[miles]

STRUISBAAI

UNDOUBTEDLY the BEST area for yellowtail!!! 200km's away from Cape town, lies this stunning area. Great harbour, makes for easy launching, plenty of holiday houses for week-end accomadation. Water is almost always 16degrees plus. Much more reef fish, compared to the usual Cape Town spots and the yellowtail grow much larger, with 20kg+ fish being quite common.

First spot is the wreck of the pioneer. A short ride out of the harbour, in 6-13m water. The boiler of the wreck sticks out of the water at low tide. BE VERY CAREFUL if you don't know where it is, as its easy to drive over the wreck and damage your boat!! Here the current normally comes from East to West (from Arniston side, going towards Aghulas) The boat drops you anything from 100-600m away from the wreck. You then drift over the wreck. 20kg 'tail are quite common here, but are very difficult to land, as they often take you into the wreckage, cutting off your spearline or bending your spear and ripping off. VERY difficult to pull a 20kg yellowtail off the wreck in 6-8m water!! KEEP THE BOAT CLOSE BY AT THIS SPOT!! I've seen the most GREAT WHITE SHARKS here!! We had 3 in ONE day here!!! Sometimes you're lucky and get Red Stumps and White Musselcracker here. Galgoen, parrots, pens-en-derms(bronze bream) and skipjacks/bonnitos are fairly common here too. Sometimes you get very lucky and get some weird species here. I've seen Red Steenbras, BIG santers and even yellowbelly rockcods here. A good few years back, Tommy Botha shot a 48kg kob here!!!

Next spot is the WRECK of the SEPTER. Slightly to the West of the pioneer (towards Aghulas) in 4m of water. Once again, 20kg+ yellowtail are common here, but so are the large GWS!! Also popular species here are 'cracker and large leervis/garrick. Once agian, this is a drift dive.

The next spot is the GROWWE BANKE or 6 MILE BANK. Here we dive on the wreck of the WAFRA, which is in 10-12m water. The area just before the wreck is 10-16m deep, with it going down to a 20m+ dirty water depth behind the wreck. Sometimes the fish are very spooky here and often they need to be chased down. Diving down to 12-14m, then waiting, seeing school of fish, chase the school by swimming after them, anything from 5-20m, then getting a shot in!! Definitely a spot to bring your carbon fins along!! Once again, always have your dive flag up and try to work the banks after 10:00am, as by then, the commercials have left, and you have the banks all to yourself.

The following spot is 12 MILE BANK. This is 19nm from the harbour and is a far run in a small boat, as the sea CAN and DOES get ugly quite often. The shallowest point here is 25m deep. The yellowtail are normally deeper than 15m here, and drifting with a flashers works well. Sometimes the water is really warm and often tropical species like dorado(mahi-mahi/dolphin fish), wahoo, 'couta, rainbow runner, YF tuna and longfin tuna. BUT, best of all, each year a couple of striped marlin are caught here!!

There are many other spots, like De Mond, Saxon Reef at Arniston, Miles Barton reefs closer to De hoop reserve side.

All of these spots mentioned above are FREQUENTED by a healthy population Great White Sharks. Don't believe in all the hype, most of them will simply circle you and then dis-appear. Rather leave the water and move to another spot. The smaller 2-3m GWS are more curious, so watch the smaller ones CAREFULLY!! At certain times of the year, Dusky sharks become a problem on the Wafra area. They look similar to GWS but are slightly thinner and smaller. 2-2.5m duskies are VERY aggressive and show no fear in taking fish from your spear. ALWAYS dive in clean water, and always carry a powerhaed in these area's. Almost all spearo's who hunt in these waters have seen a GWS, and i haven't heard of one being bitten here. So don't stress TOO much about them!!