BAIT
How bait use and availability has changed over the years By Erwin Bursik and Bruce Mann (Senior Scientist at ORI)
W
HEN the ver y first “Crocker” ski was launched off the Durban beachfront with a determined angler on board, drawn to the abundant fish activity out beyond the reaches of a shore-bound angler, he relied on bait as one of his few methods of tempting a gamefish to strike. The only bait available to anglers at that time was frozen pilchards, aka sardines. The sight of the long, beautiful “silver fish” lying on the deck of the few Crocker skis when they beached soon persuaded more and more anglers to venture out beyond the breakers. Back then the silver fish was called barracuda — incorrectly as it later turned out — and it became known as a magnificent fighting and table fish. Today we know it as a king mackerel or ’cuda. Those who opted to go to sea did so on ver y basic, homemade ski-boats powered by 2.5hp Seagull motors or any other small outboard that started to become available in South Africa after the end of World War II. Their methods for targeting ’cuda were rudimentary, to put it mildly. Tackle consisted of either cotton hand line the commercial line-
fishermen used for bottomfishing, or the then popular centre-pin or Scarborough reels on bamboo rods which the surf fishing fraternity of that era used. Albie Upton, a doyen of the early days of boat fishing, related some of their methods to me: “We took a single 9/0 Limerick hook tied onto a length of baling wire, then attached this ‘trace’ to either the cord or flax line which was all that was available at the time.” Of course this was long before the advent of nylon line. A whole pilchard was then impaled — sideways through its head — on the 9/0 hook, and then was either drifted or trolled. The trolled pilchard spun like a propeller behind a slow-trolling skiboat. The strike by a ’cuda was very exciting as they smashed the pilchards being trolled four- to five metres behind the boat. A hookup, especially on the cord handline, resulted in an incredible fight — essentially a tug of war. The few ’cuda landed were shoved into a hessian sack (streepsak) and pushed to the bow deck area where buckets of sea water were thrown over them periodically to keep them cool. These old timers’ feedback was very minimal regarding other types of baitfish that were available to the “offshore”
anglers. It seems they mainly caught fish off the beach (shad) and froze them to take to sea or else secured bait from the seine netters who pulled their nets in the Durban back beach area — around today’s Vetch’s or Addington beaches. Shad were big in those days and trolling a 1.5-2kg shad on a single 9/0 hook didn’t land too many ’cuda but resulted in huge numbers of bite offs. You must also remember that because shad was a valuable food source for many people, they were difficult to obtain as bait. The other fish the netters caught in fair numbers was the bony (glassnosed anchovy). In the old days they were caught from August to November in discoloured water. Now visualise sticking a 9/0 through the head of a four-inch bony and trying to troll it! It didn’t make a very attractive ’cuda bait. With the sort of tackle available at the time one just could not target baitfish as we do these days. Now let’s take a leap forward in time to the point where tackle selection improved and nylon line became available during the early 1950s. Things began to change dramatically in so far as trace make up and bait presentation was concerned, and that enabled offSKI-BOAT July/August 2020 • 15
