Chronicles of a Blue Water Hunter

[CFHunter]

Hey there Miles,
Great article, been following it for a while now. I got a few questions abotu Bluewater diving since ive only been doing inshore diving 60ft or shallower. What type of tips have you been using for YF's, probably a standard ice pick, but do you use barbed icepicks to ensure that they deploy. Also are you using dyneema or cable to connect the icepick to the shaft, because i know from shooting Striped bass that cable has a tendency to slice through the fish. The reason i ask is im in the middle of designing my own speartips for hunting, these are basically broadhead style slip tips for bass which do a nice job of buttoning the wound. I wanted to make a beefed up version for some bluewater, but i figured a broadhead would affect a long distance shot dramatically if the precision isnt quite on. An alternative would be to manufacture my own version of the standard ice pick. Any info would go a long way thanks- Chris

[fer_abella]

tommy botha slip tips
ss cable
one small barb

[romek]

Greeting folk,

I hear the Tuna season has started already with some good catches last weekend 20nm from Cape Point.

People in the "know" say we are in for a bumper season.

If anyone is looking to join a Tuna charter or for people to join in mid/end of March drop me a personal message.

Keenly now waiting for the Titan of Tuna's pictures and reports and mid March.

Regards
Romek

[miles]

Hiya

Romek, you've been mis-informed. I only know of ONE 50kg Yellowfin that has been landed for the last 6 weeks or so. Plenty of longfin, but no 50kg+ Yellowfins. Plenty of Dorado and small 10-20kg yellowfins though.

They should hopefully arrive during the next two weeks......

Regards
miles

[miles]

19 February 2008

Went to bed at 12:00, only to hear my alarm blaring at 2:30am!! Stumbled out of bed, trying to get rid of sleepy!! Two and a half hour of sleep is not condusive to my well-being!! Muttering curses of "i'm getting too old for this", i load my gear into the 4x4. Ten minutes later i'm at Tommy's house. He's busy rigging a gun!! "What on earth are you up to??".......Tommy's sheepish reply....... "i forgot to tie these new bands to my gun"

We hook up his boat and start the 200km drive to Struisbaai. With a 20knt+ wind howling here, we reckoned that nobody would be able to go to sea, so since we all were going to be sitting at home, why not go harrass some fish at Struisbaai!! Exactly what we did!

Got to Struisbaai, only to see the commercial fisherman off-loading 500-600kg of Geelbek and a few yellowtail. Not a good sign, as Geelbek like dirty water. We launch and run to the wreck of the "PIONEER". Waters a dirty green with less than 2m viz!! Thois wreck is well-known for its healthy population of Great White sharks. Needless to say, we give it a miss and run to the 6 miles bank. We find the block of the wreck "WAFRA" only to see the current churning up sand. Once again, 2m viz at best!!

Running out of options, we head for the 12mile bank which is 19nm from the harbour. We finally get some warm CLEANISH water!! Much to my dismay!! I HATE the 12mile bank!! On occation, it does hold good fish, but 99% of the time they're deep.........and i'm not that fit.....nor a very accomplished deep diver!! Its one of those places where guys regularly get into serious trouble by overstaying their welcome at the bottom, normally chasing very large yellowtails. Shallowest reef is 29m deep and the fish normally hug the bottom.

We deploy the flasher at 16m deep, hoping to lure the fish a bit higher off the reef. With a nice 8-10m viz on top, it drops down to 4m when you pass the -10m mark. First dive.......i hear Maruis's gun go off, whilst i'm descending. I see him come pass me on the way up with his gun flailing around a few meters below him. I get to the flasher and then see the school of fish another 3-4m below it. Being my first dive, i know i don't have much breath left, so aim for the closest nice size fish and pull the trigger. THWAAK......fish on......"OH SHIT!!".....i've got no floatline!! I've started using a 8m bungee with a small pull-under float, instead of a floatline. Works well in the 10-15m water depth we normally hunt in, but is woe-fully in-adequate in this 30m+ water depth.

After some powerful kicks from my carbon fins, i slowly start moving up and the fish stops pulling me downwards. One hand on the bungee and the other on my weightbelt, just in case...... I know its going to be a close call...... Luckily, i've weighted myslef negative at -10m so, when i hit 10m, all was OK. Got to the surface.....grabbed my fish.....IDB!! (In Da Boat!!) I HATE it when you get a school of fish deep on your very first dive for the day!!

By now, we've drifted over the reef and into 35-40m water depth. I offer to buggy the boat and Tommy now jumps in on the next drift. Lucky for me as a couple of minutes later, two bronzies are buzzing the flasher whilst a larger one in just a few meters below the surface buzzing Tommy and Maruis. Pretty pointless trying to spear when the bronzies are about as they'll take every fish you shoot.

