The day had finally arrived for the first KZN Fishing League event for 2011 to kick off. It was the perfect morning, blue skies, birds humming and excellent water conditions. Registrations were under way in record time and a briefing was given by Ronald. Jackie assisted the distribution of the latest order of the KZN Shirts. Very soon the new owners were doing several fashion parades. The 47 strong KZN Fishing members were ready to hit the water.

Some opted to put out bigger baits at the point and some preferred the bay to the South.

 

It was not long before the first fish were landed. Rishi who choose to fish the ledges on the South was first to put some scores on the board landing himself a 54cm Shad. Only a few short moments later, his second cast lands him a Salmon also of 54cm. This resulted in a sudden surge of anglers to the southern point, with the other guys changing tactics and wanting in on some of the action. It did not take long before Freddy lands himself a Lessor Sand Shark of 71cm, but unfortunately after this the tide had pulled back and all that came out in that area for the rest of the day was some good quantities of weeds. Soon after the Sandie though the action swung a little further north where Vinesh landed a Blacktail.

 

With all of the action having taken place on the South side Vischal tried his level best to even out the scores by landing a 71cm Lessor Sand Shark. Everything goes relatively quite for the next few hours with nothing being landed. Avesh is now on a mission moving along the ledges trying to put some points on his score card. With much determinations he successfully hooks and lands himself 2 Catface Rockcods, one of 47cm and one of 35cm. Pictures taken and safely released. He then proceeds to land a Blacktail and a Wrasse.

 

 

Through this all our ever intrepid webmaster Ronald never once tired of trying to convince us that he was only moments away from landing his big Grey. True to only one of his promises though, by 11 am all that the anglers saw of him was his rear end as he bravely snorkeled the rock pools, also with no results.

After lines in was called at 1pm, by which time our faithful Nic already had the fire going the guys, all gathered around for some well earned drinks and some good discussions. David was kind enough to man the fire and must have been flipping chops and sausage for almost 2 hours. A quick debrief of the day’s events was given by Ronald who then handed proceedings over to Jan to announce the winner of the “Most Species” competition. The prize of R340.00 went to Avesh who managed 4 species.

After the prize giving it was hot debates, cool drinks and a demo of the Arachnid braids strength over great food and a deadly sauce supplied by Cornel. It seems we now have a whole brigade of hot sauce makers in the ranks of KZN Fishing. A cook off may be needed in the future to determine the real “King of the Chilli.”

Overall a great day was had by all. It was encouraging to see such a fantastic turnout for the first event with many anglers having to travel a long way to make it. It was also great to see most of the anglers kitted out in their KZN Fishing attire. We looked like a truly competent group of fisherfolk even if we didn’t land the great monsters we had hoped for.

After the success of this event, our second league event to be held on 2nd April promises to be another one for the books. For all those who didn’t make it this time, it’s still not too late to get in on the action. There are another 6 events to be fished before the finals.