South Africa part 2 - The Durban Harbor lucky thirteen

Ken and I met Josh and Eli at our hotel in downtown Durban in the afternoon of Tuesday, March 12th. It felt good to have the four of us together! We had driven through some rain on the way back, but other than a little wind it looked like the skies would be clear for fishing. That was good, because we packed up the cars and drove down to the marina to meet our charter captain for the next three days of saltwater fishing. We went with Just Fishing Durban, and TK was our captain. I highly recommend them if you're in the area.

http://www.justfishingdurban.co.za/

Our plan was to fish Durban Harbor the first day, and then bottom fish offshore reefs the following two days. We signed the boat's manifest and headed out from the marina.

We followed the unwritten rules of species fishing by starting out with sabikis tipped with bait to catch as many species as possible. We didn't have many targets in the harbor other than spotted grunter (a grunt with spots and pointy lips). We were content to catch whatever new fish showed up. My first three were a jumbo anchovy, an extremely slimy ponyfish, and a small jack that prompted several hours of inappropriate jokes having to do with jacks being on and jacks being off. I can't stress enough how slimy those ponyfish were, and I'm sorry but I will not repeat the jack being off joke here.

Orangemouth Anchovy (Thryssa vitrirostris) - new hook & line species #577

Common Ponyfish (Leiognathus equulus) - new hook & line species #578

Malabar Trevally (Carangoides malabaricus) - new hook & line species #579

The wind kept pushing us into the middle of the harbor, so TK moved us close to some of the harbor walls to slow down our drift and give us a chance to fish structure. We thought we might get a few benthic species up close to the wall, but there really wasn't much action there.

Photo courtesy of Josh Leisen.

We kept drifting and moving spots, sometimes near walls and sometimes near ships that were moored. Slowly but surely our species count kept going up. My next three new ones were another grunt, a handsome porgy, and a horse mackerel that took some ID work when I got home from the trip.

Olive Grunter (Pomadasys olivaceus) - new hook & line species #580

Cape Stumpnose (Rhabdosargus holubi) - new hook & line species #581

Cape Horse Mackerel (Trachurus capensis) - new hook & line species #582

It's safe to say we prefer fishing in pristine natural environments, but sometimes it's interesting to pursue our hobby in the extreme opposite. Durban Harbor certainly fell under that category. We saw ships of all shapes and sizes coming and going from the harbor mouth.

At this point I put my sabiki away and switched to a single hook with a bigger piece of bait and a heavier sinker. I hoped this might attract the attention of larger croakers or small rays or sharks. It attracted a lot of small nibbles - probably from a few of the species I had already caught - but eventually I hooked something, a juvenile kob. These are one of the iconic sport fish of South Africa, and they grow to enormous size.

Dusky Kob (Argyrosomus coronus) - new hook & line species #583

The sun finally set, and TK suggested that we move over to a shoal in a different part of the harbor and anchor up to finish our night. The scenery reminded me a lot of the shipping yards in Long Beach.

Night fishing produced a new round of species. I finally caught my spotted grunter. A short while later something big took my bait and put up a decent fight before I got it boatside. It was a butterfly ray, which looked almost identical to its California cousin. This catch does require an asterisk, because the hook was about 4 inches away from it's mouth. If you've ever watched a ray do its forward and reverse maneuvers while positioning its mouth over a bait, you'll understand how they can end up hooked outside the mouth like that. I'm counting it as a fair catch. The last fish for me at this spot was a cool one, the jarbua terapon.

Spotted Grunter (Pomadasys commersonnii) - new hook & line species #584

Backwater Butterfly Ray (Gymnura natalensis) - new hook & line species #585

Jarbua Terapon (Terapon jarbua) - new hook & line species #586

We thought that was the end of our first day, but when we arrived back at the marina TK said it was fine if we fished a while longer from the boat. He mentioned cutlassfish being a possibility. We fished small hooks and small baits, which produced even more species. The cutlassfish didn't make an appearance, but we didn't mind. I added two more porgies and my first fish from the moonfish family. The moonies reminded us a lot of freshwater tetras we caught in the Amazon a few years earlier.

Cape White Seabream (Diplodus capensis) - new hook & line species #587

Goldsilk Seabream (Acanthopagrus berda) - new hook & line species #588

Silver Moony (Monodactylus argenteus)  - new hook & line species #589

Despite a late start and windy conditions, our first saltwater day was a resounding success. I ended up with 13 new species, and the other guys did equally well. We each caught a few fish that someone else in the group didn't get, but we figured over the next few days we'd fill in those gaps.