Durban Legends

DATELINE: FEBRUARY 10, 2023 – DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA

We had three days of fishing left together – Dom would sneak in one extra without me, because he was willing to take a much tighter flight connection than I would risk. Dom had somewhere around 70 new species for the trip, which delighted him, and I was sitting at 32, which delighted me. And of course, I could text people and tell them about my fish, but Dom, without his phone, was stuck in medieval times.

February 8 was another “half and half” day – we fished the morning on the boat, where I was very pleased to finally get an old adversary – the catface grouper. (Guides caught these right in front of me in Tanzania and Zanzibar.)

Oh hell yes.                          

Dom knocked off some solid gamefish, including a huge green jobfish, before, say it with me, he got slammed by a giant grouper and broken off in the rocks.

Dom’s jobfish. The biggest one I’ve ever seen.

The grouper. One of the biggest Dom has never seen. It’s not like I didn’t share his angst – that’s my rod he’s using, and he’s going full thumb.

My personal best on the jobfish. These things are voracious predators.

And a very lost malabar blood snapper.

Lizardfish were everywhere, but these are another ID nightmare.

Oh, and I may have gotten broken off once.

We then landed, got the boat on the trailer, and headed for some famous tidepools – Mission Rocks. There was substantial wildlife on the way.

More zebras.

A wildebeest, which I am certain was eaten by something later that day. Everything eats wildebeest. They’re like the anchovy of the savannah.

I even got a photo of a hyena skulking off into the brush. We also saw a rhinoceros, but he was too far away to photograph effectively.

When we got to the coast, I was stunned. Even a year later, it is difficult to describe this place without drooling on the keyboard. Hundreds of yards of rocks and coral, absolutely crammed with pools and gullies of every size and description, very walkable, except by Dom who slipped and fell once because he wasn’t wearing his white shoes. We would only have a couple of hours because of a rising tide, but it was so perfect I hardly knew where to begin. It was like dropping a six year-old in Disneyland with $9000 in cash and asking them to make a plan in two minutes.

There were some obvious targets – well-marked damselfish that dashed around some of the smaller pools. I pulled out the micro gear and made short work of two of them – the singlebar devil and the dusky damselfish.

The singlebar devil. Not to be mixed up with the single’s bar devil, who was my old buddy Shaun in Columbus.

The dusky damsel. They looked blue underwater.

Dom ran up a huge score working up and down the small pools, but my tendency toward target fixation occupied the rest of my time on the rocks and likely cost me a few species. As I was looking at a blenny hiding under a ledge, a small moray came out and sniffed my bait. It was a snowflake moray. The same snowflake moray that is found in Hawaii, that Jamie has caught and I haven’t. I wasn’t going anywhere, except to get heavier gear.

I left my rod laying across the crevice to mark it and ran back to get my tackle. The return trip was an adventure, because my Loomis escape rod blended perfectly into the rock color and it took me half an hour to find it. The moray was still there, and I dropped a piece of shrimp to it on a #6 hook and a 20 pound leader. Even though it was relatively small, the eel easily rocked me up and bent the hook out. I was heartbroken. But moments later, it reappeared. I went with a heavier hook and line, but the fish was much more cautious. The tide was coming up, but I was convinced I could get the fish.

Mark, acting concerned but more likely bewildered, walked up to check on me. He assessed the situation and said “You need a piece of sardine.” He trotted back, got his bait bucket, and cut me some slices of baitfish, and he did this all with a straight face, even after seeing the eel was about 10 inches long. I baited the hook and the eel came completely out of its hole to eat it. I set hard and flipped the entire beast into the bucket, then threw my body over it so that the eel would have to chew its way through my body cavity to escape. I was that serious.

Take that, Jamie!

After the fish calmed down, but well before I did, we took photos and I bellowed in primal triumph. I immediately texted the photo to Wade and Jamie, who both responded and reminded me that Jamie had the world record on this species. But even that could not ruin my day. We got off the rocks just as they were disappearing. I had 19 new fish so far on this part of the trip, and Dom easily had double that, including that striped galjoen, the redfinger, and now some scorpionfish I’d never seen in my life.

Still, I had the red steenbras.

February 9 would be our last day with Mark, and our second-to-last day fishing together in South Africa. We launched from a proper boat ramp right in Richard’s Bay, and spent a pleasant morning and afternoon hunting the bay. The wind had picked up, so we weren’t going outside, but there was plenty to do. 

We wasted at least an hour on the dock looking at the assorted tropicals roaming around in the pilings.

Unfortunately, most of them turned out to be raccoon butterflyfish – the same ones that live in Hawaii.

Once we got out on the boat, I got dozens of grunters and other assorted tropical bay denizens that I had caught previously, but there were three new species to report. And this is despite me insisting on spending hours trying to catch a butterfly ray, a low-odds proposition that time of year. But I did land the following beasts – 

The slender blaasop – a type of puffer.

