Here I am stuck out of the water because of a Hip op, and when you miss cuta season or week as it goes it sucks. But I was wondering what has been the biggest Cuta, Wahoo (know seasons is only starting) and other game fish that have come out so far this year. And while we are on that how big do these things get? I mean has anybody actually speared a 35kg Cuta? just curious... time out of the water syndrome!

a article straight out of Saspearfising.co.za


Just another Dive and a World Record King Mackerel
Just another dive in sunny South Africa. l picked Kevin up at 7.00am and we drove down to Hiberdene,a distance of 100km,south of Durban. The sea looked OK with not too much of a swell running,around 1m,and green. l said to Kevin ` I think we are in for a good dive' as I know some good spots off Hiberdene. Walking north towards the childrens home, we chatted to another diver who had just had his fish eaten and had been chased out the water by a big shark. My level of enthusiasm dropped a degree. On swimming out the viz was fine, 5m, but the water was a very cold 18 c

with a slight N-S current. We tried for snoek and then swam out to a spot Kevin knows in 50foot. The reef was very dead and I was thinking of just getting my bugs at this stage. To warm up I started to swim hard for another reef which has a lot of caves further north. The viz had dropped a bit with lots of suspension but the water had warmed up. I was having trouble locating the spot as one of my marks was hidden in the winter haze. I suddenly heard Kevin screaming loudly inshore from me. My immediate thought was shark, but then I could hear, `big cuda, big cuda.'

Kevin was being towed in a circle going out to sea. As I had recently seen a shark in the area I followed Kevin out. When I eventually saw the cuda it was hard to believe that it was one, as it was so big. We decided to locate my spot and get our bugs. I found it soon after and there was a shoal of geelbek on it. Kevin and I both managing to bag one. We shot a couple of reefies each and got some big bugs before swimming in. The fun and games was carrying the cuda to the car along with the rest of our catch. The cuda weighed 36.8kg which will be a new S.A. record. The old record was 34kg. It is also probably a world record. Not bad for a days dive! From the head stones, ORI estimate the fish to be between 7 and 8 years old.

www.spearfishing.co.za/news/kevin-cuda.htm

Attached is a pic of Koos Jordaan with a 52kg couta that is about the biggest i have heard of world wide. Before that was a guy who shot a 46kg. Anything over the 25kg mark is a very good fish!

Just FYI - the Couta in Koos's photo wasn't 52kg. Some bright spark just put that label on it started sending it out via email. It caused much excitement in the spearing community when it was sent around over and over again.

I can't remeber exactly how big it was, but if someone emails Koos, I am sure he will be glad to let you know.

Remeber that koos is also not the "tallest" of divers, which has the advantage of making his fish look slightly bigger in photos (not that he doesn't land some real monsters on a regular basis).

The biggest Couta I have heard of this season so far is Len Turner's one of 32kg that they got off Moz somewhere. I know Chris is in the process of convincing him to write an article on his trip for issue 6, so hopefully you all get to read about it and check the pics (they are pretty impressive). If I remember correctly, they got a few fish over the 30kg on their trip. I wonder is he will ever let anyone else actually know where they dived.

I often dream of one day landing a couta over 30kg...

Dane.Salmon wrote:

The biggest Couta I have heard of this season so far is Len Turner's one of 32kg that they got off Moz somewhere.

Those were mates of mine in that group. None of those fish were actually weighed, so they can't claim those weights

Len's fish (what size do you reckon?)...