Silver kob

Very few fish anywhere have a legal position that takes a paragraph to state, and the reason this one does is that South Africa manages the kob by area and gear as well as by species.

THE THREE SPECIES. Dusky kob, Argyrosomus japonicus — the big one, with a characteristic strong smell. Silver kob, Argyrosomus inodorus — the common one, odourless. Squaretail kob, Argyrosomus thorpei — the smallest, an east-coast fish.

THE BASE LIMITS. Dusky 60 cm and a strict daily bag limit. Silver 50 cm and five. Squaretail 40 cm and five.

AND THEN THE AREA FOOTNOTES, WHICH OVERRIDE THEM. From a boat at sea between Cape Agulhas and the Umtamvuna River: 50 cm, five per day, of which ONLY ONE MAY EXCEED 110 CM. From a boat in KwaZulu-Natal: 40 cm on the same terms. From the shore and in estuaries EAST of Cape Agulhas: 60 cm and one fish. WEST of Cape Agulhas: 50 cm and five.

SO THE SAME FISH, CAUGHT ON THE SAME DAY, IS SUBJECT TO DIFFERENT LIMITS depending on whether you were standing on a beach or sitting in a boat and which side of a headland you were on.

THE RESEARCH INSTITUTE SAYS SO ITSELF, in the plainest terms a fisheries body uses: because of the similarity of the three kob species, complex regional differences in the regulations exist.

THE PRACTICAL ADVICE THAT FOLLOWS. Know which side of Cape Agulhas you are on. Know whether the shore or the boat rule applies to you. If you cannot tell the species, apply the strictest of the three. And note that the 110 cm cap is not an area rule at all — it applies regardless of area or sector, which makes a very large kob the one fish in South African angling that is capped everywhere.

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 early for its eventual size — 29 to 36 cm total length at between 1.3 and 2.4 years, depending on locality — and lives to about twenty-five. Early maturity would ordinarily make a species resilient; that the stock is nonetheless at 10.4 per cent of unfished biomass says how much fishing pressure it carries rather than anything about its biology.

Spawns throughout its distribution and throughout the year, with a peak from August to December. In Namibian water spawning runs October to March, mainly around Sandwich and Meob Bays. Year-round spawning with a seasonal peak is why there is no closed season on this species while there is one on galjoen and elf.

A predator on pelagic fish, shrimp and squid, hunting over sand and low reef rather than grazing structure. That is the fundamental difference from the sparids on the same coast and it changes everything about the fishing: kob take fish baits and lures, they hunt in low light and coloured water, and they are caught on moving presentations as readily as on static ones.

Sciaenids are sound-oriented fish — the family name means drum, and they produce and detect low-frequency sound with the swimbladder. Combined with a well-developed lateral line, that makes kob effective hunters in the turbid, aerated surf where they feed best, and it is why they are a dirty-water and low-light fish rather than a clear-water one.

Found inshore in less than sixty metres in summer and dispersing further offshore in winter in response to oceanographic patterns. In False Bay the shore fishery runs roughly October to April and begins when the south-easter starts blowing and warming the bay, with wind direction moving the fish along the coast between Kalk Bay, Strandfontein, Macassar and Gordon's Bay.

The kob a South African shore angler is most likely to catch, and the backbone of the Western Cape summer surf fishery. It supports commercial and recreational line fisheries and a Western Cape beach-seine fishery. The stock is severely depleted at 10.4 per cent of unfished biomass on the 2018 assessment and is IUCN Vulnerable. The rules are area-dependent: 50 cm and five per day from a boat or west of Cape Agulhas, 60 cm and one from the shore or in estuaries east of it, and never more than one fish over 110 cm.

A soft-mouthed, thin-scaled fish that is easy to damage and that is often caught in numbers.

SUPPORT IT HORIZONTALLY AND KEEP IT OFF DRY SAND. The scales come away easily and the mucus coat with them.

USE CIRCLE HOOKS ON BAIT. Kob take a bait properly and are deep-hooked easily on J-hooks, and a deep-hooked kob released is usually a dead one.

BAROTRAUMA MATTERS FROM DEEP WATER. A fish from sixty metres or more will need venting or a descending device to have any chance.

AND READ THE AREA RULE BEFORE YOU KEEP IT. Cape Agulhas is the line, the shore and the boat rules differ, and the 110 cm cap applies everywhere and to every sector.