The past two days off Durban have had rough and choppy seas.
On Tuesday we started out with very nice flat seas but it was not long before the North Easter started blowing and we ended up with a short 2m+ swell. The water surface temperature was averaging 20.5 deg. C.
On Wednesday the swell was averaging 3m out in the deep with the occasional sets over 4m and very close, not nice seas at all. Closer in-shore the swells were around 2m+. The water surface temperature was up 3 deg. C from the day before averaging at 23.5 deg. C. The NE wind was howling and we had an extremely strong S-N current making fishing very difficult.
On Tuesday we went out for a 5hr session to try for some Natal Snoek (Queen Mackerel) along the northern beaches but no matter what we tried we could only get Shad and the Shad were thick, the area next to Blue Lagoon looked like Bamboo City with all the guys fishing on the beach. After we had caught several Shad which is not what we wanted we decided to move off and went out deeper where we hooked up one Eastern Little Tuna, and then further out we had a reel scream with a big fish on which we lost, I think it was a large Bonnie or Yellowfin Tuna, this happened again later and we also lost the fish.
We then did some bottom fishing and landed a nice sized Rockod.
On Wednesday also on a 5hr session I found it very difficult and with the strong current and huge swell and we really struggled to get our drift right and stay on our marks and ended up losing a large Geelbek at the boat and landing a nice Englishman.
These conditions are always frustrating because you work so hard for a little result.
There are a lot of whales around at the moment. The Gannets are aplenty and they are all so full of sardines that they can hardly fly, and you see them dive bombing into the water regularly.
