Dive Report From The Pinnacle

After much anticipation, planning and day dreaming of the flat , indigo blue seas that Mozambique has to offer …Bouyweather was painting a different picture. Looking at the forecast it looked like gloom and doom with our first day looking like the only reliable day during our week long stay.

Leaving early on Saturday morning we travelled through the day and thankfully had a very uneventful trip with quick border stops and no stops from the police along the way. We arrived at Zavora at about 8:00pm and the tiredness of the trip faded away with the excitement of the next days diving.

After sorting out the gear and posting a few cold ones it was off to bed knowing we had to make the most of the next day as it could well be our first and last days diving.

A 4.30 start and we headed for the bay. The launch here is very sheltered with bricks that run out from the point in a north easterly direction. I had some marks that a mate had given me so we headed for the first spot know as Red Sands. This spot is a pinnacle that comes from 22m up to 8m.

Jumping in up current of the pinnacle I could see the water looked very fishy. First dive down in front of the reefies and bait fish that were holding in front of the pinnacle and two cuda came in. My Freedivers 1.3 made short work of the closest one. From then on it was mayhem, this spot was cooking with seeing cuda virtually on every dive. Most of them were the 8-10kg range with some 12-14kg fish amoungst them. After a short while the hatch was fulling up and we were letting shoals of cuta swim past while hoping for a trophy to come in. I landed two of over 17kgs and saw some crocs that only seemed to come in on speared fish. There were also shoals of kingys - bigeyes, fulvys, yellow tail and golden kingys coming in on the the pinnical from time to time that we generally left alone.

After a great first day the predicted front hit early hours of Monday morning putting any chance of a dive out the window until Thursday when it calmed down enough to get out. We headed straight back to Red Sands and jumped in. The vis had deteriated from the 15m it was previously to about 6m and 3m on the bottom. Drifting toward the pinnacle and feeling a bit disheartened having had big expectations from the previous dive I heard Mike calling me. This was his first time spearfishing and swam toward him to see what the problem was… turns out no problem at all… he had just shot a 12kg prodigal and was calling me over to see what kind of fish he shot! Not a bad fist fish!