Fishing has always been at the centre of everything for me. But when I moved to Knysna and started spending serious time on the estuaries of the Garden Route, one species above all others became my obsession — Garrick.
Garrick are an incredible fish. Powerful, aggressive, and almost always hunting near the surface. They patrol the estuaries on the tide, and when you find them, the fishing can be extraordinary. But getting your bait to them — and keeping it there — is where most anglers struggle.
The Live Bait Problem
Garrick love live bait. A lively mullet or small fish presented naturally on the surface is often irresistible to them. The problem is presentation. The moment you add a ledger weight heavy enough to cast out into the current, you lose everything that makes live bait so effective. The bait sinks, the natural movement is killed, and you spend half your session retrieving and recasting just to get back into the zone.
I wanted a way to get a lightly lip-hooked live bait out to 40m — with no weight, no hard cast, no stress on the bait — and hold it right where the Garrick are feeding. On the surface, in the current, exactly where I wanted it.
That’s where MiBuoy came in.
Stealthy, Natural and Completely Frictionless
With MiBuoy, you simply lip-hook your live bait on a short leader — around two metres behind the unit — and walk it out along the bank. If there’s a current running, MiBuoy holds position naturally. If there’s no current, you just keep a slow steady walk going and your bait travels parallel with you along the river until you find the fish.
And when you do find them, you walk back slightly downstream and bring the bait through the exact same zone again. Clean, quiet and completely controlled.
What makes this so deadly for Garrick specifically is the frictionless trigger system. When a Garrick comes up and grabs that live bait, the only resistance it ever feels is your rod tip or your reel clutch. MiBuoy releases instantly and becomes completely neutral — sitting on the surface, out of the way, while the fish runs 20 or 30 metres before you set the hook.
No resistance. No panic. No lost fish.
A Different Way to Fish
This isn’t trolling. There’s no boat cutting through the water, no heavy gear spooking fish, no noise. MiBuoy is completely stealthy — a small, silent board drifting parallel to the bank with a live bait trailing naturally behind it. The Garrick don’t know anything is there until it’s too late.
I’ve had sessions where I’ve gone back through the same stretch of river three or four times, each time putting the bait directly through the area where I know the fish are sitting. That kind of precision and repetition simply isn’t possible with conventional casting.
MiBuoy was built for moments like these. And Garrick fishing on the Knysna estuary is exactly where it comes into its own.
Find your MiBuoy