Planning your day: the weather homework
Before gear, before traces, before anything: learn to read what the sea is doing. A few minutes on the right sites tells you where the clean, warm water is and whether you'll get out at all. These are the ones Justin uses to plan a fish.
- Windfinder. The crew's trusted wind and general weather app (Windy and Windguru do the same job). Wind speed, cloud cover, wave height, direction and period, plus the barometric reading. The Superforecast view breaks the next two days into hourly readings.
- Surfline. The surf-specific read: surf size, primary and secondary swell with the gaps and direction, plus tides. It also shows first light and sunrise times, so you know when you'll actually be able to launch.
- The Sharks Board daily report. One a lot of people don't know. Every day they post where they've launched, area by area from Richards Bay down to Port Edward: wind, swell, rough water visibility and temperature, current direction and any activity. Chasing couta and dorado in summer? It'll show you which bay has the cleanest, warmest water. Snoek jumping somewhere? It's in there too.
- CSIR Wavenet (Durban). A live weather station off Durban: live wave size, period, direction and sea temperature. It picks up big gusts before they reach you, so if a westerly is coming through while you're fishing north, you'll know it's time to head home.
- Ocean Eye webcams. A subscription webcam network covering the crew's home stretch: La Mercy, Salt Rock, uMdloti, uMhlanga, Ballito Main Beach, Tiffany's and Salmon Bay. Perfect for eyeballing the surf before an afternoon fish.
