Home grown Couta & Snoek!
Over the last few weeks I have spent most my time diving away from home as the season has been rather disappointing here. I have dived Vidal, the Shoal and the Kei looking for some decent fish to spear. My search turned up rather fruitless.
On Friday a mate of mine Warren convinced me to do a 'fitness' dive ..... this was starting to look appealing as I have done very few shore dives lately and my fitness is starting to reflect in my diving. And there is no better fitness and conditioning than a a couple hour swim from the shore.
Anyway we headed out off one of our local spots and some how got separated. I thought Warren had swam up to a ledge further down the beach. Anyway I swam to thre next ledge and he wasnt there so I decided to hang around and do a few dives. The vis wasnt brilliant and it was difficult to find the drop off. On the one dive I missed the reef and hit the sand about 15m or so from the reef. I thought I would swim along the bottom towards the reef and maybe see if there wasn't anything chilling on the drop off.
Instead I swam into a Couta right on the sand! The vis at the bottom wasn't great and I closed in on the fish. It kept its distance and when it started to turn away I figured I was close enough to the fish and took the shot. I thought the fish was about 10kg, but when the spear took a while to hit the fish I realised that it was a decent fish. Long story short I landed the fish and was super stoked, and thought to myself the boys arn't going to believe this one!
Time was running out and by the time I landed the fish I was way down the beach and caring this beast back was not going to be fun. Next thing as I hit the back line a school of large snoek bail past. Instinct takes over and I manage to plant a spear into the tail of the small trailing fish in the shoal. This turns out to be another decent fish.
The Couta landed up weighing 21.68kg and the Snoek 7.83kg, the walk back was a little more than the fitness sesssion I had bargained for but it was all good. But most of all these two fish have restored my faith in my home reefs and I guess this is what keeps us going back out there spearfishing over and over ... especially when most the time we get blanks.
Coatesman
On Friday a mate of mine Warren convinced me to do a 'fitness' dive ..... this was starting to look appealing as I have done very few shore dives lately and my fitness is starting to reflect in my diving. And there is no better fitness and conditioning than a a couple hour swim from the shore.
Anyway we headed out off one of our local spots and some how got separated. I thought Warren had swam up to a ledge further down the beach. Anyway I swam to thre next ledge and he wasnt there so I decided to hang around and do a few dives. The vis wasnt brilliant and it was difficult to find the drop off. On the one dive I missed the reef and hit the sand about 15m or so from the reef. I thought I would swim along the bottom towards the reef and maybe see if there wasn't anything chilling on the drop off.
Instead I swam into a Couta right on the sand! The vis at the bottom wasn't great and I closed in on the fish. It kept its distance and when it started to turn away I figured I was close enough to the fish and took the shot. I thought the fish was about 10kg, but when the spear took a while to hit the fish I realised that it was a decent fish. Long story short I landed the fish and was super stoked, and thought to myself the boys arn't going to believe this one!
Time was running out and by the time I landed the fish I was way down the beach and caring this beast back was not going to be fun. Next thing as I hit the back line a school of large snoek bail past. Instinct takes over and I manage to plant a spear into the tail of the small trailing fish in the shoal. This turns out to be another decent fish.
The Couta landed up weighing 21.68kg and the Snoek 7.83kg, the walk back was a little more than the fitness sesssion I had bargained for but it was all good. But most of all these two fish have restored my faith in my home reefs and I guess this is what keeps us going back out there spearfishing over and over ... especially when most the time we get blanks.
Coatesman
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