Vilanculos trip 19th – 27th July 2003

 Ryan Vdr Merwe and myself flew up to Vilanculos last Saturday. A good mate and dive buddy, Alan Donald owns and runs a water sports operation from Archipelago Sun. As soon as we touched down at Vilanculos airport, we entered a different time zone. No need to change the time on your watch, rather throw it away instead. Time has no relevance in this laid back, island type atmosphere.

Alan, who was looking rather ferrilish with his scruffy goatee, which could only be shaved off after landing his first saily , was there waiting in his Landcruiser.

It was not long before we were swerving between the local indigeni, ending up at the Archipelago Sun, only 2km from the airport. (7km from Vilanculos metropolis) We spent the rest of the afternoon sorting out our gear and getting organised for the following days spearing.

Sunday:

A thick layer of fog hung over the sea on Sunday morning, evident that the warm Agulhas current had moved in close to shore. We headed out on Dave Evan’s boat "Bush Cat", Alan, Ryan, myself as crew. The GPS was used to negotiate the myriad of sand spits that emerge at low tide. (If you wander to far form the channel, you end up in the bush, hence the name "Bush Cat"!) It takes approx. 40 mins to reach the open sea. The wind direction changes from an offshore to SE or SW ( the prevailing wind there) a warm wind generated from the Agulhas current.

As the fog lifted, the sea turned glassy. On the first drift I had two big wahoo swim out of range right on the surface. The next 2 hours involved some great spearing action. Ryan and myself landed some nice cuta up to 17kgs, myself a wahoo around 16kg out of a huge shoal. Ryan was unlucky to lose a wahoo estimated at over 30kg when his spear pulled out. In fact, we all missed several golden opportunities at wahoo! Not long into the pandemonium we heard Alan shouting for a speargun, as he had just rolled up his buoy line. Much to Ryan’s disbelief I threw in his prided carbon reel gun. Are you NUTS were the last words I heard, before he dived in and finned frantically towards Alan, who was by now being towed around by his first sailfish with a jammed reel! Ryan was quick to clip on a float and 30m line. Fortunately, the saily didn’t give any major bursts. Soon we had Alan’s saily and Ryan’s reel gun safely on the boat. With the fish hatches already full, we moved onto another spot. A very moderate West had come through.

We arrived at another pinnacle ranging from 15 – 30m on the outside. It was my bakkie turn and I was starting to get itchy feet watching one kakaap after the other being boated. When I finally jumped in, I was surprised to find some kakaap (averaging 7kg) milling around mid –water like cuckoos. Shortly after landing a couple kakaap of my own, Dave announced that we had to go in as the boat was getting overladen. We arrived back at the mainland around 6:30pm after gutting all the fish close to Nenene Island. And so ended our only day of warm water and ensuing epic pelagic action.

The following days were not as action packed. With colder water moving in, the viz remained on average 12-25m, but the wahoo disappeared altogether, and the cuta weren’t as prolific. Consequently we honed our efforts on the more resident species like kakaap, Ignobillis Kingfish and still shot a few cuta each day, none of them over 12kgs. The Fauvy kingfish and sea pike were like vermin, so we avoided targeting these species altogether.

There was a direct correlation between the degree of kakaap activity and the tides. On the high tide the kakaap moved in onto the reefs, and became more approachable later in the afternoon. There were some reefs that we had to work really hard for the kakaap, lie on the bottom and throw up sand to attract their attention. Occasionally I got over ambitious with this trick and tossed up so much sand I couldn’t see the kakaap peering at me through the sand screen! The last day we landed some lovely kakaap averaging 7-8kgs, on the high tide. Ryan landed the only Ignobillis of the trip, around 25kg and rounded his tally off with a saily around 37kg. (The injured fish nearly impaled me after trying to put in a second shot....I waited a good 5 mins before trying it again).

We only dived 3 pinnacles and a long stretch of reef called "Ballooba" (like Leven at Vidal) in around 16m on the inside and around 20m on the outside. The other pinnacles rise up to around 12-15m and drop off to around 30 – 35m quite quickly. I am sure with some more scouting with the sounder there are plenty more hot spots in the nearby area.

The malaria in Vilanculos is on the increase, but besides for Alen "accidentally" driving over my 1.3m Carbon Rob Allen railgun, there were no other major blunders.