Sea conditions remained steadfast for much of last week, yielding good results but unfortunately the rain did bring with it flooding rivers and within a short period of time, the coast took on a brown look that stretched quite a distance out to sea.
Once the dirty water settled a bit, the ginger beer colour was ideal for targeting salmon or kob.
Shoal and snapper salmon were soon on the bite at some river mouth areas, and a few anglers enjoyed some hectic action.
Other species caught in the discoloured water were grunter and a few big stumpies.
A number of really big grunter have already been caught.
The Durban beachfront proved to be productive for grunter plus several big fish were caught in the bay off boats.
Grunter and stumpies caught along the beaches and at river mouths have all been caught in the dark.
Prawn and sealice have been popular baits but several big grunter have been caught using sardine bait.
The summer off-shore angling season has so far produced some nice dorado and yellow-fin tuna, the backline areas have also managed to produce the odd big garrick.
Conditions have not always been that great, especially for those that launch through the surf, plus the dirty water did mean that the in-shore fishing came to an end for a while.
But it is still early days and hopefully this season will be a good one.
The bottom anglers continue to catch some good sized bottom fish and again, there were several cracker caught last week.
There are some big rockcod to be found on some reefs as well, and those anglers fishing the deeper reefs have found sizeable Captain Fine rockcod on the bite along with some geelbek.
Shad poachers were not be deterred by the rain and continue to ignore the closed season, catching as many shad as possible.
With the big blue shad now in local waters, it is very tempting to target these big fish but if the volume of fish being caught per person continues, the breeding stock will be under pressure and the shad numbers will continue to dwindle.
Gill nets set across the Tugela River are still a big problem. Sad, but this is happening along the entire coastline at present with no thought at all for conservation.
I was watching a fishing programme last week, filmed at Port St Johns on the Wild Coast.
This is a very popular fishing destination and at this time of the year big garrick and kob are targeted.
The filmmakers were shocked to discover that anglers were using several large treble hooks.
These guys were jigging garrick that had moved into the river to spawn and nothing was being done about it.
Up to 40 garrick had been jigged in one day. Surely this will have an effect on the garrick population.
The future of our fish populations must be protected but who will stand up to stop the rampant poaching along our coastlines?
