxe-eye Tarpon. The real deal (Megolops cyprinoides)! We had caught a small one years before, on a jig fly…and heard of a few being caught down under the bridge on flies…but had no idea they got this big in the Umzimkulu at all. And at about 4kg’s, it would have become the new Oxe-eye Tarpon world champion – the current record stands at 2.99kg’s! Anyway, after a magnificent fight we released it healthily after a few photographs and a good bye kiss. After checking things out a bit further, and finding that although the biggest one weighed officially was 3kg’s, some 18kg specimens have been reported. But this is the crunch line. In Zimbabwe! This raised all sorts of eyebrows, as all of a sudden it dawned upon us, that these tarpon live in the river! They do not go into the sea, they go upriver, and down. They love the brown water, they love fresh water, and they spawn in saltwater! They are very, very hard to catch and to exploit, without nets. They are tough as nails, and aggressively eat anything! They might even survive the holocaust! They can even survive stagnant water by gulping air into their lung-like bladders?! Talk about a superfish. And in Australia it is rated as a higher prize fighter than marlin and barramundi (Australian National Sportfish Association) !!! Right here in the Umzimkulu River. As luck would have it…a camera rolled and the following fun video was produced…
Then it was the Big Eye Kingfish (Caranx sexfasciatus) that made a few guest appearances. They are suckers for small white plastics and plugs and during the fish-off between the Mydo Luckshot against the World’s best lures, couldn’t resist the small white imitation rapalas…once again, the camera rolled and we have another video on the Umzimkulu Marina Youtube playlist…
But the fish of the week for me was my first Rock Salmon (Lutjanus argentimaculatus) on the new MYDO Luck Shot…an articulated dropshot head based on the MYDO Baitswimmer patented designs. Look out for them in a tackle shop near you…
And here it is…the tiniest MYDO Luck Shot as designed for bass but readily catches saltwater gamefish in the ocean and in estuaries.
Join us on the Umzimkulu River in Port Shepstone this fishing season or festive season – fishing trips, parties, luncheons – all arranged call +27 79 326 9671 or umzimkulu@gmail.com
As of the Hibberdene ‘Couta Classic 2014 post, we can safely deduce that thesardine.co.za has been released from the ravages of DNS savagery. The errors have been tracked and the errant server has been punished. Hopefully readers and subscribers didn’t notice, but some of our posts were disappearing a day or two after being posted. So we would post more, and then the kidnapped posts were returned, only to be abducted again the next day. Unfortunately is was wreaking havoc with our search engine ratings.
At first we suspected one or two of the many dynamic PHP plugins and scripts used to make thesardine.co.za work. And so we began the debugging process. The net is chokka block full of reasons, suspects and workarounds for our disappearing posts problem…and so we dived in…removing, resetting, replacing…no result. The weeks ticked by until it became clear, after countless tests and experiments, that an errant server somewhere was grabbing our DNS numbers and diverting the traffic every now and then.
It’s chaos out there! So, if you experience similair problems with a WordPress or other CMS out there…good luck…just take it slowly, no radical measures off the bat, take notes at every turn, looking for references…and don’t rule out external errors. WordPress is a solid system used and supported worldwide. There are threads on almost every problem, clash or bug you can find, due to the huge user base. And we support WordPress extensively so give us a call if you have any WordPress queries, requirements or issues…+27 79 326 9671 or umzimkulu@gmail.com
Wild Dorado off Port Shepstone
The south westerley buster blasted through during our ride out of the Umzimkulu River mouth – into the chocolate brown plume that spits out of the river, this time of year.
It’s on the seam between this brown water, and the clear deep blue of the Mozambique current, that the dorado hunt. Up and down, ambushing baitfish as they swim in and out of the brown water.
And the dorado just love the westerley gale conditions that now prevailed. A good 25 knots plus kept us on our toes. It took a good hour of battling the wind and waves, before the first rod screamed off with a dorado jumping on the end of the line. It chowed the mackeral fished on the surface.
Shane struggled with the fish which was hooked in the back, and a tense 20 minutes later, it was i.d.b. Then Mark got his fish, on a daisy chain (pink), followed by young Luk, fishing with a silver number 4 MYDO Baitswimmer. Shane stuck the GoPro in the water for the fish’s final moments…
After the third fish, we were beat, Mark and I had hooks in the foot and leg respectively, and we were banged and bruised all over…home time!
Not only are dorado super fun to catch, they are also the tastiest fish to braai, fry or grill. And at 6kg’s, these fish are barely a year old. They grow really quick and reach sexual maturity in 6 months!
Their numbers have definitely dropped overall, they used to come in the hundreds, but each year in summer, we are treated to their acrobatic displays down here on the KZN South Coast. They are great to tag, being hardy and resistant.
Musselcracker on light tackle: Video
Photo 1: Robin Beatty, Jarda Kolar, Renske Massing, Brian Lange, Michael Moye and Candice Kolarova with 15kg Musselcracker caught with Niteshift Charters, Umzimkulu Marina, Port Shepstone (c) Xona
The 3:30am call time was difficult to process into action, but we did, and our morning crew featuring Jarda Kolova (CZ), Robin Beatty (Aus) and Renske Massing (Ned) found themselves heading slowly down river in the pitch dark. Clouds meant that first light was slow in coming, and after checking the launch through the gloom, we went for it.
Brian Lange steered us out of the mouth and parallel to the sandspit, at full tilt. 55 Seconds and a bunch of foamies later, and we were on the backline, rigging baits. The ‘couta still make it down to the Kwazulu Natal South Coast, and Feb is normally a good month for them, so we went straight for mackeral rigged on MYDO baitswimmers, MYDO stripswimmers with fillets, a daisy chain and a surface bait rigged with a float. Looking very good we headed north into the current. Jarda, the keenest fisherman in Czeckeslovakia, was flicking a rig of yo-zuri type jigs, and came up with a shoal of tiny red-eye sardines, which we promptly put out live.
There have been very few dorado this year, and only a few ‘couta have been coming out (sign of the times?), and after being beaten backwards by the strong current, we turned around and headed for the reefs just south of Sheppy, and dropped anchor. Light line fishing for soldiers and rockod in the current, is challenging and heaps of fun. Jarda started off with a few and soon we wee all catching delicious red soldiers. At 26 metres or so, these reefs often produce gamefish so we had three trap sticks flopping around out the back, when a nice little Hammerhead Shark came to investigate. We pulled the daisy chain rigged with redeyes away quickly enough, but he made short work of the fresh sardine on the outrigged rod and before long, Jarda was having a good old sweat.
Then Renske felt something on her 6kg line light tackle rig, an Okuma 555s and a beautiful Daiwa estuary type rod. She pulled and pulled, and the fish pulled and pulled. Brian mentioned Musselcracker due to the way it was fighting, and with about a 2kg drag, it looked to be a long and anxious haul. Remember, we had Jarda on the Hammer still, so crossed lines and burnoffs were on the cards. Eventually, after a good 15 minute fight, Renske popped up this beautiful Musselcracker (Poenskop, Black Steenbras). It was her first and it was quite deep, so we put it in the hatch as we released the Hammer, and packed up heading for home before 8am!
Watch the video of the action here…
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