By Scotty Kyle

Last month I saw a beautiful, magnificent, inspiring and reassuring sight. I was on a boat on one of the Kosi Bay lakes in South Africa close to the Mozambican border. We saw a shoal of 20 Giant Trevally in the clear shallows and followed them for some time. These fish were, however, not your ordinary exciting, beautiful, elegant decent-sized fish. These were monsters. Bullies, a gang of arrogant and fearless thugs, cruising the shallows terrifying all other fish. You felt that even a hippo would give way to these leviathans. 

I tried to take photos or a video, but nothing came near to doing justice to them. I have caught many GT’s over the years but would give my “eye teeth” to pit my skills, wits and strength against any of these fish. We saw them clearly and they all looked identical, their backs were broad and rounded and they were well over one metre in length. Weight is difficult to estimate, but we saw the fish clearly and at very close quarters.  I reckon they were over 30 kilograms each, meaning that they were probably well over 20 years old. 

This sight filled me with joy as I was returning to an area in which I had lived with my family for almost 40 years. I started there in 1980 as the Provincial Conservation Fisheries Officer and my job had been to assess fish stocks, recommend regulations and then monitor management success. 

I worked in this isolated corner of the province as it was being opened up to tourism based on sport fishing. The lakes, however, already contained the largest traditional fishery in southern Africa, and my job was to establish if the fish stocks could sustain additional sport fishing and, if so, how this could be done. The traps had been operating for hundreds of years and were thought to be in some kind of balance with fish populations. There was a real concern that introducing sport fishing could cause competition and conflict with local fishers, and lead to overfishing and fish stock collapse. 

I did my work and made recommendations, most of which were implemented, and sport fishing grew. My family and I, all serious sport anglers, remained there fishing and living the most wonderful lives – catching all sorts of amazing fish in the ocean and the estuarine lakes. Our two sons caught incredible fish, including GT’s of up to 40 kilograms in the ocean and over 30 kilograms in the lakes. During my time in the area, we had proclaimed it as a Nature Reserve and then it became a World Heritage Site.

Meantime, a war in neighbouring Mozambique forced many people into the area. Between the refugees and local high population growth rates, the number of people living around the lakes had more than tripled. Development followed, local expectations grew along with population, and pressures on all natural resources increased. Fish poaching pressure, mostly gillnetting, started and grew rapidly, despite strenuous efforts to curtail it.

When I retired in 2019, we relocated from this “tropical-paradise” to a city 500 km away. I never lost my interest in, and love for, the area, its fish, environment and people, but as I came back six years later, I didn’t know what to expect. I had feared that the area, which had seemed “pristine” when we had first arrived, would now be very different. I was worried that the fishing would be much more intense, and less productive, than it had been. I was concerned that the people would scorn me and blame me for failing to facilitate good management, as well as for my involvement with law enforcement.

Many locals quickly recognised me, but they were mostly friendly and ready and willing to talk about fishing. They complained a lot about things being not like “in the old days”, but they still had new stories of excellent fishing and amazing fish. We fishers tend to look back on the old days through rose-tinted spectacles, but in this case I had data from scientific monitoring, which suggested that fishing success has indeed declined. But I also knew it doesn’t necessarily mean there were less fish, because fish learn. 

I digress, but in my and my family’s experiences, if you kill or keep the fish you catch in a container, the fishing continues to be as successful, but if you release them immediately, you rarely catch many more fish in that spot. When the “dropshot” technique first got popular at Kosi Bay, we caught amazing fish of several species in good numbers in the lakes. The next season we caught almost nothing on dropshot, although the fish were there and we could catch them on live bait. I have no idea how, but the fish communicated and warned each other of “dropshotting”. This communication can be within a shoal, species or multiple species even in a large lake.

So, after arriving at Kosi, I went down to Kosi Mouth and tried dropshotting up the beach towards Mozambique. The tides were not good, and the weather was challenging. I did not expect much and not much happened. I tried hard in the shallows for small fish but caught nothing. 

