Grumpy’s fishing report

For the past week we experienced some bad weather along the coast.

The east wind has hit the coast hard as of yesterday and should be a nuisance until Thursday lunch time.

Despite this some good catches were reported. Long Beach was the winner and gave anglers great galjoen catches on Sunday. The best area to fish is immediately after the Damara Tern breeding area when driving from Swakop towards Walvis Bay. It’s the first of the four turn offs towards Long Beach.

The better catches are usually in that area of the first turn off and one can also harvest your own fresh white mussel in this area. You may take 25 mussels per person if you have a valid recreational fishing permit. In winter the mussels migrate a little deeper so be prepared to get wet. In summer the mussels migrate to the high water mark area so at low tide one can easily dig them out of the ground.

There were some kob also caught around the Wlotzkas area but mostly galjoen were targeted. Some blacktail also took the anglers bait.

Conditions will be great for the Galjoen Derby on 2 July. The entry fee for the competition is N$140 per angler and the winning prize is a whooping N$20 000. The prize giving will take place opposite Spar Oceanview with lots to do for the whole family. A potjie kos competition and braaibroodjie competition with live music forms part of the activities on offer.

The Zeila Wreck is also a very good area to fish for galjoen and steenbras and there one can also get your fresh white mussel.

Here’s a tip. When you want to open a mussel, cut the mussels flesh straight through while it is still in its shell. Then one has two halves that have a large surface area and thus gives off more smell to the fish, as to opening the mussel and taking out the flesh and then cutting it in half. This makes a huge difference. Try it you might be pleasantly surprised.

Another tip is to dip your muscle flesh into aniseed. We don’t know if it masks the human smell but one thing is for sure, it works!

Grys Duintjie and Trappies also gave their share of galjoen this past week. This area is just to the north of Hentiesbaai and is a very popular area to target both edibles and in-edibles.

The conditions for this weekend looks super good for targeting steenbras in the Canopy area as well as at Maketus turn. Try a bit of chicken liver (yes the ones we fry up in a pan) because steenbras love them and lots of steenbras are caught with this bait. Give it a go.

Tight lines!