KZN Fishing Report
By : The Kingfisher 12 May 2017
The weather over the past week has giving most of our anglers chance to go wet a line and been somewhat productive as there have been a couple of reports of decent fish coming out on and off shore . The main highlight of the week has been the copious amounts of big Couta being caught up North and down South .
Ski Boat
Starting up North around Sodwana Bay fishing has been rather productive with reports of decent Couta , Wahoo and Tuna being caught off the Paddle Ski ' s as well as off the Boats . The
- majority of the bigger fish being caught have been picking up dead and live Bonnies . When fishing with a bigger bait such as this , one would have to up size on hooks due to the size of the baits and maybe consider using a darker hook .
St Lucia and Cape Vidal have also been rather productive with large amounts of big Couta and Tuna coming out as well as a few Sailfish ! When targeting these bigger fish , heavier tackle is required as you trawl bigger lures and bigger baits and need a reel that has a strong enough drag to trawl the bigger lures . A lot of anglers who use a heavier main line will also have at least 300m of braid as backing as they
REPORT do not have much spool capacity using a heavier line and targeting a fish as fast and aggressive as these especially a Sailfish , having braid is a good option .
Moving to Richards Bay , fishing has been about the same here as everywhere else with good reports of Couta and Tuna coming out of the Paddle Ski ' s and Boats . There have also been reports of Sailfish in the area picking up baits intended for the Couta and Tuna . Spoon whipping continues as the shoal size Couta still can ’ t leave the spoons alone .
Moving a bit further South from Tugela mouth to Zinkwazi , apart from the Couta coming out there have been some very nice size Dagga coming out in the evenings as well as early mornings and late afternoons . The majority of these Dagga have been caught on live bait and big Chokka baits fishing on the bottom . When fishing for Dagga , don ’ t be shy to use an abnormally large hook as many anglers use hooks up to 12 / 0 in size due to the huge mouths that Dagga have .
The whole Umdloti area has been one of the most productive areas on our coastline with plenty of huge Couta being caught almost every day for the past week . 90 % of the Couta have been caught on bait of which Bonnies and Wala Wala were the preferred bait . Larger and heavier traces are being used now that our anglers know what they ’ re up against in terms of the size of the fish . Our local water has also been rather productive with quite a few Couta , Tuna as well as some Snoek on the backline coming out . Majority of the Snoek are being caught on fillets and small bullet spoons as usual . The majority of the Couta coming out our local water are shoalies making them rather easy to catch as they pick up almost anything you put in the water . Whipping spoons for them seems to be
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