Although I consider Casino Beach to be a low tide venue, it is actually ideally fished at neap tides. This is when the wave action is not too overpowering and the holes open up nicely. Low tides means a flat beach with fewer holes while high tide means fighting the surf.
So when the tides reached neap (or near neap) on a Wednesday we decided to go for a quick pre-work session. Nick picked me up at 5am and we planned to meat Neill on the beach at sunrise.
Things took a turn for the worse when we reach the beach and I took my rod tube out the car. It was empty! My only hope was that Neill (who lives nearby) had not yet left home and could bring me a spare rod. A quick phone call revealed that he hadn’t yet left home…and that he also wasn’t planning to. Nice Neill, wasn’t this your idea?
Thankfully our phone call (and begging) spurred him into action and he quickly joined us on the beach with a rod.
A standard morning at Casino Beach
Conditions looked ideal bar the chilly air and drizzle – clearly winter is on the way – and there were a lot of small fish around. I got a small wavie as well as a few bastard mullet and Neill pulled out the same. Nick on the other hand somehow blanked, claiming he was fishing big flies and targeting big fish. Ja, ja.
Flies that worked for me were the usual orange and white charlies and salty buggers. Slower strips work better than fast strips as long as you can find a break between waves.
And then it was off to work…
Always needing more fishing we opted to head out again the following morning. This time, being a public holiday, we opted for the Durban harbour as our venue.
I picked Nick up just before 5am, hooked up the boat, and we had launched by sunrise. Our first port of call was kingie corner which I opted to fish with a flipper as the sun snuck up over the horizon. I was soon into a small kingie but sadly it came off during some mockery of Nick.
Nick meanwhile fished sub surface and had a few hits but hooked into nothing. Judging from the structure and number of missed fish I’m assuming that the fish were small. But then a fish is a fish.
A few minutes later I spotted some action on the surface, threw a fly into it, and missed another small kingie. The wind then started to pick up and things went quiet.
We opted to move to springer alley where we positioned ourselves amongst a few other boats (including some other fly fisherman). Sadly things were quiet there as well an no fish came out on bait or fly.
Eventually we moved back to kingie corner hoping the kingies were still around. Sadly they were and as such we opted to call it a day and headed home for a braai and a few of our recently brewed ginger beer. They rock! True story.
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