South African National Spearfishing Championships Day-2

Local favorite Charl Blignaut notching up some maxi weighers.

Conditions at the second days diving at the South African National Championships made a turn for the worst and the divers had to put in some serious effort to get some quality fish. Local knowledge came in really helpful as the guys in the know managed to still get some good fish.

With the next few days not looking good, and the possibility of the divers getting in again looking slim, the committee running the event have not released yesterdays scores. They say that the results are really close and they want to keep the final result for the prize giving on the weekend.

Jaco Blignaut one of SA's top divers making sure he is not out done.

 I have however been sent an report by Richard Leonard for Gully Jumpers regarding yesterdays diving.

Day 2 started off with light easterlies and clean water in the deap but the competitors soon found ot that it was going to be way more challenging than they thought. The thermocline had pushed in and at most places from 10 meters down there was a radical temperature shift from 18degees to 10 degrees in temperature. The report announced that the east wind was going to increase through out the day gusting up to 25 knots by 11am. The pressure was on, the competitors knew they needed to find their fish early on in the day before conditions got too bad too dive in.
Well the forcast was dead on, the wind started howling by 11 and the water got progressively worse. It proved to be a very challenging dive day for the competitors with most divers scratching out 3-6 weigh'ers. A nice surprise was the Geelbeck and the ever so saught after Miss Lucy or as the EC divers call - Stump which made an appearance in some of the bags.
The big show down and point of suspense was between 2 SA dive legends, Jaco Blignaut and Charl Blignaut. The question was how would Jaco be able to contend against Charl the local champ with local knowledge. Jaco Beached first with a great catch, better than any one else at that point, that was untill Charl hit the beach and started unloading his hatch. It seems local knowledge combined with great diving ability gave Charl the edge and a amazing catch of 10 species - again the only diver of the day to achieve this but what really blew us all away was the 5 maxie weigh'ers in his bag with a 14.5 KG tail to seal the deal as the diver in the lead of this competition.
The results will remain un announced as the weather is up, the divers are not diveing today and there might not be another dive day for the rest of the comp. The results will be anounced on Sat evening after the prize giving.
Richard Leonard
Gully Jumpers Committee Member

Local boy Darryl giving some of the top divers something to think about.

We hope that this is not it for Nationals 2012 and hope that tomorrow sees some diveable conditions. I know from the reports I have gotten back from the Natal boys is that its been tough, very tough.

I will have the final results up before the weekend is out.

Coatesman