One of the great attractions of spearfishing around  Inhaca Island is the variety and number of spots to dive. From deep blue water spots and big ledges coming out of deep water, to great spots for reef fish and wrecks scattered around the area… Inhaca has everything. The only problem is when and how to dive the spots properly in order to be effective.

The whole Inhaca area is governed by tidal moments in and out of the Bay of Maputo. This means that you could get to a spot the one day and it’s cooking… only to find it as dead as a desert the next. So every spot needs to be worked according to the tides. Once you have the tides and currrents worked out, you will be able to plan what species and reef you are going to hunt at different times of the day and week.

Much of the time, spearfishing is all about location. Sometimes, the difference between a productive dive and and an unproductive one is not a question of “how?”, but rather, “where?”. Growing up, I would often see experienced divers coming out of the water with far better fish than I did, even though we were diving in the same area. I thought these guys must just be amazingly skilled divers. I have learnt, however, that all the skill in the world will not help if you are not diving on the right spots that hold fish. Not knowing your location can put you at a huge disadvantage.

This is why guys with local knowledge will often out-dive spearos who are visiting an area. It’s often that specific small crack, or knowing to find certain indicator fish on a section of reef, that will make all the difference. If you dive an area a lot, you will eventually have the reef mapped out, and you learn where the fish hold up. Over time, you learn where certain fish are more likely to come through.

A recent discussion on the USM forum regarding reelguns vs conventional buoyline setups sparked some interesting topics, one being ‘How to attach your shooting line to your reel line’. Traditionally, clips were used in the past, but as they often snag your line and make a noise, spearfishermen in the know have progressed to using a simple Quick Release knot to secure the 2 lines.

One of the guys posted a very informative pdf showing how to tie the Quick Release knot. This was the same standard knot I had been using for some time without fail. However, just recently I discovered a different variation of the knot, which is superior.

The knot may not be as simple as the standard Quick Release knot, but it forms a neater knot and tightens up easier when tied. I can hear my grandfather’s words to me as a youngster tying fishing traces: “A neat knot is a good knot.” This saying has always stayed with me, reinforcing my 2 basic rules by which I judge the value of a knot: how easy the knot comes together when tied, and how neat the final knot is.

Many spearfisherman prefer to use dyneema for their shooting lines attached to their spears. Dynema does not have a memory like mono and does not get scuffed on the reef and bones as much as traditional mono.

Dyneema can be difficult to tie if you don't know how, so here is a simple and very effective knot. This knot can also be used for attaching clips and bungees to spearguns and 100 other uses.

It’s no wonder our forefathers named it the ‘Transkei’… loosely translated as ‘that place over that river’. It was a place so formidable and difficult to transverse yet alluring beautiful. Not much has changed since those days. Sure, now there’s a spiderweb of mud roads criss-crossing the landscape, which makes getting from A to B at least possible. The mystery of the Transkei still grips you. It’s almost surreal.

Deep green valleys carve their way through to cliffs that plummet into the sea, as if the hand of God came and tore away the shoreline. The Transkei is like something out of a Tolkien novel, a ‘Middle Earth’ of sorts complete with rolling mists that cloak its secrets. Even the trees grow strangely, twisted and battered by the wild winds and elements.

The Transkei ocean, not unlike the land, also has its own thing going on. It’s not at all like the Cape or Natal. The Transkei cliffs seem to give the sea an odd ‘bump’ even on calm days. The colour of the water is different, a ‘clean green’ gloom with an airy feeling to it that only adds to the adventure and craziness of this phenomenal place.

Just the other day I watched a guy fill up his booties with water, walk up the beach and rinse his feet off with the water in each bootie before putting them on. I have been shore diving for as long as I can remember and there I was learning something new, I had always been the guy looking for a rock pool to rinse my feet in.

When spearfishing you are just never too old to learn new tricks, so we thought we would nail down a few basics in this edition. Sure, this is how we do it on the KZN North Coast and there are probably a bunch of guys from the Cape no doubt, who will have a completely different approach. That’s fine as long as they share the ‘love’ and let us know what works for them..