Slinger

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.

Faster-growing and earlier-maturing than the Cape reef sparids, which is why it sustains a daily bag limit where roman carries two and dageraad one. It is a protogynous hermaphrodite in the pattern of the genus, changing sex from female to male with size, and the same warning about size-selective fishing applies even though the population is in better shape.

Spawns over reef with pelagic eggs and larvae, changing sex from female to male at larger size. The species has been studied more than most of the east-coast reef fish because of its commercial importance to the KwaZulu-Natal line fishery.

A reef feeder on invertebrates, cephalopods and small fish over structure in ten to a hundred metres. Squid is the standard bait, fished on or just off the reef from a drifting or anchored ski-boat, and slinger are the fish that fill a box on a mixed east-coast reef trip.

Vision and lateral line at close range over reef, feeding competitively where a shoal is on the structure — which is why a boat that finds them catches steadily and a boat that does not catches nothing.

Present on the same east-coast reef systems through the year. Availability is set by whether a ski-boat can launch and hold on the mark, which on the KwaZulu-Natal coast is a swell-and-wind question rather than a seasonal one.

A mainstay of the KwaZulu-Natal ski-boat fishery, recreational and commercial alike, and the fish most east-coast reef trips are actually built around. It is a commercial species with a recreational limit of a daily bag limit at a minimum size, and it is one of the few South African reef sparids where a bag of fish is a reasonable expectation rather than an act of pressure.

A reef fish from moderate depth caught in numbers, so the release question comes up repeatedly on a single trip.

DESCEND ANYTHING GOING BACK. From forty metres or more a slinger will not swim down without help.

DECIDE QUICKLY. Fish are coming aboard steadily and the ones that will be released should be released fast.

STIFF SPINES, FIRM MOUTH, de-hooker, wet hands.

AND WATCH THE CUMULATIVE CAP. Five slinger plus five of anything else is the whole day's allowance.