White Steenbras in the shorebreak

On a trip spinning for Kob in the Woody Cape area we found ourselves with time to kill over the high tide periods. We noticed that there were fish moving up over the sand mussel beds with the surge, tilting up and tailing for a few seconds over the sand mussels, then swimming back on their sides with the receding wave. These fish were very shy, and couldn’t be easily approached, but were clearly feeding on the sand musels in extremely shallow water. We rigged up our lightest spinning rods with one ounce ball sinkers on a running trace and a 1/0 barbless circle hook, which we baited up with fresh sand mussels dug up from the beach. We stood well back from the water and cast our baits into the surge where the fish were feeding. The surge would move the baits around, leaving them high and dry at times between waves, and also washing them into the trench behind the shorebreak at times. These dynamic moving baits were picked up by both blacktail and white steenbras in water not more than 30cm deep at times. The fight that these fish put up on super light tackle, and in such shallow water was amazing. They would run hard in their attempts to reach deeper water. This provided us with much entertainment during the high tide periods when we couldn’t effectively spin for the kob, due to the banks being too deep to wade to. It is amazing how the fish have grown confidence in difficult to access areas, due to the beach driving ban. They are behaving like fish do on remote tropical atolls.

Above is a pic of Chris Schoultz and Paul Cowley with a couple of blacktail which were caught in the shorebreak with a rolling bait off a sandy beach. These fish have obviously also adapted their feeding habits, and were hunting sand mussel in the shallows.