Plenty big tuna off Durban

Plenty big tuna off Durban

We have been told of excellent tuna fishing off Durban this past week. The tuna action has been good both in terms of size and numbers. We have also heard of good couta fishing off Zinkwazi.

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Over these last few weeks KZN has managed to kick off an excellent off-shore season. This last week has not changed with anglers catching incredible fish, including couta. Now would be the time to rig your lures up with steel trace as the wahoo and early season couta really start to arrive. These fish have incredibly sharp teeth which almost always manage to snip through the nylon or fluorocarbon leaders.

There have been plenty reports of dorado and tuna around the St. Lucia and Maphalane area. These fish are coming out in boat-loads and hopefully should make their way down the coast. With the large amounts of these pelagic fish around, it is always good to keep an eye on your hatches. When the dorado are on the bite, it is easy to lose track of how many go into the hatch, so to be safe, remember to check the hatches every now and again to make sure that you are within your bag limit and you are not taking more than you need.

Our reports of big couta are mainly from Cape Vidal and Zinkwazi. These fish being caught on Rattlers in the metallic purple colour being trawled quite quickly. The Kingfisher Rattler range of lures are incredibly good at swimming at high speeds as well as low. Live bait has also been working well for anglers with a live maasbanker doing the trick.

Around the Durban area the tuna catches have been unreal, with some boats catching up to five fish over 20kg in one session. This is really becoming an incredible season. It is incredibly good to see that there are literally thousands of healthy 5-8kg summer yellowfin tuna around as well.

Umdloti has been producing some excellent fish and will begin to do so more frequently as we get deeper into our summer. This is brilliant news for our paddle-ski anglers. Anglers trawling Rattler 120s should be rewarded with some excellent fish as this lure has been specifically designed to be trawled behind a ski without taking too much strain on the paddler.

Bottom fishing around the Durban area has unfortunately taken a back seat with anglers being more focused on the vast amounts of gamefish around at the moment. There has been a fair amount of dorado caught off Durban recently, but not too many around the ships. It is only a matter of time before the dorado are in full swing. Konas seem to be working the best for these fish.

Further down the south coast the summer fish are in full swing with dorado, tuna, wahoo and even the odd sailfish being caught in various locations, but in particular in the Shelley Beach area. Down towards Port Edward anglers are being menaced by the amberjack when they are in search for the yellowtail on bottom fishing outfits - live bait once again has been king.


(File Photo: Caroll Hermann)


Twitter - @kingfisherdaiwa @SportswaveAndre


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