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Odysseus
My take is two sides, one, in the sea they are dispersed over a much wider area whereas in the river they are concentrated together in one place when they are smaller, even more so with a strong tidal flow, moving up and down with the tidal water feeding. My skipper that I fish with for leeries knows his area like the back of his hand and IF THEY ARE AROUND, generally he will know where they will be concentrated. In summer when they are back, normally if the water is right, right milkyness, right colour and temperature, not to warm and not too cold, and there is bait around, and you spin for long enough then you will elicit a chase at some point, this year the numbers of fish are just not there. Days of beautiful water where you cold spin off the rocks normally and at least spot or see a few leerie, this year has been dead. There have been a few and I have heard of some down the drag but nothing near normal. That brings me to number two...
The other side is that the main population of large adult fish that would frequent the reefs and beaches are severely depressed. Apparently they are a few percent of unfished levels, but those studies one would have to take with a pinch of salt. From what I see and what I've been told, I would put the fact that you have no luck in the surf down to sardine runs and the culture of keeping the fish from the "garrick run" for the pot or sale. The stories of the returning shoal in the old days was one of a shoal over ten kilometers long! Those days are long gone. In old books one reads of a "bokkoms" industry in langebaan and velddrif of netted baby lerries, those gold and black/silver numbers the size of your hand. Those days are long gone. Can you imagine how many adults there must be out at sea to have that amount of babies in the lagoons? Funny the first I heard of leeries on the west coast was from an old timer that used to spoon for them on the beach north outside the mouth of the berg..
My guess is that the large expanse of the sea, the small numbers of large fish are the reasons. The real reason, I'll explain like this, there was no real sardine run for maybe 5 years, so the small fish in the rivers grew up and became breeders and stayed resident, we had epic fishing for those years which just got better each year. They then had a good 2 or more seasons as adults to spawn unharassed with no major northern migrations that happened as there was no sardine run. Suddenly the rivers were and still are full up with babies because of this but..last two years there were runs, and they got slagged. All the large breeding fish from out entire countries stock start filing past the points on the south coast and grab live bait after live bait and come home for a curry or braai and never get to breed or come back to their summer home.
All that and ..right place, right time
You will still get epic days but you have to wait for weather conditions to concentrate bait and fish at your feet and you have to be there for that hour of magic and have all your gear and self ready to capitalise! But if you get them in the rivers, they will be outside too, but yeah its a big ocean so it is a numbers game. Also I'm no pro..just fish with them..Also there is hope for the stock, they are incredibly fast growing fish, and there is ample bait, we just need to leave the breeding fish to swim and breed another day and let their spawn grow up and do the same once and there would be so many fish we could not imagine.