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.

We all know that us spearos are a different breed, especially when compared to ski-boat fisherman. The ‘gun-ho’ do-what-it-takes attitude of the spearfisherman has meant that over the years, the boats that have evolved in spearo circles have had less refinement and finesse than those used by our ski-boat fishing cousins. Wet rides and aching backs from sitting on low hatches have been the norm, but the small boats have always been easy to handle, cheap to run and negotiate the surf well. Not to say that standard ski-boats don’t work for us, it’s just that the deck layouts are usually very cluttered, the gunwales are high and for the most part are too cumbersome. I suppose if you sat on a boat all day roasting in the sun hoping that some fish might swim past your bait, you would want to do it from an arm chair with a cup holder for your beer, and also not want to get wet!

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..

I have been obsessed with spearfishing Dog Tooth Tuna ever since I first saw that silver dot coming in on me just over a year ago in Madagascar (see USM vol 4 – A Mad Madagascan Reality). On that spearfishing trip I was given a small taste of the power and grandeur of these fish and also a very large slice of humble pie at the same time. When I arrived home from Mads (with no spears, bungis or working guns left), I made a promise to myself that I would find a way to land a decent sized Doggie one day.

A little while back we were having a discussion on the USM forum on the importance of correctly powered speargun rubbers, and the effects on accuracy and penetration etc. Then out of left field Corry chirps something along the lines that everything we had discussed was useless unless the spear was sharp. Not only did he have a good point, but it also got me thinking on a number of other aspects that dramatically affect accuracy, penetration and more.