Watch this cool underwater and highly authentic video shot by Asha Irvine, Chris’ able lady – as Chris puts the spear in a huge couta at Pomene recently.
The fish was deep down, swimming the bottom as Chris descended above and behind to plant the perfect shot. The couta swims off like it would, and Chris gives chase, with Asha right behind him, camera rolling.
The reel gun must have been smoking underwater but luckily it was well spooled and the 32kg fish soon got dragged up kicking and screaming.
Chris’ antics have been nothing more than spectacular…we had to run a series on him to keep up!
Featuring: A great reality clip of Chris’ croc couta at Pomene, caught from the beach, on a recent adventure up to ‘this paradisical place.
Meeting Chris Leppan down here at The Umzimkulu Marina for a weekend and his entourage of enthusiastic ocean people was game enough. But seeing his collection of amazing fishing stunts pulled off lately, takes things to a new level. I thought he was just a surfer?!
Not only will you read about here in upcoming weeks, and see videos of, huge king mackerel taken from the beach like the one featured in this video below. But also of even huger couta Chris shot at Pomene in Southern Mozambique, in fact muuuch huger! Wait ’til you check that fish! Which Chris shot all the while being filmed by his highly capable camera expert girlfriend!
And pretty soon, we will run the video Chris got whilst taming an 80kg marlin, from his surf ski! Right in front of where he stays in Durban North?!
So enjoy this first instalment of how a waterman has fun in the afternoons…with much more to follow…
The Sardine team have been doing trips to Pomene and surrounds for a decade now. If you, or anyone you know, would like to know a bit more about the place (like the lodge is soon to be closed btw), or conditions/logistics, buzz me on umzimkulu@gmail.com. We can also arrange to get you up to Pomene – to stay in our rustic facility on the beach at the point, buzz me too!
The place is sure to be blown up, literally to smithereens, as cruise ships start their tenure in the bay later this year. No more secrets. The cat has left the building. They are doing a bunch of trips, carrying a few thousand at a time, to be dumped on the serene and unspoilt peninsula, for a day. November through April. Fortunately, these cruise ships seem to move around a heap, hopefully they will go back to Inhaca Island, where they came from, which is a far better suited venue. We did some work for the cruise ships captain when they were scouting, finding channels and parking spots for the huge ship, which is how we know this all to be true. It also has been advertised in their brochures already since last year. An alarming note is that the estuary could be closed off to access for the public. Periodically or not, we are not sure. And, there are plans to build a hotel, in the place of the old and romantic Pomene Lodge. Sad way to go…paradise found and lost.
Further waves on the horizon are reports that even more cruise ships are starting from the north. Coming down from that way, since the piracy guys have been collared. The commercial fishing fleet are also back on the water, operating out of the Seychelles and Mauritius, and so the mill keeps turning.
Captain Duarte Rato of FishBazaruto.com has his finger on the pulse up and down the East Coast of Africa, and has an amazing Inhaca Blue Marlin bite to report, this March 2017.
The recent sport fishing competition held from out of Inhaca, just out from Mozambiques capital, Maputo –  reported phenomenal numbers and more numbers of marlin action. The release only tourney was a huge success for the 13 boats, who each accounted for a minimum of three fish!
The winning teams raised so many marlin, that they lost count!
An excerpt from Captain Duarte’s report…
“Yolanda won the event with the release of 7 fish, four Blues and three stripes. However, they reported sixteen bites and over thirty raised fish – they said they lost count.
Then there were two boats with 5 releases; Hakuna Matata released 3 blues and 2 striped and Aquamarine 2 Blues and 3 stripes.
Gabri got 4 fish on the day. They released a blue and two Blacks and had another Blue die on them, which got tail wrapped and could not be revived.
The guys aboard Fourplay released 3 Blues, out of 12 they either missed or pulled – and they had 19 fish up for the day.
Other fish reported where a Black by Cheetah out of three bites, and they only fished until 9am. Nakisai also released 2 Blues amongst a number of strikes. Nana released two Blues and had another one sharked by an Oceanic Whitetip, the first ever time I have heard of a fish being sharked out wide in this fishery´s. They also lost another right by the leader, and reported about 15 bites! Another boat that reported a similar number of fish on the day was Mon Ami, although they failed to convert those except on one striped they released out of the whole lot. Bite Me II released two Blues, as well as DanDan.
That´s an average of more than 3 Marlin per boat per day and not a single one of the ten boats that where specifically targeting Marlin skunked! Again, this is weekend anglers, mostly fishing out of small outboard powered trailer boats!
The tides of March are marching again, and it’s quite tough to understand why.
The main thing out of synch is that the tidal coefficients are not that high. Monday’s coefficient was a mere 95 in the morning. Given that the coefficient range reaches over 120, it means that it was only about 85% of what it could have been. The height of the tide on Monday was 2.1m in Durban. Durban’s highest tides come in at a raging 2.3m! That’s 20cm more than Monday’s water.
But it’s the storm surges from the massive swell that really is higher grade learning. Why now? Why The Ides of March?
Very strange stuff indeed.
But if you check this amazing animation of the globe’s wind and weather (and even ocean currents and waves if you select the right overlay), you will be able to monitor the whole lot in real time.
