Wahoo are around in fair number as is reported by spearos up and own the KZN coast. The blue water has been coming right close in often, last weekend the water was a toasty 25.19 degrees. Just the way the Wahoo and Billfish like it. Yep, with the Wahoo come the Sailfish, and the Striped Marlin. The stripeys around here this time of year come in shoals.! And we can expect the second showing of dorado anytime soon. Especially with the recent downpurs and resulting brown water line.
Over to Jason…
Diving conditions have been average this week with one or two day’s being excellent. Autumn fish are here with shoals of 10kg spannish mackerel around and wahoo putting in an appearance . Saturday a light southwest blows early switching to a light to moderate northeast later in the day with a negligible swell of 1.3m running. Sunday a light to moderate offshore blows in the morning switching to a moderate onshore in the afternoon with the swell running at 1.6m. So Saturday gets100 percent green light for a dive with game fish switching on as the onshore starts to blow. Fish of the week goes to Luke with a slab of a wahoo and club merit fish goes to Garrett with a bus Queen Fish. As always dive safe and straight spears.
FishBazaruto’s game-fishing video playlist getting bigger and better
Game-fishing for the camera! It’s real cool when the kids take over and just thump out cool little edits of your day at sea for you! Well this has been happening more and more as the young ones embrace technology – especially cell phones and video. Captain Duarte Rato of FishBazaruto up in Vilanculos, Southern Mozambique, had some real keen and talented young crew on his boat Vamizi this last week – The Watt teenagers – movie makers and fishermen!
Young Benji Watt and his first sailfish is the first clip.
As you can see from these classic clips recently added to FishBazaruto’s YouTube playlist, authentic and quality video is a cell phone or a GoPro away. All these tools come with editing software these days – totally intuitive and built into the hardware. You can trim video right in your phone’s gallery, and assemble the whole lot with titles and if you really have to, put music on top.
Throwing a track over your hard earned authentic sound bytes is a no-no! And you lose out on the copyright of your own material. Any revenues generated go to the artist who originally recorded the song. Use original sound wherever possible. You can bleep out the swearing!
You also don’t need to commentate at all. You can but don’t talk to the camera. Do that afterward with a voice over helping to tell the story. Filling in any gaps. But mostly, the story tells itself, especially if you can tie off a shot and record the whole lot on a wide, and use another phone or camera for the close ups.
Too easy!
Assemble on your phone or your computer. Then upload to YouTube. And this is where all this extra cool new content is coming from! You! YouTube is awash with every fishing video you could dream to watch. Instructional stuff is all over and so well done. Knots. Traces. Fighting fish. You can glean so much from watching these videos. Often they are series’ of themed video- just like a TV show.
So what’s next from us?
Live from the boat! As the season kicks off in Bazaruto this year, there are some spots that have enough signal, to get a live stream going. Both Duarte and ourselves (The Sardine Team are operating up in Vilanculos through to January), will endeavour to get a live tangle with a marlin going.
Stay tuned via our Facebook pages, if you Like our pages, you will be notified when we go live.
Learn more about FishBazaruto at their content rich website over at http://fishbazaruto.com. Duarte and his team update the site regularly – in fact every trip Duarte has done since 2010 or so, is documented on the website. With photos.
As we move into the video age – when everyone has access to the equipment, and the interfaces become easier and more intuitive, it’s gonna be a very colourful – Future of Fishing.
Many rods actually vie for the mantle of being the most important rod on the boat. The live-bait jig sticks? The spinning stick? But there is one rig that really covers all bases and every situation – the good old Daisy Chain.
South African style. Three 3 or 4 inch feathers / min-eyes / jube-jubes / dusters…rigged in a row, about a half metre apart. Each with a single hook. I rig mine with wire…explanation to follow. But first let’s get clear that this ain’t no IGFA compliant rig. No sir! In fact, I got in touch with IGFA, and asked for clarification. Here with the cordial and timeous answer I received from Mr. Vitek.
“Thanks for the message. Based on your email, it does not appear that your rig would be IGFA legal as you mentioned that each of the feathers has a hook. IGFA rules only allow anglers to fish with a single hooked bait at a time. That said, if you were to only put a hook on the last feather, that would be IGFA compliant.”- Jack Vitek
So it seems we can fish the Daisy Chain in IGFA rules, so long as only the last feather has a hook in it.
So why all the fuss?
Billfish to bonito. That’s why. A sailfish or young marlin eagerly chooses the Daisy Chain over the other purpose rigged lures. Dorado smash them. Natal Snoek (Queen Mackerel) love them. Bonito – the pulse in our veins on any trip – devour Daisy Chains – even multiple baits on one chain sometimes. Couta of all sizes. Skipjack. Kakaap. All sorts…
In fact the Daisy Chain not only catches anything and everything, even shad – but they give you back another advantage – intel. You can glean data from the daisy chain, as to what is going on, and act accordingly. They are like feelers out there, just letting you know what’s going on at that present moment.
Daisy Chains can drag fast too – really small form factor – they kind of keep each other in the water and not flying about like a single lure rig at the high speeds we sometimes try at. Natal Snoek love the higher speeds as much as billfish do.
And now, if you rig the Daisy with an extended wire tag end that doubles over and back, to become a clip for piece of fillet, and a real strong hook with real strong wire – you have a Strip Bait Daisy Chain. I say strong wire (#8 at least) – mainly for resilience because the Daisy is normally going quite fast and is always in the white water, playing second fiddle to the tag lines and outside rigged lures. So it can’t even really be clearly seen – so it’s fine to rig up on wire. Especially since the Daisy is lying just in front of the inside konas, and right above the deep diving rattlers – and just behind the second teaser.
The middle of all the action!
The two upright back corners are where the Daisy Chains run nicely. If the wind blows, put them flat next to the deep divers.
These modified and wired Daisy Chains will soon be available from Mydo Lures. Look out for The Mydo range at a tackle store near you. If your local tackle store doesn’t stock The Mydo, try https://thesardine.co.za/mydo/.
Check out all the wahoo featuring in this weeks spearfishing report by the ever reliable Jason Heyne… – Shonalanga
The sea conditions at the start of the week were great then a big north east pushed through on Wednesday which churned the sea up. Thursday and Friday the south west blew cleaning up the south coast. Saturday the swell drops to 1.5m with a light north blowing switching to a moderate north east later in the day. Sunday looks tops with light variable wind all day and a 1.4m swell running. There are big king mackerel patrolling the south coast with garrick and daga salmon starting to make an appearance. Big Natal snoek are back on the north coast. Sunday looks to be the best day for a dive. As always dive safe and straight spears.
