Catch and release!

I used to do alot of rock and surf fishing over the years down on the most southern part of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.

Mostly I would be targeting what we call shad or known as blue fish elsewhere with some sumptuous sardine that fish just can not resist.

Now and again we would be rewarded with another species like bronze beam or a black tail.

I found that most of our rocky shoreline provides ideal habitats for some amazingly beautiful fish including these juvenile yellow bellied rockcod.

They are part of the grouper family and have pretty large heads and mouths.

You can easily identify them by their brown body and very prominent yellow on their stomach. They also have greenish speckles on the top of its body.

These fish loves surf zones and can be found on reef systems in sub tropical locations around the world. As they grow larger they eventually move to deeper water and has been found upto depths of 200 meters on reef.

They are very territorial in nature making them easy to study by marine biologists.

These fish are only at about 30% of their healthy stocks so I would always recommend releasing them. After you get a few photos of course!

Yellow bellies can grow reasonably large. The South African record stands at 17 and a half kilo's but the pending record is almost twice that size.

If you catch one of these beauties in South Africa also take into consideration that there is a bag limit of one fish that must be 60cm or longer from head to tail per person per day. Not abiding by those laws can get you poaching record and a fine.

Catch and release!

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