I went out on Friday last week to Rocky Banks which is about 9nm offshore from Cape Point. It was a great day but a bumpy ride out! We first stopped at the snoek fleet because we heard there where some tail coming through.
I jumped over and dropped my flasher to about 10m and on my first decent I saw two big snoek gliding away from me. I lined up on the closest one and waited for him to give me a bit of an angle and managed a very poor stomach shot but surprisingly enough the shot held and I was able to slowly wrestle my first snoek up!
Snoek are very hard to shoot because they are exceptionally skittish due to the fact that they fear seals so much and we as spearo's must look a lot like a seal. And they have very soft flesh so your spear tends to pull out easily. I've been told to take head shots because it gives the barb something to hold onto so I was very surprized when my stomach shot held, that being said I fought it extremely gently
I saw a few more snoek but they dissapeared very quickly but luckily we managed to catch a few on spinners.
We then heard that there was some yellowtail 1nm south and headed out to go look.
I jumped over and dropped my flasher to about 10m and on my first decent I saw two big snoek gliding away from me. I lined up on the closest one and waited for him to give me a bit of an angle and managed a very poor stomach shot but surprisingly enough the shot held and I was able to slowly wrestle my first snoek up!
Snoek are very hard to shoot because they are exceptionally skittish due to the fact that they fear seals so much and we as spearo's must look a lot like a seal. And they have very soft flesh so your spear tends to pull out easily. I've been told to take head shots because it gives the barb something to hold onto so I was very surprized when my stomach shot held, that being said I fought it extremely gently
I saw a few more snoek but they dissapeared very quickly but luckily we managed to catch a few on spinners.
We then heard that there was some yellowtail 1nm south and headed out to go look.
We found the first school of fish just under the surface and Ant shot his first one quickly but the schools where moving around a lot and you either got your fish or if you missed your shot you missed your opportunity.
Justin managed to plug a really nice fish for the day and we all had 2 tail on the boat except for Justin who managed 3!
It's great working with experienced guys because when you shoot your fish you call for the next gun immediately and once the guy on the boat hands it to you, you dive down and shoot the next fish. This way you will manage to get at least two fish out of the school before it moves on.
You also need a good flasher and the Freedivers flasher that I used was perfect; easy to set to a specific depth and brought the fish in!
Justin managed to plug a really nice fish for the day and we all had 2 tail on the boat except for Justin who managed 3!
It's great working with experienced guys because when you shoot your fish you call for the next gun immediately and once the guy on the boat hands it to you, you dive down and shoot the next fish. This way you will manage to get at least two fish out of the school before it moves on.
You also need a good flasher and the Freedivers flasher that I used was perfect; easy to set to a specific depth and brought the fish in!