(by Ryan Lategan)
South African Summer has produced some amazing weather along with some phenomenal catches. One or two South African records with a potential world record were broken along the way, one of them being shot by Taylor Rose Sims and the others by Jaco Blignaut. Taylor Rose representing the Diving Divas of SA with a beautiful Tassle shot on a shore dive in the Eastern Cape leaving her eligible to claim her amazing catch as a new SA record for the ladies. Jaco Blignaut smashing his previous record with a 52.4 kg Amberjack shot in 45m of water in KwaZulu-Natal. On his list of records, there is potential to claim a new world record for an eelskin rockod. Recently the Southern Cape and Overberg region had some stunning conditions with spearo reports of clean and warm water for days on end. This yielded some good and rather strange catches for these regions. One particular species shot by Dawie Jansen Van Noordwyk found itself to be rather lost, this being a Natal bumphead, which is normally found in the waters off KwaZulu-Natal. Shot on Skipskop in the Oververg region, it was a long way away from home. Just 800gr from the SA record made it an even better catch. To top things off we have an eleven-year-old youngster (it is allowed to spearfish in South Africa at such age), Griffin b, who landed a beautiful musselcracker, amongst many of his recent catches. A dream of many spearos to hunt and land these exceptional fish. Mentored by his dad Gletwyn Rubbidge, a former Protea spearfisherman I can see only big things coming from young Griffin…The future of spearfishing in South Africa is looking bright.










