Springer

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.

Like the tarpons and bonefish, the Elopidae have a leptocephalus larval stage — a transparent, ribbon-shaped larva quite unlike the adult, which drifts in the plankton before metamorphosing and recruiting into estuarine and coastal nursery habitat. Juveniles use estuaries and sheltered inshore water; adults move between estuaries and the open coast.

Spawns at sea, with the leptocephalus larvae drifting before recruiting into estuaries. That larval stage is one of the reasons the family is so widely distributed: a drifting ribbon larva travels much further than a normal fish larva, which is why the same genus appears across the Indo-Pacific and the Atlantic.

A pursuit predator on small fish and crustaceans in moving water, hunting on tidal flows in estuaries, over sandbanks and in the surf. It hunts by sight, at speed, in packs when the food concentrates — which is exactly why it is a lure and fly fish rather than a bait one, and why a moving tide matters more than a time of day.

Vision, with very large eyes for an estuary fish, and a strong lateral line for hunting in the turbid water of a tidal channel. It will feed at night as well as by day, and a springer hunting a lit harbour or bridge light is a standard South African estuary sight.

A warm-water fish, most abundant in South Africa in the summer months and on the KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape coast. It follows the food: a tide pushing baitfish through a channel or over a bank is what concentrates springer, so the useful planning unit is the tide rather than the calendar.

One of the best sport fish in a South African estuary and one of very few that reliably takes a lure or a fly. It is caught for the fight and released, because it is extremely bony and almost nobody eats it — a rare case of a species protected by being unpalatable. A recreational species at a daily bag limit with no minimum size. Note that spearfishing is prohibited in estuaries entirely.

A hard-fighting fish that is almost always going back, so handle it as though it is.

DO NOT LIFT IT BY THE JAW ALONE. A slim fish with a large head is easily damaged that way; support the body.

USE BARBLESS OR CRUSHED-BARB SINGLES ON LURES. A jumping fish and a treble hook is the worst combination in light-tackle fishing, for the fish and for the hand holding it.

HOLD IT INTO THE FLOW UNTIL IT SWIMS OFF. It fights to exhaustion and warm estuary water is low in oxygen.

THE SCALES COME OFF EASILY. Wet hands, minimal contact, no dry surfaces.