We adopt the one up one down routine. When a diver shoots a fish, the second diver dives down and fends off the sharks, so as to land the fish. We each shot a couple of fish more and decided to call it quits as the water was getting dirtier and the bronzie's much more bolder and more agressive.

Back at the harbour, we hear than only 3-4miles outside us, guys were catch HUGE dorado!! (a rare visitor to our coastline!!) Some scuba divers also told us of top to bottom viz. on the "Skip-skop" banks.....with PLENTY of BIG yellowtail and even a 75kg or so striped marlin!! After driving back home, my mate calls me up to tell me they'd just caught 250 albacore all in the 15-20kg class........... Jeez, did we get it wrong today!!

Oh well, i still had a fabulous day at sea!!

ps. fish were 10-15kg's
pps. we all used Pelaj's new range of spearguns. Tommy is sponsored by Pelaj, so am I and Maruis shot with our proto-type Pelaj guns and liked it so much, he promptly bought himself one!!

[podge]

Miles as ever outstanding stuff.

[fer_abella]

Oh no !! Miles starts again !!

even a 75kg or so striped marlin!!
huge dorado
big yellowtail
250 albacore

You know i easily get confused by that large amount of fish.
Catch them one by one and small ones if possible.
So i can manage to stop thinking aboutgoingtoSAagain !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mowgli]

Slick, as slick can be Dude..

[miles]

Oops!! Somehow missed posting this!!

04 December 2007
Maiden Voyage

Rigging my new boat has truly been a very rewarding as well as informative process. Almost EVERY person to climb aboard would offer his/her unsolicted advice, with nobody seeming able to agree on ANYTHING!!

After launching her, the first thing my fishing mates did was poke fun at the fact that i didn't have a echo-sounder/fishfinder mounted!! One of my buddies graciously offered to borrow me his old furuno Fcv668 echo-sounder, which i declined......... Wanted to show those guys that i can fish with-out a fishfinder and plotter!!

Sooo, ended up taking only a handheld GPS and off we went. The guys i sold my old boat to wanted me to show them how to catch tuna and i was quite happy to oblige. With a crew of 8, and only 3 being experienced tuna anglers, we left harbour.

A bit lumpy inside the bay, but flattened out beautifully in the deep, as predicted. Starting chunking when we got to the deep, with no idea of water temperature or even whether there were fish under the boat. Ten minutes later i see the longfin (albacore) in the chum line!! We catch a half dozen or so of these little buggers, sort of 20-25lb (8-12kg) class fish and then started using whole sardines to see if the YF weren't under the albacore. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ..................YEELLLLLOOOO OW-FINNNNNN ON!!! 2 rods bent over double and now the fun begins!!

Firstly, i some-one borrowed my knives to a buddy and he promised that he'd put them back on the boat. Needless to say, he didn't and i didn't check either!!! So, i managed to find a couple of old, rather blunt knives in my tackle box. The sharpest thing we had was the knife on my leatherman!! Then, i hadn't taken into acount that the new boat is considerabily higher out of the water, making my 3' (1m) gaff's rather in-effective!!

With all the drama and much shouting and profuse sweating on my new crew's part, we ended up doing not so bad. Final tally was 18 Yellowfin, with the smallest being 60kg's (130lb+) and 4 being 85kg class (200lb's) fish with a couple of albacore thrown in for good measure.

Surely a sign of good things to come!!

[capetownguy]

blerrie hell! fish fish fish fish! u dont stop! HAHA its crazy man!
well done as usual!!

[Mowgli]

Brother.. You should be writing and we sure will be buying.. Trust me..

You out-wit Carlos Eyles, the renowned author of The Last of the Blue Water Hunters.. The Blue Edge.. Dolphin Borne.. etc. although his books were beautifully written..

You've got the talent.. Don't waste it..

And I almost forgot.. Congrats on your new boat Bud..

[fer_abella]

:

[videocean]

Congrats Mate, for the fish like always and for the boat too, looks very confortable and wider.
The hooks for get up the tuna are the same, jajaja not like your knives.

Regards.

Carlos.

[miles]

Been a bit busy for the last week or two. Our tuna have FINALLY arrived, how-ever, the yellowfin haven't been caught in good numbers yet, to justify a trip to the deep.

Had a friend from the USA come visit, so we did some sight-seeing. Spent some time chasing the local yellowtail population, both on spear and rod and reel. I'll let the pic's do the talking!!

Photo's below were taken from Chapmanspeak, Cape Town, South Africa.
Photo4: The Sentinal at Hout Bay with a fog bank rolling in from the sea
Photo5: a spearfishing allowed sign!!

[miles]

Photo1: Slangkop light-house, enshrouded in fog.

Photo2: Simons Town harbour

Photo3: sunrise!!