The strongspine silverbiddy, which is a mojarra.

And a threadfin silverbelly, which is also a mojarra.

On our way to Durban, we stopped by Mark’s home. He too has a lovely wife and children, and we couldn’t thank him enough for six great days on the water.

Dom, Mark, and Steve. Note that Dom is still smiling even though he had been phoneless for five days.

As with Zander, we have kept in touch with Mark over the year since our trip, and he can always be counted on to send something hysterically funny when I’m the middle of a meeting.

For example …

We got to Durban around dinner time, and checked into a Hilton, the first western-style hotel we had seen in a week. We raced to get dinner and set up for the next day – we would be fishing Durban with highly recommended Captain TK from Mitchell’s Just Fishing Charters. Durban is far enough back to the southwest where we knew we had a good chance at a bunch of new stuff, but it also looked like it was going to be windy.

Morning came quickly, and we took a taxi over to the wharf. TK and deckhand Calim were waiting for us – friendly, knowledgeable, and eager to go. The boat was a comfortable cruiser, and while we were worried about the substantial breeze, TK explained that there were plenty of sheltered spots to hit, even some outside the bay.

We get under way as Calim prepares the rods.

We fished inside the harbor for a couple of hours, catching quite a variety of local estuary creatures. Dom cleaned up, and I got a couple of new ones – 

The Malabar trevally. I now have the “Malabar hat trick”- the Malabar Trevally, The Malabar Grouper, and the Malabar Blood Snapper. (Tied with “Sarcastic Fringehead” for coolest fish name ever.)

The common ponyfish. These are an ID nightmare.

We went outside for a while, anchoring carefully in the lee of the channel jetty. With cut baits, we had plenty of action – seabreams, grunters, and some small groupers, but TK was not satisfied. Begging our pardon, he said we were going to go back into the harbor to pick up some more bait. So we lost half an hour, but we gained a big bucket of ghost shrimp. This was a great move. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, wanted to eat these.

For the next four hours, I don’t think 30 seconds passed when we weren’t landing a fish. Dom and I both worked small rigs right under the boat, and caught all kinds of fish old and new. My first add was a smallscale sandperch.

Many thanks to Dr. Jeff Johnson for the ID on this one.

I also got a familiar but cool fish – a bar-tailed flathead, which I had caught previously in Qatar.

I’ve always been fascinated by this family of fish.

While we dodged occasional rain and amused ourselves with the smaller fish, TK and crew put out some big baits for sharks, rays, or whatever would bite. Dom and I both got greyspot guitarfish this way – our biggest fish of the day.

These things always fight well.

Continuing the shrimp rigs, I got another puffer species – the smooth blaasop.

This was the fifth newbie of the day and the 27th in this part of Africa.

The big bait went down again, and I set into the heavy, sullen fight of a moray. We swung it on board, and for the life of me, it looked like a yellowmargin. But digital photography is free, and we took pictures. Months later, the eel was identified (again by Dr. Jeff Johnson,) as an Elaine’s Moray, a fairly recent split, but from the undulate rather than the yellowmargin.

And it would have been a world record if I was paying attention.

Do not put this in your pants.

We were well over time when Dom caught an interesting damselfish under the boat. TK patiently waited it out until I finally got one as well. It turned out to be a bluespotted chromis.

A new species and the final fish of a life-altering two-week adventure.

The 29 species I had gotten in the tropics, added to the 17 I had caught in the Cape, came to a staggering 46 new species for me, taking me to 2164 lifetime. Dom tacked on nearly, but not quite, 100 species to his impressive total, and did most of it without a phone.

Calim, Dom, TK, and Steve. That’s my happy face.

We said our goodbyes to TK and Calim, had dinner and a beer, and headed off to our respective rooms. I had to clean everything and pack, but Dom was going to dare one more morning of fishing and cut his flights a little closer. He was off in the morning before I got up, and I headed to Durban airport, then off to Johannesburg, then a long layover there, and finally, after two weeks and more fish than I ever could have dreamed of adding, I was on my way home. 

This was a team effort, and I can’t thank Zander, Mark, TK, or any of the deckhands or launch crews enough. I can’t thank Dom enough for inviting me, and I especially can’t thank the red steenbras for choosing the rod nearest me, because, I figured at the time, that alone would guarantee that Dom and I would be back someday.

In hindsight, it is a sobering thought that on that day, February 11, 2023, that day that Dom snuck in an extra day of fishing, and got a few extra species to take his South Africa total to 99, that he had exactly one year to live. I wonder now that if he knew this, if he would have lived his life any differently. I don’t think he would have, and I have to admire that.

Steve