With the upcoming trip to Sterkfontein looming Nick decided he was in need of some new flies. This saw us heading down to Kingfisher to pick up a few beetles and hoppers for what we were hoping to be some great sight fishing for Yellows. And what would a trip to Durban be without a quick stop in at Durban Harbour to try and bash some Kingfish.
The tide was pushing when we arrived at 7:30am and we started our fishing on the breakwater located close to Point Yacht Club. There were a lot of fish cruising the edge of the pier but I was unable to identify exactly what they were. They did however look like game fish due to their sleek shape and forked tails.
Between Nick and I we had everything covered – I was fishing an intermediate line and made my way through clousers, deceivers, glassies, charlies and salty buggers. Nick on the other hand was fishing the surface with a floating line and tried a variety of flippers and poppers. Sadly however none of the visible “game” fish were at all interested in any fly we tossed in front of them.
After half an hour without any luck we moved off the breakwater and on to the sand bank to try our luck on the drop off. There was a lot of surface activity around but sadly we were still unable to entice anything on to our flies.
Eventually we caved to the pressure and started fishing the bottom in hope of picking up the ever faithful Bartail Flathead. “Gurney bashing” as we call it is the lowest form of harbour fishing. It basically entails dragging something brown slowly over the sand bank in hope of picking up a Sand Gurnard. No matter what the weather, time of day and tide, you will always catch a gurney. In fact, you may even be so lucky as to pick up a Sole or Grunter in the process.
Ten minutes later we had both netted gurneys and were feeling a lot better about not having blanked. With the bank getting deeper we opted to move back to the breakwater for one final go for some game fish.
Within 5 minutes of climbing back onto the pier the water was boiling with a lot of small fish. Although we could not see what they were a guy on one of the yachts looked overboard and informed us they looked like small Springer. We cast at them furiously for the next 15 minutes but sadly this was in vain. At this point we decided enough was enough, packed up out kit, and headed home.