Kayak fishing South Africa - Durban

About a week later, I came back to Durban and this time made contact with Brett Challenor, the owner of Stealth kayaks (I’d like to thank Eyal Abro for making all the connections for me). We set out to go fishing at uMhlanga Rocks, a suburb at northern Durban.
This time we didn’t have a wave breaker and we launched from an open beach, with 1.5-2m surf waves. Again, I’ve got the Stealth EVO 465, my favorite so far.
Brett told me to go over the first break (just low foam) and wait for him before I try to go over the pipeline. That’s exactly what I did, but I lost concentration and a heavy foam wave flipped me over. Well, that surely made me angry… I climbed back to the kayak, waited to what seemed to be a pause between breaks and paddled out as hard as I could. I almost made it, when I saw a big one rising, and crushing right on top of me. I flipped over, but my toe was caught in the footrest. I struggled a bit, getting dragged after the kayak, until the footrest was pulled out of its place and I was freed, but swimming after the kayak and paddle (that I released while trying to free myself).
Brett saw all that and came to help and after a minute or so I was back on the kayak, checking I’ve got everything on me (a hat and more important, the camera in the pocket of my pants). That’s was it! This time I waited patiently till the pause between the waves and paddled out, Brett came to fix the footrest and we were able to start what we came for – Fishing!!
Before we went out, I took out my camera for a picture and turned it on – nothing happened, tried again, with the same result. Only then I remembered that I’ve left the battery in the charger… Luckily, Brett brought his Canon D-10.

We started jigging Sabiki for live bait and soon enough we had a couple of mackerels, which we rigged to a medium treble hook. While we were waiting for a strike, we went on catching live bait, mostly mackerels, but some Chads (Trolusim) as well.
For some time nothing really happened, even the bait fish got tired…Until line was getting out of my reel – not a strong, fast strike, but slow, graduate pulling of line. I took the rod, waited a few seconds, tightened the drag and pulled to set the hook. The thing on the other side was heavy, very heavy and didn’t even move by the pull – it only went on swimming slowly but steadily. I tightened the drag some more and tried to pull him up, without any result but an acing back. After 5 minutes, one of the guys went past me, he saw me and told me it’s probably a Rugged Toothed shark, they’re big and behave like that. After 5 more minutes of futile attempts, I cut the line and returned disappointed to Brett.

We kept fishing, but even the mackerels disappeared, but I managed to catch a small red Sparid (Farida) and rigged it as live bait. Meanwhile we came over a group of Shad fish (similar to Gombar), which took the Sabiki, but were too small to keep and too big to use as bait.
The Shads make an interesting story of fisheries management – in the 70’s, there was a big decline in the population of this fish, so the government made bag and size limits, so now you can only take 10 of them, bigger than 30cm. That law helped the population to increase again and now there are more than plenty.
That fish is very aggressive and the Sabiki rig is too thin for them and they tear off the hooks. After an hour I’ve got no hooks left from a 7 hooks rig.
Meanwhile, my poor bait fish was dragged behind the kayak, floating and I thought it’s time to replace it with a fresh one, when I’ve heard a splash from behind and saw something diving next to it. Next thing the reel gave line again… Another shark…

This time I was determined to lift it to the surface, to see how big it was. I tightened the drag and struggled it for another 10 minutes, till the line broke and I almost fell backwards from the kayak.
It was late enough for me and time to head out and face the waves again. We paddled towards the surf, this time I was looking with great care to time the waves. The surf is usually big here, but because it’s ocean swell, there’s enough time between each wave and timing is everything here. I came as close as I could to the breaking point and just as a wave went by me, I paddled as hard as I could towards the shore. Again, I nearly made it, till a cheeky wave came behind me and took me surfing. I braced as good as I could, but felt the kayak slipping from me. Luckily, the footrests keep you attached to the kayak and I managed to stay on top (afterwards the guys at the beach told me they couldn’t believe that I’ve stayed on).
That’s it for now, I hope to have at least another fishing session before I’m leaving these beautiful country and ocean.
Thanks again to Brett and Eyal at Stealth kayaks.