Hottentot

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 comparatively fast-maturing and short-lived sparid by South African standards, which is why it can sustain a daily bag limit where its relatives carry limits of one or two. It is a shoaling fish associated with kelp and rocky ground through its life, without the estuarine juvenile phase that several of its neighbours depend on.

Spawns inshore over rocky and kelp-associated ground, with pelagic eggs and larvae, and does not undergo the sex change that characterises several of the larger South African sparids. The absence of that complication is part of why it holds up under pressure where slower relatives do not.

An omnivorous browser on algae, small invertebrates, worms and crustaceans taken from rock and kelp. It feeds in shoals and competitively, which is the practical difference from the bronze bream: where a bronze bream inspects, a shoal of hottentot competes, and a bait among several fish is taken with far less hesitation.

Close-range vision and taste in the clear cold water of the kelp inshore. Competitive shoal feeding reduces the individual caution that makes its eastern relative difficult, and that is a behavioural rather than a sensory difference.

Present year-round on the same kelp and rock ground. The practical seasonality on the Cape west coast is the wind: a south-easterly summer brings hard upwelling and very cold, clear water, while winter north-westerlies bring swell that closes the ledges. The fish is available whenever a mark is.

The everyday shore and small-boat fish of the Cape west coast and the Cape Peninsula, and the species most Western Cape anglers first catch. It is a commercial species as well as a recreational one and carries an unusually generous recreational allowance — a daily bag limit at a minimum size — which is a direct reflection of its abundance and its faster life history. Assessed by the IUCN as Least Concern in 2009.

An easy fish to handle well and an easy one to handle badly because there are usually several of them.

UNHOOK QUICKLY AND PUT IT IN THE WATER OR ON ICE. A fish left on hot rock while the next one is being caught is a fish that is neither released well nor kept well.

THE INCISORS ARE SHARP AND THE DORSAL SPINES ARE STIFF. Neither is dangerous, but grip the fish across the back rather than closing a hand round it.

WATCH THE CUMULATIVE CAP. Ten hottentot is the individual bag limit and is also the whole cumulative daily limit across every species; if you have ten hottentot you have finished for the day.