White stumpnose

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 bay-associated sparid using shallow sheltered water as nursery ground and moving to deeper sand and mixed bottom with growth. Like its relatives it crushes shell, matures at modest size, and is long-lived enough that a locally heavy fishery reduces it faster than it replaces itself — which is the reasoning behind the 2024 IUCN assessment of Vulnerable.

Spawns in coastal water with pelagic eggs and larvae, and juveniles use sheltered bay and estuarine habitat. Saldanha and Langebaan are the classic nursery system on the west coast, and the fishery's fortunes there are tied to what happens inside those bays rather than to anything offshore.

Crushes small bivalves, crustaceans and other hard-shelled invertebrates from sand and mixed ground, taking worm and weed as well. On the sandbanks that means it works the bottom over shellfish beds, and the effective baits are white mussel, prawn and worm rather than anything resembling a fish.

Vision and taste over clean sand in the clear cold water of the Benguela inshore. It is a fish that inspects a bait and is caught on light traces in consequence.

Present through the year on the same bay and sandbank systems, with movements between shallow nursery ground and deeper water tracking size more than season. On the Cape west coast the practical constraint on the fishing is the wind rather than the fish.

A staple of Cape west-coast bay and boat fishing and a common shore capture on the sandy stretches, taken on light bottom tackle. It is a commercial species as well as a recreational one, with a bag limit of a daily bag limit at a minimum size — a generous allowance that sits alongside an IUCN assessment of Vulnerable made on 11 July 2024, and both figures are reported here because they genuinely disagree.

Small to middling, easily handled, and usually caught in numbers on sand.

KEEP IT OFF DRY SAND. A beach or a boat deck strips the mucus coat; wet hands and a wet surface.

HOLD ACROSS THE BACK. Stiff dorsal spines, sharp incisors, nothing dangerous.

AND WATCH THE CUMULATIVE CAP. The individual limit is ten, which is also the whole daily cap across every species combined.