A couple of mornings ago I walked down to the mouth at sunrise to go gather some inspiration for this report with a 10wt in hand. The weather was looking perfect as I paddled my kayak through the shallow low neap tide estuary in order to cross over to the south bank. I met up with Andy Coetzee and mates returning from their last first light session of their visit to the mouth. .
With great disappointment in his eyes, he looked at me shaking his head saying words that I wish I never heard.
After reading about his incredible stories on fishing our Thongaland paradise over the last 30 years, I think coming from anyone else it would not have hit as hard. For Andy to tell me that our oceans have been emptied, this really got both my heart to sink and my blood to boil at the same time!
Sadly, over a couple of days fishing, they only had half a handful of chases and not a single hook-up.
For me too, the last two weeks felt like fishing in a washing machine with absolutely no fish around at the mouth.. At least I still saw some GT’s in the waves earlier in the month, enough to keep my dreams alive!
For Andy though, his dreams were shattered, having amazing memories of what the mouth was like 20 years ago. Apparently the average morning session saw at least 10 -15 big GT chases in a single morning session at the mouth.
This all just made me realize again how special and precious every single big GT left in our oceans are! Guys we really need to protect our oceans! Now more than ever, we need to handle our catches with care and please release them safely!
As I mentioned above, the last two weeks were really dead! I blame this on weather conditions that were crazy with a pretty consistent south wind for 10 days. The wind maxed out one morning with gusts of about 50kts, definitely not the norm on the Thongaland coast.
Generally the south winds are great as they bring swell and create currents that wash baitfish out of their protection among the rocks and push them into the bays where gamefish can drive them into the shallows. It seems like the last two weather systems were simply just too big. It was chaotic!
The beginning of the month reports came in of some large GT’s caught on bait at Bhanga Nek as well as some decent Rock Salmon in the lakes.
It seems like the weather is settling a little bit before the next cyclone is predicted to start forming of Madagascar around the 5th of March. This will more than likely again produce some swell and suck in lots of air from the south. Conditions around the mouth are looking great with a good sandy bay formed again to the north and some lovely gulley’s washed open on the south bank.
Keep those 10 – 12wt’s wet and please drop me an email if you need any advice or are planning on visiting Kosi at info@kosionfly.co.za
