I have just gotten back from an exploratory
spearfishing trip to Madagascar. The Ultimate Spearfishing mag and a journalist from the French magazine Apnea were invited out to Nosy Sakatia by the spearfishing charter Orca Sakatia run by Craig Scott.
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| A Castor Banks Dog Tooth Tuna |
I dont want to give too much away as we will be doing a full article in the next edition of the mag. But I have to tell you that it is off the hook! We only managed to get out to Castor Banks once as it is 80km out to sea!! But when you get there you will flip your lid.
Castor Banks has to be the best place I have ever spearfished ...hands down. On 2 occasions I saw Black Marlin, one was a beast the other was probably about 150kg. We saw Sailfish on numerous occasions and there were Wahoo and Iggies every where. And thats only what you see from the surface!! When you get to 20-25m as you approach the drop off there are Dog Tooth Tuna that swim at you like Salad fish only a 100 times bigger.
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| Dane Salmon happy finally have one Doggie in the hand. |
The problem with a place like that is that you let fish of a lifetime just swim past, because once you have seen Marlin, Sailfish and 60plus kg Doggies thats all that you will settle for. I pulled back on shots on 30kg plus Ignobilis Kingfish and countless Wahoo. The prize was the Dogtooth, and putting spears into the Doggies was easy, the hard part was landing the fish. I lost and broke 5 spears and rigs, and I was only shooting the
Dogtooth tuna I could get the best shots on. Even when you shoot a 40-50kg Dogtooth in the head you get snapped up. Dane shot what I think was a 60kg fish, I was on the bottom and saw the whole thing. It looked like he spined the fish and it went down doing somersaults, that fish some how still had plenty of life and it bolted off only to snap the metal clip on his line.
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| Ronan with his Sailfish |
While Dane and I tried in vain to land a big Doggie, Ronan Bourhis the French journalist managed to get close to a Sailfish and landed a good one. We did manage to get a few small fish, but the Doggies beat us :-(
I think next time I will be whole lot wiser and more prepared...... Like take a whole bunch of spears prepared!
Coatesman
Join me on a spearfishing adventure of a lifetime to Madagascar & the famous Castor Banks - FIND OUT MORE HERE
SPEARFISHING MADAGASCAR | CASTOR BANKS & NOSY BE
2 comments:
Insane you lucky bugger!!!:-)
I dived around the islands in Northern Madagascar a few years back. It WAS amazing ... I can still remember having Barracuda longer than me with my fins on swimming past my speartip like so many grazing cows.
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