Location: Kwazulu-Natal south coast on the east-coast of South Africa. Event: the annual "sardine run" - they're actually Pilchards, and described by national geographic as the "greatest shoal on earth". This year's event lining up to be possibly one of the most spectacular 'runs' in dozens of years - with shoals stretching over 300km (yes, 300 km of sardines!!!!).
For those of you who relish the pull and run of a dogfish or hound-shark, or who have spent the money on a charter to go offshore to target the blues - give some consideration to some of the tangles you'll see on this footage - these are mostly all super-large "grey" sharks - typically deep oceanic Grey sharks that venture into the surf zone for the sardines, plus Dusky Sharks, Zambezi's (Bull-sharks), Blackfins, Tigers, Bronze Whalers, Spinners, and an assortment of super-sized flatfish, as well as various gamefish - Spanish Mackerel (Cuta), Kingfish, Queenfish, Garrick, Shad (Bluefish/Tailor) etc.
Also impressive is the beating the modern generation "Grinders" can take- these are mostly the 5000's series, typically spooled with nothing less than 600m of 80lb braid, but ideally you want to be armed with something holding 900m-1000m 80lb braid to avoid the risk of getting spooled.
I suppose the closest one might get to having a similar land-based arm-stretch would be if you could connect with a large Porbeagle or Bluefin tuna, somewhere off a deep-water point on the west coast.
Re: Sardine run shark mahem @ASFN Fishing #fishing
Sun Jun 27, 2021 2:45 pm
Wow, thanks for sharing, some amazing fishing. Only getting back into it after a few years off and this gets my motivation pumped once i pull the next tiny pollack, hehe
Re: Sardine run shark mahem @ASFN Fishing #fishing