Skills books › Freshwater and Coastal Fishing for Beginners

Choosing your first fishing rod, reel and tackle

Beginners often buy tackle that is too heavy for a dam or too light for the surf. Match your tackle to the water and the fish. Whatever you choose, a correctly set drag, sharp hooks and fresh line land more fish than an expensive rod.

Start with a hand line?

A hand line is a length of line on a plastic spool, with hooks and a sinker. It is very cheap, easy to carry and good for children, piers and dam walls, and it teaches you to feel a bite. It is hard to cast far, and the line can cut fingers. Many South Africans learned to fish this way.

Rods

• Length: about 1.8 to 2.4 m for dams, rivers, estuaries and piers, and 3.6 to 4.5 m for surf and rock fishing.
• Casting weight: the range of sinker and lure weights that the rod is built to cast, marked on the rod. A light rod might show 10–30 g, and a surf rod 100–170 g.

Reels

• Spinning reel: hangs under the rod, and is easy to cast and untangle. It is the best start for almost all beginners, from dams to light surf.
• Multiplier reel: sits on top of the rod and casts heavy sinkers far, but the spool can overrun into a bad tangle. Learn it later, with help.

Set the drag

The drag sets how hard the reel resists when a fish pulls. Set it so that line slips out smoothly at about a quarter to a third of the line's breaking strain, and test it by pulling line from the rod tip by hand. Too tight, and a strong fish breaks the line. Too loose, and the fish never tires.

Line

• Monofilament: stretchy, forgiving, cheap and easy to knot. It is the beginner's line for almost everything.
• Braid: thin and strong with almost no stretch, but dearer, and it needs special knots.
• Fluorocarbon: hard to see underwater, and often used as a leader.

A rough guide to main line strength:

• small fish in dams and rivers, and kurper: 2 to 4 kg;
• carp, bass and yellowfish: 4 to 8 kg;
• estuaries and piers: 6 to 10 kg;
• surf and rocks: 10 to 20 kg, with a heavier shock leader for casting.

A shock leader takes the strain of a hard cast with a heavy sinker, so that the line does not snap and send the sinker flying towards other people.

Check the last metre of line after every fish and every snag, and cut off any damaged part.

Hooks

Hook sizes run in two series. From size 20 up to size 1, a bigger number means a smaller hook. Then come 1/0, 2/0 and up, where a bigger number means a bigger hook.

• Small dam fish and kurper: about size 8 to 12.
• Carp, bass, blacktail and bream: size 4 to 1.
• Shad, kob and galjoen: 1/0 to 4/0.

Circle hooks catch the fish in the corner of the mouth as it swims away. You do not strike. You simply tighten the line. They are far less likely to be swallowed, which makes releasing fish safer. Barbless hooks are easier to remove, from a fish or from your finger.

Keep hooks sharp. The point should catch on a fingernail, not slide.

Sinkers, swivels and floats

Use the lightest sinker that holds the bottom. Swivels stop the line from twisting, and a float holds the bait at a set depth and shows a bite. Take every scrap of line and lead home, because lost tackle harms birds and sea life.

Looking after tackle

Rinse rods and reels in fresh water after every trip to the sea, let them dry, and store rods out of the sun.

This guide is based on Chapter 4 of Freshwater and Coastal Fishing for Beginners, which includes a starter kit list.