The way I interpret this last push, is that the cyclonic system that grew as it moved south East of Madagascar over the weekend, but did not develop to full cyclone (didn’t even get a name), just stubbornly stayed out there, day after day, whipping swell straight at everyone from the Cape to Mozambique. It’s the positioning of the cyclone that makes for the swells. If it goes crazy and heads for land, it’s not ideal, not by a long way. But when they sit out there, just far enough off not to make too much chaos on land (torrential rain), just behind and below Mad, the distance that  a swell can be built up, is a good 2000 to 3500kms. Winds pushing consistently at 60kmh to 120kmh and sometimes more, can do wonders for us, with this huge fetch of water. Hence the huge swell and storm surges that swamped Durban beachfront and surrounds the last few days. Epic stuff – like a mini tsunami really. And with our best cyclone season for years going on right now, things are gonna stay very interesting.
Aside: If you study the animation at the link above closely and over time, you will also see how come Mozambique is offshore so often, this time of the year. As the winds square the coast, where I write this now – Port Shepstone KZN, it’s raining, it’s onshore, the water is brown and the waves are huge. Meanwhile, get on up to sunny skies and chevrolet, and huge crystal clean barrels – at any low tide in Mozambique, right now!
“I have been trying to get photos or pics from the crew up there, but at this stage, an ominous silence prevails. The wind does look a bit iffy today, but it’s the perfect tides  – things, when they smooth out up there, will be melted plastic.
Calvin Moore is in Pomene! Robin Beatty is in Tofinho! Send news!
Is Caesar going down tomorrow? – Xona”
Endless rains are great for farmers but the brown water instils a nervousness down here in KZN as it’s full of sharks. The Umzimkulu River mouth is a favourite hangout for huge Zambezi’s, that can often be seen free-swimming around the mouth area. Eish!
The recent cyclone and weird weather may have had something to do with things but Bazaruto has been absolutely off the scale. Yellowfin tuna as far as you can see in every direction, with bonito and skipjack filling in any spaces.
And the marlin and sailfish are still around for a fight, it’s been one helluva billfish season up and down our coastline.
Here is a link –  Baitball Article – to a contribution Captain Duarte Rato of FishBazaruto, made to a great article that ran in the January issue of Voyages de Peche magazine.
The article, which is about bait balls or where and when large masses of bait come together along with its predators, was put together by Julien Lajournade, had as it´s collaborators Duarte along with well know photographers Jessica Haydahl Richardson (Yellowfin & blue runnes in Cobia Panama), Pat Ford (tarpon and others on mullet at vero beach Florida), Marc Montocchio (great photograph with tarpon and silversides in the Caymans) and Scott Kerrigan (on sailfish and sardines off Isle Mujeres – Mexico).
You can read and see more of Duarte’ss amazing experiences with these bait balls right here…
Bait balls – massive amounts of bait and predators – it is all happening at Bazaruto right now, here is an email I received from Duarte recently…
“Hey mate, hope all good…
As you know after the season I have chilling with the family and finalizing all the bookings for the rest of the year for Bazaruto and Cape Verde. But, after cyclone Dineo (which as you know was much kinder to us here in Vilankulos / Bazaruto than our friends further south in the Inhambane area) we finally have had a spell of absolutely gorgeous weather and my boys at Bazaruto told me about excellent light tackle game fishing. So, yesterday decided to take my boy (that´s Duarte´s oldest son which just turned 4 years and is obsessed with fishing – I hear he prefers to watch fishing videos than cartoons – wonder where he gets it from) out. Man, it was absolutely unbelievable from when we got to V-mile area yesterday morning until midafternoon when we come back was going mental. I think all the churning caused by the cyclone as just moved up all these nutrients and the ocean is alive everywhere you look. Between V mile all the way to the north of the Island at any given time you seeing 5 or more schools of Yellowfin tuna, skipjack and bonnies gorging themselves on tiny oceanic anchovy! It´s all small stuff (what we in season call bait) but great fun on the light tackle. Perfect stuff to target on the light spinning rods.
We had nonstop action from the start and everyone hooked up simultaneously all the time. It looks like a slaughter and we did take a lot of fish out but we released much more and we were all with our freezers empty and brought some fish back for the boys. Funniest thing was Duarte Jnr, who we have now nicknamed gaffman, who at a stage did not want to take any rod but just wanted to gaff the fish, every single one of them…hilarious! And he knows when they really small he was like ´´this one we throw back “! By 10am he was so tired he was falling asleep but kept being woken up by screaming reels and he just could not resist. To let him have a much-deserved nap (he did wake up at 4am), and despite the water being horrible dirty and green I decided to fish for Marlin for a couple hours. We first put a live YFT but that did not last long and we were hooked up to a shark within 20 minutes, which obviously woke him up againJ! I decided to put the lures and head out wide in search of blue water which was not to be seen up to 500 meters out! It was green and we never raised one, did get a decent wahoo for Rafi tough. When we come back early afternoon it was still going wild and the mayhem continued before we decided to call it a day at 3pm. We have a strong SE moving in on Sunday which should push in the blue water and I am sure some fish with a sharp nose with it…there is enough bait to make them come! Until then we will just have fun on the small stuff, back at it tomorrow…
Cheers mate…attached a couple of pics from yesterday. Back at it tomorrow, and the next day!!!””
Some guys have all the luck!
Thank you Duarte…
And now this…
After mastering the necessary gaffing skills to be on the boat with his Dad, young Duarte was seen at the helm of his first vessel – a surfboard, at Tofo!
Oh oh, better catch some waves now before he grows up
