The weather improved very nicely over the weekend. Started off diving on Saturday morning. Conditions weren't too spectacular. We were diving over the low tide period and in spite of really applying ourselves to the task at hand, we came away with nothing for our troubles. From my point of view, a day diving is never a complete loss. You always learn about new points and detail about approaching areas you may have ignored before. Sometimes you think that you know an area until some-one tells you exactly how to approach the area and you discover a new hotspot. We did our best to find kingfish, jewfish and crays but were unsuccessful. We all managed to get a snapper while bait fishing, so the morning was not wasted.
Sunday was not pegged as a dive day as conditions had been quite marginal on Saturday. By midday the picture was changing. I got a call from Justin to get me in the mood for diving and Kurt was coming along too. We headed straight to the lighthouse and started off being quite disappointed with the conditions. When we arrived at the N end of the light, the sea had improved tremendously. Mozambique water, 25-30m viz with a temperature around 21C. I hopped in to find a school of Australian Salmon circling the boat. Thinking they were tailor, I knocked one over, as my wife loves tailor. Salmon have a reputation for being very ordinary and I chose to burley it up. For me this proved to be the ticket as I quickly picked up 4 reasonable kingfish. The pushing tide seemed to be pushing in better water all the time. I saw schools of bluebar parrotfish and a big school of jewfish all safely inside the sanctuary. Justin and Kurt lay on the bottom watching a school of Mangrove Jacks at their cave, these also safe in the sanctuary. On the edge of the reef toward the NE in about 22m of water, I followed a bluebar for a long time. The fish seemed flighty and the presence of 3 large Grey Nurse Sharks probably added to his shyness. A large shape resembling a small whaler approached and only when it got close to me did I realise it was a massive kingfish. This fish proved to be too smart for me too. As did a nice Amberjack a little later.
As the sun was dropping we stopped at a shelf to see if we could dupe some Mangove Jacks. The surge was a little intense to get too close to the hotspot but Justin found and speared a 17kg kingfish. A really big strong fish. One can only imagine how hard the really big ones fight! I am just happy to have some fresh kingfish to smoke over the weekend.
On Wednesday we decided to try our luck with the snapper again. True to form I ended up catching a little red rockcod on nearly every cast. These are small scorpion-fish like critters and look quite nasty. Michael got a reasonable snapper. We stopped at the wash to do a little diving as the water seemed to be improving. Michael quickly subdued a 15kg Samsonfish, but paid for his catch with a badly bent spear. We moved to the S side of NW and Luke found another Jewfish, this time 19kg, slightly smaller than his previous 22kg fish. My diving was shot. In my haste to pack, I did not load my mask & snorkel in, which really put a damper on my diving.
This weekend I hope to explore one or two of the new spots I have been shown and perhaps get some diving in off my sea-kayak.
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