White seacatfish

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.

An amphidromous coastal catfish moving between marine and brackish water. It produces very few, very large yolky eggs rather than the millions of small ones most marine fish release, and the male mouthbroods them — a low-fecundity, high-investment strategy that produces few offspring with a high survival rate, and which makes the species far more sensitive to losing adult males than its abundance suggests.

After spawning, the MALE takes the eggs into his mouth and carries them through incubation and for a period after hatching, DURING WHICH HE DOES NOT FEED. The eggs are unusually large and few — tens rather than thousands. A brooding male caught and killed takes an entire clutch with him, which is a real conservation point about an abundant fish and one almost nobody knows.

An opportunistic bottom feeder taking crustaceans, worms, molluscs, small fish and carrion, located by scent and by touch with the barbels. It feeds hardest in coloured water and after dark, and it will take any natural bait offered on the bottom — which is exactly why it is caught so often by people fishing for something else.

Chemoreception above all. The barbels are sensory organs and catfish generally have among the most acute senses of taste and smell of any fish. That is why a seacatfish finds a bait in turbid water before anything else does, and why it is impossible to avoid on a coloured-water beach.

Present year-round on sand and in estuaries, moving between brackish and marine water. It is most conspicuous to anglers in coloured water and after dark, which is when it feeds hardest and when it is most likely to be handled badly in poor light.

Almost never a target and very frequently a capture: it takes any bottom bait in coloured water and is the fish that arrives when kob and steenbras do not. It is not named individually in the regulations, so the general daily bag limit applies. Its practical significance to an angler is entirely about handling — it is one of the few genuinely venomous fish a South African shore angler will meet regularly.

THIS IS THE ONE TO GET RIGHT. The serrated dorsal and pectoral spines are VENOMOUS, and a puncture is severely painful, swells, and infects readily.

DO NOT GRIP THE FISH. Use long forceps or a de-hooker, over the water, and cut the trace if the hook is awkward. The hook is worth less than the hand.

IF IT MUST BE HELD, hold it from above and behind the dorsal spine with the pectorals controlled — but the honest advice is not to hold it at all.

FIRST AID FOR A STING IS HOT WATER. Immerse the wound in water as hot as can be tolerated without scalding, for thirty to ninety minutes, which denatures the venom and relieves the pain. Then clean the wound properly. SEEK MEDICAL ATTENTION for any puncture that swells, discolours or does not settle, and for any wound where part of a spine may have broken off inside.

AND CONSIDER PUTTING IT BACK. The male may be carrying a whole clutch of eggs in his mouth.