While visiting my folks over the
past long weekend, we spent some time at the mouth of the Goukamma river. I had
great grunter fishing there on previous occasions. While on a bit of a recce on
Friday afternoon, we saw tailing fish everywhere. We decided to give it a go
the next day and hopefully catch one or two. On Saturday 23rd March,
my Dad and I headed to the Knysna lagoon where we pumped a few cracker prawns. From
previous experiences, the fish in the river pulled their noses up to any other
bait, so it was definitely worth the effort.
It was a spring low tide, so
while I had some time to kill, I went for a quick but successful sinker dive. The
river mouth was very close to where I had been diving so my Dad and I quickly
stopped there to see what we were dealing with. On arrival, we saw a few fish
tailing in the channel and when we got closer, we were shocked to see how many
fish were in the water. Our original plan was to only fish from 4pm, but here
the fish were… at midday! This opportunity was just too good to pass up so we
hightailed it to the house and collected the gear. I had rigged up two light
spinning rods the night before, so we were ready in a flash.
Armed with a few live prawns, we
waded into the channel and flicked them out. On my first cast, I went on with a
lovely grunter that gave a great fight on the light tackle. I had just landed
the fish when my Dad went on with a really good fish that gave him a run around
before getting it to the bank. With two fish for the pot, we decided to release
any other that we caught. The fish were still feeding well, despite the
disturbance we had caused, so we waded out to the same spot and like dejavu, we
both hooked up. The tussle that these fish give is really great, especially on
light gear. With 2 released fish, we were pretty happy with the results. It did
seem that after the fish were released, the others in the area became a bit
more skittish. They were swimming all around us, but spooked quickly. About every
4th or 5th cast would result in a bite instead of shot
for shot. We were not to perturbed by this as any more fish was a bonus.
At about 4pm, we decided to call
it an afternoon and head home for a well-deserved whiskey. We had managed to
catch 9 grunter (average 2-3kg) between us, missing 2 more right at the bank.
What this day taught me was to always be prepared as you never know when an
opportunity might present itself.
