Blacktail

SOUTH AFRICA REGULATES SEA FISHING SPECIES BY SPECIES, WHICH IS NOT HOW MOST COUNTRIES DO IT.

A recreational permit is the entry ticket and not the whole of it. On top of it sits a minimum size and a daily bag limit SET PER FISH, a closed season on a small number of species, and a cumulative daily cap across everything caught — so being inside the limit for each species separately does not put you inside the limit overall.

THERE IS A CAP ON HOOKS on a rod-and-line permit. A spearfishing permit is separate, allows no breathing apparatus beyond a snorkel, and PROHIBITS SPEARFISHING IN AN ESTUARY — a flat ban rather than a limit, and the rule visitors most often do not know.

A LANDED FISH MUST KEEP ITS HEAD AND TAIL so its length can be checked. Nothing caught on a recreational permit may be sold by anyone. And a small list of species may not be caught, landed or possessed at all.

FISHINGHQ DOES NOT PRINT THE FIGURES, and the reason is on this page rather than in a policy document: the department's own guidance says adjustments may be forthcoming given the acknowledged crisis of linefish, the numbers differ by species and by area and by whether you were standing on a beach or sitting in a boat, and a stale figure on a fishing site is worse than no figure at all. Get the current position from the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, and get the protected-area position from whichever body manages the stretch of coast you are on.

Matures at about 20 cm and three years, and lives to twenty-one. Many individuals mature first as males and some change sex to female — protandry, and the opposite direction from the protogynous pattern of the musselcrackers and roman. The high residency and the twenty-one-year maximum age together are why an abundant species still shows local overexploitation where the shore is heavily fished.

Spawns from winter to early summer — July to December — on inshore reef throughout the range. Eggs and larvae are pelagic and are distributed inshore of the Agulhas Current across the whole distribution, which is the mechanism connecting the two separate populations recorded on the east and west sides of the subcontinent.

A generalist and the broadest feeder on this coast. Adults take red and green seaweed, sea urchins, polychaete worms, sea anemones, limpets, mussels and red bait; juveniles feed mainly on small crustaceans and polychaetes. That range is why almost any natural bait works and why blacktail are the fish that turn up on every rig aimed at something else.

Close-range vision and taste in shallow, aerated, frequently turbid water. A generalist that inspects and samples, and which is bold rather than shy — a small shoal of blacktail will strip a bait meant for a musselcracker inside a minute.

Highly resident, present year-round in the same surf-zone rock. Spawning runs from July to December on inshore reef. There is no meaningful closed season and no migration to time a trip around; blacktail availability is a question of whether the mark is fishable.

Primarily caught in the shore fishery along the entire south-eastern seaboard of South Africa, where the research institute ranks it as THE THIRD MOST IMPORTANT SHORE ANGLING SPECIES. Generally caught on light tackle, and it will readily take sardine, squid, prawn and red bait. It is the fish most South African shore anglers actually catch, whatever they set out for. Assessed Least Concern in 2009 but SASSI red, with a minimum size and a daily bag limit.

Small, abundant, easily handled and easily wasted.

USE HOOKS SIZED FOR THE FISH. Blacktail take baits meant for far larger species and a big hook in a small mouth is a deep-hooked fish.

WET HANDS, QUICK RETURN. It goes straight back into the wash, not onto hot rock while you rebait.

THE DORSAL SPINES ARE SHARP and the incisors will nip. Neither is dangerous.

AND KEEP COUNT. The species carries its own daily bag limit AND sits inside a cumulative cap across everything caught, and a shoal of blacktail is the easiest way in South African shore fishing to go over one of them without noticing.