South African Shore Anglers Association

Twenty anglers were invited on the basis of their three year angling ratings from both the Senior and Masters Divisions to join us for trials in Saldahna Bay. We chose the West Coast to fish the trials as the World Angling Championships will be fished in the same area in November 2010. All the arrangements were kindly planned and arranged by Pierre du Preez, SASAA Secretary. The officials and invited anglers stayed in two houses in Jacobs Bay, just north of Saldahna Bay.

Everyone arrived on Thursday 18th March at about 16h00 and a full briefing was held at Pierre's home that evening. A full detailed explanation of the rules, baits, zones, pegs, measurements and times was given to the anglers. There were several questions that were raised and answered as the FIPSM rules and SASAA rules vary so vastly that one can safely describe it as a new way of fishing.

The anglers in the two zones with pegs 20 meters in width apart from one another. They had to cast from dry land with no wading at all. The only time that they could exit their zones was with the permission of a marshal, to either relieve themselves or fight a fish in another person's pegged area. The no wading rule was relaxed to knee height, only if the angler was fighting a fish and had permission from the neighbouring angler and marshal.

The minimum size fish to count was 15cm and as there were no closed season fish, all species counted. The fish were measured and returned to the water alive.  Anglers were not allowed to cast again until their fish measurements were written up on their card and signed off.

Obviously everyone had to scale down in the size of their tackle and hook size because of the restrictions placed on the anglers. The method of conventional angling, i.e. wading to shoulder height  and casting big baits can only be described as extreme angling in comparison to the FIPSM rules and the method in which these trials were fished. However, "when in Rome, do as the Romans do", so all anglers scaled down completely to accommodate the FIPSM rules. The angling times were also restricted to four hours per session and it was decided to fish three days with four hour sessions each day.

On day one we fished just south of Dwarskersbos. The fishing started on the low tide pushing in and the sand sharks bit consistently from the beginning to the end of the session, with each angler averaging about 16 sand shark per score card. There were three West Coast Steenbrass caught towards the latter part of the first days trials, two caught by Colin Scheepers and one by Johan Botha. There was a total of 185.05 points scored with Johan van der Westhuizen attaining the highest score for the day of 19.42 points for 28 sandsharks that he caught.

We were very fortunate to have SASAA executive member Graham Kingsley Wilkens with us as one of our official marshals and he kindly arranged access through the Saldahna Bay Port to Spreeuwalle for day two of the trials. This area normaly produces large schools of sandsharks, eagle rays, duckbill rays and gully sharks. We all had our hopes up very high for day two.

Day two was an early start at 09h00 and within a very short period of time we realised that we were not going to catch too many fish. The water temperature was approximately 13 degrees and after one and a half hours of fishing there were only five sandsharks caught. We decided to stop the fishing and move to Blue Water Bay, which is also in the Langebaan Lagoon in an attempt to get the anglers to catch more fish.

It was quite a logistical manoeuvre to move the anglers and officials to Blue Water Bay and get all the zones set up again. There were a few more fish caught in the new area, but nothing like the catches of the first day. At Blue Water Bay there were a few eagle rays caught amongst the sandshark. There was a total of only 25.85 points caught scored on the second day with Charl Marais taking the day with a top score of 4.07 points.

Sunday morning saw us on day 3 fishing at a restaurant on the beach which is just South of Dwarskersbos. There was quite a bit of seaweed in the water but this did not dishearten the anglers enthusiasm.  The catches were again very poor and we decided to again move to a new area, being the same place as day one at Dwarskersbos. The area was very shallow because we were fishing it on the low tide and it was full of weed, thus making it difficult to catch any fish. An official decision was made after an hour and we moved to an area just north of Vredenburg called Pelican Beach, where we again set up the pegs and zone areas to fish the final hour. The end of day three saw only a total of 32.63 points being caught with the top angler again being someone new. The top angler for day three was Colin Scheepers with a total of 6.81 points.

It was now time to calculate the final points for the trials and get together each individual angler's total points over the last three year period from the respective divisions in which they had fished so that we could select a Protea Team to represent South African Shore Angling at the World Angling Championships in November 2010.

The selectors for this task were previously elected by the executive committee and they were myself, Dirk Lukas, Graham Kingsley Wilkens, Terry Boucher and Pierre du Preez.

To culminate the end of this three day trial period, we had a scrumptious braai at Pierre du Preez home in Jacobs Bay after which the Protea Team was announced. The team to represent South Africa is as follows:

We all returned home on Monday morning after having shared a wonderful time and experience together. The organisers also learned valuable lessons in their test run before having to organise the World Angling Championships in November 2010. Thank you to everyone who made the trials a resounding success.

David Goldberg
President SASAA