Thomas’s Big Spanish Mackerel, 5 January 2006

My 14 year old son, Thomas, and I were diving on a small reef about 6km off Yeppoon. It was early morning, low tide, visibility of 7-10m. As soon as we got into the water it looked good with plenty of skittish baitfish and a few birds working in the area. We anchored the boat on the top of the reef @ 5 m depth. We had a drop off to the west of 15m and to the east of 20m. The reef is only 30m long and the whole area does not get any deeper than 20m. There were a few birds working on the west side of the reef and we dived there first. On my 4th dive I shot a large golden trevally. It wrapped around a bommie before I could control it. I was not able to free it quickly enough, and the spear line chafed through and I lost it together with my spear. I swam over to my son and suggested that we now share his gun. This was his brand new 1.2m Rabitech Hunter, reluctant to share with anyone under any circumstances, 10 day old Christmas present spear gun. So I had to use some cunning. I suggested that he have first shot at a large coral trout near the bommie where I had lost my spear and we then swim over to the east side of the reef where the birds had now started working and I would have a look there. We were delayed by the large coral trout that did not get quite in range, but eventually I got my turn with his gun and we swam over to the eastern side of the reef. As we got there we swam into a ball of 4 inch baitfish. I dived down and saw 3 or 4 mackerel of @ 7kg below the ball.

I thought that this would be a good opportunity for Thomas to shoot his first Spanish mackerel so I swam back, handed him his gun and hung back watching. The way he tells it is like this:

“Eventually my Dad gave me my gun back and I swam towards a ball of baitfish. As I got to the baitfish I saw a large flash as a big fish swam into the ball. We saw each other at the same time. All I could focus on really was the head of a very large mackerel. It had slowed as it saw me. I slowly dropped deeper, twisted round, brought my gun up and shot it behind the head. For a split second the fish did not move. I could see my spear had penetrated through at an angle of @45 degrees. Then the fish took off. I surfaced, shouted 'big mackerel', hung onto my buoy and followed it. It raced across the reef to the west side. After about 15 minutes it slowed down, started circling and got jammed into a ledge on the bottom. We dived down, got a good hold of it, and swam it back to the boat. We did not dive any more that day, just went back to our campsite and enjoyed it all. It weighed 37kg and was 1.64m long”.