Fransmadam

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.

A small, abundant, comparatively short-lived shallow-reef sparid — the opposite of the long-lived endemics it shares ground with, and the reason it carries a daily bag limit and no size limit where a poenskop on the same reef carries one and fifty centimetres.

Spawns inshore over reef with pelagic eggs and larvae. Its reproductive biology is less studied than the commercially important species on the same coast, which is a straightforward consequence of nobody selling it in quantity.

Picks small invertebrates, worms and crustaceans from shallow reef, feeding actively in low light and in the shaded water of gullies and under overhangs — which the large eye supports. It takes small baits readily and competitively, in shoals, which is why it is caught in numbers by people fishing for something else.

Vision above all, adapted for low light by an unusually large eye. That is a genuinely useful thing to know: a fish that sees well in dim water feeds through dusk and dawn and in shaded gullies when the more visually ordinary species have stopped.

Present on shallow reef through the year, abundant and resident, with no migration and no season to plan around. What varies is the light: a big-eyed fish that feeds well at dusk and in shaded gullies is most in evidence when the visually ordinary species have stopped.

Abundant and constantly caught, mostly by people fishing for something else. It is a commercial species with a recreational bag limit of a daily bag limit and no minimum size. Treated as a target on tackle scaled to it, it is a perfectly good light-tackle fish, which is the same argument that turned British rockling and pouting from nuisances into species-hunting targets.

Small, robust and usually going straight back.

SMALL HOOKS FOR A SMALL MOUTH. A big hook meant for a musselcracker in a fransmadam's mouth is a deep-hooked fish.

WET HANDS, quick return into the water.

SHARP DORSAL SPINES, nothing dangerous.

AND COUNT THEM IF YOU ARE KEEPING THEM. Ten is both the species limit and the whole cumulative daily cap.