The Cape Peninsula and False Bay

What you can target here

One entry per fish, grouped by how you would be fishing — because the answer is a different one from the rocks and from a boat. Each entry says how strongly the sources support it and how much evidence sits behind it. This is documented quarry, not a forecast, and none of it is a statement that you may fish any particular ground.

How people fish here

8 methods are recorded on the places documented here, counted from the records themselves rather than from what is practised in the country. Each opens a full guide to the technique.

• Ledgering

  Recorded at 4 places here, over harbour wall, headland, surf beach.

  Fishing a bait on the bottom held by a weight, with no float — the simplest way to fish at distance, in depth, or in wind.

  Documented on the same ground: Hottentot, Silver kob, White steenbras, Barracouta, Bluefish, Galjoen.

• Light rock fishing

  Recorded at 3 places here, over harbour wall, headland.

  Ultralight lure fishing from the shore with tackle rated in single grams — a discipline that catches the fish everybody else steps over, and one FishingHQ held every component of and had never named.

  Documented on the same ground: Hottentot, Barracouta, Bluefish, Leerfish, Silver kob, Yellowtail kingfish.

• Spinning

  Recorded at 3 places here, over harbour wall, headland.

  Casting an artificial lure and retrieving it so that it moves like something alive — the most direct form of lure fishing.

  Documented on the same ground: Hottentot, Barracouta, Bluefish, Leerfish, Silver kob, Yellowtail kingfish.

• Feathering and multi-lure traces

  Recorded at 1 place here, over harbour wall.

  A string of small lures on droppers, worked in the water column — how most people in Britain and Ireland catch their first sea fish, and the method most likely to catch far more than anybody intended.

  Documented on the same ground: Hottentot, Bluefish, Silver kob.

• Float fishing

  Recorded at 1 place here, over harbour wall.

  Suspending a bait at a controlled depth beneath a buoyant indicator — the most visual, most controllable and most widely applicable method in angling.

  Documented on the same ground: Hottentot, Bluefish, Silver kob.

• Jigging

  Recorded at 1 place here, over headland.

  Working a weighted lure with a rising-and-falling motion, usually vertically, so it behaves like a wounded or fleeing baitfish.

  Documented on the same ground: Hottentot, Barracouta, Yellowtail kingfish, White musselcracker.

• Shore diving

  Recorded at 1 place here, over harbour wall.

  Entering and leaving the water from land under your own power — the most accessible spearfishing and the one where the entry and exit are the dangerous part.

  Documented on the same ground: Hottentot, Leerfish, Silver kob.

• Surfcasting

  Recorded at 1 place here, over surf beach.

  Casting heavy baited tackle from a beach into surf — a method defined by distance, by tide, and by reading water that all looks the same.

  Documented on the same ground: Silver kob, White steenbras, Galjoen, Bronze whaler.

These are the methods documented at the places FishingHQ holds here. A species listed beside a method is documented on the same ground, which is not the same as being taken that way — where a source establishes the method a fish was caught on, it is stated on that place’s own page. All fishing methods.

The fishing year here

The months the records under this area actually name, tightest season first. This is “observed in these months” rather than a season: a species whose months nobody recorded is not listed, because a gap in the evidence is not a year-round fishery.

• BarracoutaMay to September
• LeerfishNovember to March
• Yellowtail kingfishNovember to April
• Silver kobOctober to April
• GaljoenMarch to October
• BluefishDecember to August

Places within this area

Publicly documented fishing geography. FishingHQ describes what the ground is; it does not say whether you may fish it, and every one of these sends that question to the body that holds the answer. Browse every place in this part of the world.

• Kalk Bay harbour wall

  Harbour wall · Salt water

  A small working fishing harbour on the western shore of False Bay, with a stone breakwater enclosing it and a wall that is fished along its whole length. The bottom inside is sand and shell over rubble; outside the wall the ground is kelp-fringed sandstone reef dropping into the bay.

  Sheltered from the prevailing summer south-easter by the mountain behind it, and exposed to the south-easterly fetch across False Bay itself. A hard south-easter puts a short steep sea onto the wall.

  Severe hazards of The Cape Peninsula and False Bay apply here: cliffs and rock platforms, cold water shock.

  Particular to this water: Kalk Bay is a working commercial fishing harbour as well as a fishing mark, and the wall is a working quay with boats using it. Access to parts of the structure is controlled by the harbour operator, and the peninsula coast sits inside the Table Mountain National Park Marine Protected Area, whose zonation is administered by SANParks.

• Strandfontein

  Surf beach · Salt water

  A long sandy surf beach on the northern shore of False Bay, with a tidal pool and pavilion at its western end and clean sand running east towards Macassar. The ground is fine sand with shallow gutters running parallel to the beach and very little rock, so the fishing is about reading the water rather than about structure.

  Open to the south across the whole fetch of False Bay. The summer south-easter blows straight onto it, which is what warms this shore and what makes it uncomfortable to fish at the same time.

  Severe hazards of The Cape Peninsula and False Bay apply here: cliffs and rock platforms, cold water shock.

  Particular to this water: The False Bay coast is inside the Table Mountain National Park Marine Protected Area for part of its length and its zonation is administered by SANParks. Some of this shore is also a designated bathing area with its own seasonal arrangements.

• Cape Point

  Headland · Salt water

  The rock headland at the southern end of the Cape Peninsula, where the cold Atlantic side and the warmer False Bay side meet around a narrow point of Table Mountain sandstone. Deep water lies close in on both sides and the ground is steep boulder and rock platform with heavy kelp.

  As exposed as anything on this coast. Two water masses meet here over deep water, the swell wraps round the point from both sides, and there is nothing between it and Antarctica. This is a mark that is unfishable far more often than it is fishable.

  Particular to this ground: cliffs and rock platforms.

  Severe hazards of The Cape Peninsula and False Bay apply here: cold water shock.

  Particular to this water: Cape Point lies inside the Cape of Good Hope section of Table Mountain National Park. SANParks administers both land access and the Marine Protected Area zonation, and shore angling is permitted only in defined areas and with a SANParks activity permit in addition to the national fishing permit. Several nearby zones are no-take.

• Gordon's Bay

  Harbour wall · Salt water

  A small harbour and rocky shore at the north-eastern corner of False Bay, at the foot of the Hottentots Holland mountains. The harbour has a fishable wall; the coast running south from it is steep sandstone and boulder with deep water close in, and the shore north is the sandy end of the bay's northern beach.

  Sheltered from the south-easter by the mountains immediately behind, which is what makes it fishable when the rest of False Bay is not. Open to the south-west across the bay.

  Severe hazards of The Cape Peninsula and False Bay apply here: cliffs and rock platforms, cold water shock.

  Particular to this water: The harbour is a working and naval facility with restricted areas, and the coast south of it forms part of the False Bay protected-area network. Access to structures is controlled by the harbour operator.