Dageraad

A DEEP-WATER REEF FISH RELEASED BADLY IS A DEAD FISH THAT LOOKED FINE.

Brought up from thirty metres or more, the swimbladder expands and the fish cannot swim down. It floats, drifts away and is taken. Nothing about that is visible as harm to the angler who watched it go.

USE A DESCENDING DEVICE where the fish is going back. A weighted release clip that carries the fish down and lets go at depth recompresses the swimbladder and works far better than venting.

IF VENTING IS THE ONLY OPTION, it needs a proper hollow venting tool, the correct position behind the pectoral fin, and somebody who has been shown how. A knife or a hook does damage rather than good.

AND MINIMISE THE TIME AT THE SURFACE. Decide before the fish is aboard whether it is being kept, and if it is not, get it back down quickly.

A FISH THAT SWIMS AWAY IS NOT A FISH THAT IS FINE. The United States fisheries agency's own field work found that rockfish surviving a recompressed release were still affected by capture and barotrauma for THIRTY TO SIXTY DAYS afterwards. Success is not the fish disappearing; it is the fish being alive two months later, and everything above is about buying that.

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.

Slow-growing, long-lived and protogynous in the pattern of its genus — smaller fish function as females and change to male at larger size. The combination of late maturity, sex change and a fishery that selects for size is the same one that has driven every collapsed sparid on this coast, and it is why the species now carries a Critically Endangered assessment.

Spawns over deep reef with pelagic eggs and larvae, changing sex from female to male with size. Reproductive detail is less well documented than for the roman, which has been the subject of far more research because it is shallower and more accessible.

A reef feeder taking invertebrates, cephalopods and small fish over structure in thirty to a hundred metres. Squid is the standard bait, fished on the reef, and the fish is taken as part of a mixed reef catch rather than targeted alone.

Vision at close range over structure in the low light of deep reef, with the lateral line for detecting movement. Like the other reef sparids it works a known patch rather than searching.

Non-migratory and reef-associated year-round, so there is no seasonal movement to plan around. Access is set entirely by whether a boat can reach and hold on offshore reef, which on this coast is a weather question.

A boat and spearfishing species of the deep Cape reefs, taken as part of a mixed reef catch. It is a commercial species with a recreational limit of a strict daily bag limit at a minimum size. Critically Endangered on the July 2024 IUCN assessment, and the practical position for a recreational angler is that a dageraad is a fish to release if it can be released successfully.

TREAT IT AS A RELEASE if the fish can be got back down.

BAROTRAUMA IS DECISIVE. From thirty to a hundred metres a released fish needs a descending device to have any chance at all.

STIFF DORSAL SPINES and a firm mouth; use a de-hooker and support the fish horizontally.

DECIDE BEFORE IT IS ABOARD. Critically Endangered, a strict daily bag limit, and a fish that spends five minutes on a hot deck is not going back successfully whatever is decided afterwards.