The next day I tried again. The tides and conditions were much better, and things just felt “right”. Not far up the beach I had a knock, that must have been a fish, and cast again. As the lure hit the crystal-clear water a nice fish took it and was off, peeling the line off the reel. After a good, clean fight, as there were no rocks or obstructions, I landed my favourite fish, a good largespot pompano. I soon landed two others and my day was made.

As I wandered up the beach I saw something impossible, or at least very unlikely. It was a turtle emerging from the ocean to lay eggs. Part of my work had been supervising a turtle breeding monitoring and protection programme in that area, but the turtles should only come up at the end of October, and this was early September. It was also around midday and the turtles almost always came out onto the beach after sunset. To compound the unlikelihood, that day was hot and sunny. 

I lay down my rod and dashed up the beach. The turtle had now decided “today was not the day” and turned back to return to the ocean. It was a young adult female loggerhead turtle. During the survey we tag all possible turtles and so I checked for tags, but found none. A tag number can identify when and where it was first tagged and we could have established its nesting history.

Just when I thought that the day could not improve, it did. I wandered back up the beach, casting as I went and, in a nice-looking little white, frothy eddy, something grabbed my lure very close to the shore. The “thing” then slowly, but powerfully, headed off for Australia. The braid peeled slowly, but strongly, off my reel and, thinking the tension was slack, I checked it. The tension was fine; the fish was just pulling hard. I looked around for witnesses or help as I was fishing very light-tackle and the currents made landing a decent fish a little too exciting.  

I had had several hundred metres of line on my reel and the fish must have taken about 200 metres out when it finally rested and then, ever so slowly, slowly I began to gain line. I had not landed a fish like this for years, and conditions were against landing it safely. I allowed myself to enjoy the sensation of a good fish on my line, and of telling the family that I had not yet lost the ability to hook a decent fish. 

My knees got a little wobbly as, metre by metre, the fish came in, but it was not yet finished. It came into the white-water “furl” right against the shore, where it seemed to enjoy repeatedly surfing strongly past me. I could not get its head turned, or lift it gently into a wave that would carry it up onto the beach. Still no witnesses. 

Eventually it did tire, and at last I got the timing right and the fish’s head up into a wave. It washed up the beach and I ran down and pulled it further up. I wanted to let it go as soon as possible and with as little injury as I could, so I took a quick photo with shaking hands. The hook came out easily, and I sent the fish back to freedom. In our family unless there’s a photo, even a bad one, there is no “proof of fish”. 

I had my photo but somehow the fish shrank between the ocean and the beach and then again in the photo. It remained a nice fish, but it was no longer the monster I imagined as I was fighting it. It did, however, complete my wonderful day. Not only were there still nice fish around, I was still able to catch some of them. 

It was the next day that I went out in the boat and saw the GT’s. Returning to Kosi Bay had not been easy. Fish stocks had declined since the 1980’s and I think that all the “stupid” fish were killed years ago. But as it turned out, if you fish reasonably well, persistently and with a tiny bit of luck, you can still catch very good fish. 

Watching the twenty huge, old, magnificent GT’s in Second Lake was reassuring and inspiring. Despite everything man has thrown at the fishes of Kosi Bay in recent years, the populations have survived.  If we can encourage “catch and release” and limit gillnetting, fish populations can indeed “bounce back”. Given even a little break, Kosi Bay can become a world-renowned sport fishing venue not just for massive GT’s, but also for its beauty, history, culture and its people.

Main image credit: Canva

Next in Fishing Stories

Fly Fishing the Flaming Gorge

By Diana Rupp

The big brown trout rose to the surface, opened its mouth, and engulfed the dry fly. I hauled back on my fly rod to set the hook and felt the thrilling weight of the fish as it surged downstream. My index finger burned from the searing of the fly line as it shot through the rod guides.

“Let him run!” James, my guide, shouted, hauling on the left oar of the drift boat and expertly clearing a large rock that knifed up from the rapids. The boat thudded down through the roiling whitewater, rocking me where I stood in the bow. CONTINUE READING