It had been a long winter in the Cape, maybe not in terms of driving rain and icy cold days, but for any artificial lure angler spring has taken its sweet time. For me, time seemed to stand still in the weeks leading up to the long weekend in September. I’d done my research on catching kob on artificials, stocked up on the relevant tackle, and was convinced that my brother and I would cane the fish when we eventually got to our favourite destination.
The day eventually arrived and I picked up my brother from the Cape Town International Airport on our way up to the river. We had a game plan that surely wouldn’t fail us. In the early morning we would throw paddletails for Kob before fishing for Spotted Grunters until high tide; then catch some Garrick on surface lures that had come into the river with the sea water.
Unfortunately, this is not how things panned out.
For two mornings in a row the only thing we caught on paddletails were the rocks on the river bed; an expensive and extremely frustrating exercise. The same two days didn’t even yield one follow on the surface lures when we changed our attention to the Garrick. It was at this stage that we decided to put the lures away, pump some prawns and enjoy the “guarantee” of some grunter action on light tackle.
Well, needless to say, we didn’t catch a single grunter either. However, our reels did scream a couple of times which always gets the blood pumping. The culprits ended up being two juvenile kob (40-50 cm), one Cape Stumpnose (about 30cm) and two baby White Steenbras (35-40 cm).
Finally, the reel really screamed and there was a “proper” fish on the other end. It gave a great fight and I was convinced that I would get the bragging rights for finally landing what we had been targeting. I was wrong, though, as we saw the beautiful black stripes of a slightly bigger steenbras ghost into the shallows. It was 50cm and swam away just as strongly.
On the last morning I decided to go and throw paddletails one last time, just to prove once and for all that this method of fishing doesn’t work. I ran into my usual problems of getting stuck and just when I was about to pack it in got what I thought was a bite. It felt like the bumps I’d read about, but a voice in my sceptical mind said it must have been some structure on the bottom. I persisted for a couple more casts (just in case) and hooked into a fish. The 35cm kob came in without much protest and disappeared into the depths as quickly as it arrived after I removed the hook.
It wasn’t the most successful long weekend I’ve had at the Breede but it was really encouraging to see so many juvenile kob and steenbras, which has both experienced dwindling numbers over the past decade in this system. It bodes really well for the future, and now that I’ve proven to myself that it is possible to catch a kob on artificials, I will be back to hopefully get stuck into a decent size fish.
I’m sorry about the lack of pics, we were so convinced that a “decent” fish was around the corner that we didn’t take any pics of the little guys. Here is one that I snapped last summer and hopefully I’m be able to enjoy catching the same one again this festive season.
… Gareth Stevens
