It must be every angler's dream to fish in an aquarium. Yesterday (31 May 2011) this dream came true for some anglers, as they were asked to assist staff at Bayworld to catch the fish in the main tank because the Port Elizabeth aquarium has been shut down.

There was much excitment and speculation as to what would happen when the first baited hook enetred the water. The fishing was well controlled and initially only heavy duty handlines equipped with big barbless circle hook were used. The action was fast a furious for the first hour and the catch was dominated by the fast swimming predators, which included Yellowtail (up to 5 kg), elf (up to 5 kg), a leervis (about 15 kg) and kob (up to 25 kg). Some nice Musselcracker (up to 10 kg) and some really nice reef fish such as Dageraad, Santer and Roman were also caught on hook and line. After a while the fish got wise and things slowed down. However, one angler then caught two more nice kob using a McArthy soft plastic jig.

After a lunch break it was decided to send some divers into the tank and use a big seine net to concentrate the fish and catch them by hand using a PVC vynal stretcher. This worked very well and the divers were able to capture the remaining kob, a leervis and many other smaller fish.

No fish were injured and all of them are still alive. Some species were pledged to marine fish farmers. These included Dusky kob, Spotted grunter, Yellowtail and Yellowbelly Rockcod. All the remaining fish were tagged with the 082 TAG FISH white plastic dart tags and placed in a porta pool. Two leervis and one large white steenbras were also surgically equipped with acoustic transmitters. These fish will also be released into Algoa Bay and their behaviour will be monitored by the array of acoustic receivers in the Bay.  Once some data is collected, the movements of these fish will be reported on the FISH TRACKING blog page of this website.

It was a very successful day and we urge anglers to keep an eye open for these tagged fish - some trophy fish will be released back into Algoa Bay. If you catch one of these fish remember our motto "Catch & Release - The only soluition".