Africa Wild

I was born on the coast, so visited the beach since I could walk and salt water fishing was part of that life.

I love Salt water fishing, BC!

But mostly night fishing where you lay a line out and sit in a camp chair with your "condiments"....

Great fun for me and my Dad in the old days, but a bit more risky now!

Looking for salmon, mostly, but got the irritating sea barbel (Both types)!

RP

Kob fishing is a little hairy nowadays as night time on our beaches isn’t the best place to be, but if in a group it’s a jol.

Give me a shout if you are ever in KZN as I have plenty tackle

Rock and surf angling as it’s known, is on the calendar for me 5 months of the year and sometimes 6 if the sardines arrive on the KZN coast. The rest of the time is split between KNP and Imfolozi, but I do fit work in sometimes

The winter months don’t bring the target market for me, as I’m not into the “hook and cook” which winter brings in KZN. There are parts of the coast which are better in winter, but not in KZN for me, as it’s all about the water temperature vs the targeted species and summer brings the species of interest to me.

On a Saturday morning nearly 2 years ago I was on one of my favourite spots called Errol Hayes, which is between Umkomaas and Scottburgh and caught the Sand Shark below, which created some interest from people on the beach, but the 1 chap seemed overexcited.



The excited chap turned out to be an Australian researcher called Tom Zouch who was doing research on the feeding ecology of apex predators and the fact that mercury poisoning is going to slowly cause damage to these predators.

I’m no scientist, but it turns out that small fish on the coast line all had an element of mercury build up due to pollution and because mercury never leaves the system apex predator’s mercury levels are reaching a stage that’s dangerous to their health.

Tom was majorly frustrated because he didn’t have his kit to take a biopsy and went on to explain that they had been diving and trying for days unsuccessfully on the Aliwal shoal, so I agreed to meet him and his crew on the beach at 5am the next morning to see if I could help out with a subject for the biopsy.

If I had known what waited for me the next day I may not have slept so well

poor Shark... beautiful fish

Fascinating!

Great catch BC!! What happened next?

I arrived at 5am the next morning and to my surprise Tom was there with his biopsy kit, so I was now under pressure to produce something.

10 minutes into the fishing session 2 of my mates decided that the water wasn’t correct and ducked off to another spot leaving me alone with my new Aussie mate, so pressure increased.

5 minutes later my rod was nearly ripped from my hands

Tom immediately got very excited and started fiddling with his biopsy kit, but I was watching the line disappearing from my reel at massive speed, so suggested that he should relax as this could take awhile.

5 minutes later I realised that this was a massive fish, so ignored Tom’s frantic conversion and phoned my mates as I knew that there was no chance in landing a fish of this size with Tom and his gang.


Trying to phone and hang onto the rod


I fish with 600m of braided line as a backing, which has a high breaking strain but has a small diameter, so you can put plenty on the reel and then because one can’t fish directly with braided line on a multiplier reel, one puts about 300m of monofilament on top of the braided line.

The reason for this is that “regulation” maximum mono diameters can’t exceed 0.6mm in diameter, which equates to about 21kg line, but one will only fit about 500m of 0.6mm on the standard reels used for rock and surf fishing, but large fish will “take” all that line fairly quickly, hence the braid to bring the total line length to around 900m

One can break “regulation” and fish with larger diameter mono line, but it’s not really practical, because lines thicker than 0.6mm are difficult to cast, so your bait never makes it to the correct depth.

Half an hour later this fish was about 800m out to sea and I had moved off the “point” to the beach. You can see the “point” in the background where I hooked the fish.



An hour later Olivier Symcox arrived on the beach, who was the blonde on the ESA fishing programme when it first aired on TV and now writes for the fever newspaper on the south coast, so pressure to land the fish increased again.

Another hour later I landed a massive Zambezi. Tom took all his biopsy samples and was seriously excited about the fact it was a male zambi (large males aren’t as common as large females )





After a few pics we safely released him back into the sea and I was stuffed so went for a beer

Brilliant catch there BC