I Sneaked down during the week last week for a quick little session in a nearby Transkei estuary. It was just a one day trip, with six hours to fish. I am trying to make the most of what is left of the warm summer water, and get as much estuary fishing in as I can.
Each time I have gone down in the last few months I have tried a different river. I have been amazed at how productive every single one has been. The last three rivers that I have fished have been first time visits for me, and I have been going in without much information, apart from studying them on Google Earth. They all seem to have very similar characteristics though, and are pretty easy to adapt to from a fishing perspective.
My first fish on this last trip was a Gt, which took a Rapala X-Rap Walk and gave me a great fight on my 8lb outfit. It is always great at a new spot when that first fish smashes your lure, and you know that the river is going to produce!
I then got into some smaller bigeye kingfish, catching them on surface lures as well. They were awesome, attacking the lure in shoals, trying to shoulder each other out of the way to eat it. The competition factor definitely makes fish far more aggressive when they are in shoals.
None of them were over a kilogram in weight, but they put up a good fight and kept me busy for a while.
When the kingfish action began to slow down I started working the structure along the edges, hoping to entice a river snapper or perch. I got a number of perch this way, but no strikes from river snapper. They are such moody fish, that at times there is almost nothing you can do to get them to show themselves. I guess that is why I love snapper, they have to be one of the most challenging fish to catch regularly in estuaries. The perch kept me well entertained during my efforts for snapper. With plenty of swirls and boils on my slowly worked lures. I got some on the Rapala X-Rap Walk lures and some on Rapala Shallow Shad Rap 7cm worked very slowly. I just cast the lure right up against the rocks/reeds/branches and allow the ripples to fade. Then a small twitch, causing the lure to dive about 10cm and allow it to float to the top again and lie for a few seconds. I repeat this until the lure is a few metres from the original structure before working it back to me with an erratic, but faster twitching retrieve. Many of the strikes from perch come while the lure is lying still on the surface, but quite a few also hit it when it is sub-surface as you stop to let it float up again. I find that there is a better hookup when they hit it below the water than on the top.
Although I didn't get any really big perch, I just find these fish so entertaining, and they give a great account of themselves! As you can see from the pic above I have been experimenting with single hooks and assist hooks on my Shad Raps, and having some success and a lot of fun doing it.
During the middle of the day I changed tactics and started fishing deeper using dropshot and bucktail jigs. I landed a very nice Bartailed gurnard on dropshot, which put up a tremendous fight. After that I got a small Malabar rockcod, also on the dropshot, working it slowly bouncing along the bottom in a channel near some rocks. I then tried a 1/4 oz bucktail jig with an olive tail, which I also slowly bounced along the bottom of a channel, parallel to a rocky ledge on the shore. I soon had a fish on that gave me a great fight, and when I landed it found it to be a kob. I was very pleased with this, as I had been wondering whether there were any kob in the system, and now had it confirmed. Again, it wasn't a monster, but when you are using 8lb tackle everything gives you a great run for your money!
As the afternoon began to cool down again, I went back to surface lures and worked the X-Rap Walk a bit more. I had a splashy strike in the middle of the river, and the fish immediately jumped as I set the hook. I saw the shape and initially thought that it was a springer, but soon realised that it was a seapike, as it didn't have the speed or power of a springer. Seapike are jsut so aggressive and it was quite interesting to see that a fish of this size had hit quite a big lure.
Soon after that I had to pack up and head home, but it had been a great day. In about 6 hours fishing I had landed 13 fish, made up of 7 different species. Nothing that I had caught was going to be breaking any world records, but that is not what it is always about. It is just immensely satisfying to get onto a piece of water and sample what is available for some fun.
I thought I would just share this little experience, as I have noticed quite a bit of interest from UA members recently on estuary fishing, and I want to encourage those that love it to keep at it. It can be an awesome experience, and if pressed I think I would choose this sort of fishing above all others.
