here's a chort post from my website wwwfreedivers.weebly.com
My brother and I went through to Arniston last weekend and what a trip it was! besides the early wake up and the long drive! things looked great when we arrived, I have to be honest and say I was a little nervous because this was the first spearfishing trip that we have taken our little boat on.
But she handled like a dream! we launched and looked for reef but struggled to find good structure (because we didn't have any gps marks) so we ended up going to a couple of rocks that is about 300m offshore to the right of the launch.
Now I have to say that I love diving Arniston for a few reasons:
Warmer water
possibility of shooting great fish!
At the first large rock my we ankered the boat and my brother worked the outside and I worked the inside until we met up on the other side of the rock. There where deep cracks and grooves and at one very large overhang
I was waiting at the back of the cave when a large Roman came storming in, needless to say he landed on the boat!
My brother on the other-hand was working a slightly deeper section and was at the bottom when a school of about 8 White Musselcrackers came at him, he managed a shot at a fish and the spear planted a little too close to the pectoral fin. I guess he still could have landed the fish but you need to understand how strong these fish are! the fish swam through a cave and the line on the reel snagged and with no give in the line the spear tore out!
Just before he got back on the boat he managed a Roman and then we moved off to the outside reef called Saxon. At this reef one of us stayed on the boat while the other dived and my brother did the first dive on the reef. There was alot of live on the reef when I jumped in, loads of big Galjoen where swimming about! I decided to move into really shallow water and was swimming along a gulley that dropped about 5m when I saw 2 crackers swimming past, I managed a quick shot from the surface but it was a terrible shot and it tore out in a second and as soon as I reloaded I was surrounded by a school of about 20 crackers! I did a slow dive to the top ledge of the gulley in about 1,5m of water and lined up on the closest biggest fish and pulled the trigger! It wasn't much of a fight but I was really impressed with the strength of the fish when I got him into my arms!
we worked a few other areas and we both saw more crackers but since we had enough fish for a while we called it a day!
