Judge
02-23-2005, 05:22 AM
Escape over the Bar
Sometimes you curse your luck. When you have everything lined up for a great weekend of spearing and Mother Nature dumps bad conditions on you. What can you do? You have to make the most of a bad situation. Here we were away for a weekend of spearing and on both Saturday and Sunday a raging 5-6 metre swell was pounding the shore and in many cases rendering the bars at river mouths up and down the coast too dangerous to navigate.
A bar is a submerged or partly submerged ridge in a river or along a shore. Where rivers flow into the sea you will often have large build-ups of sand. These are bars. More boating accidents occur in NSW Australia on these bars than anywhere else. When the seas are up these places are treacherous; however, on the northern coast of NSW there is one particular river access over a fairly tame bar where even in such big seas it is possible to access the ocean.
On the Sunday we escaped over the bar. There were huge seas breaking on a large bank on our left, and to our right the shores were being pounded with massive moving walls of water. With Mike Bonnici at the helm of his 17 ft Sea Devil we knew we would either cruise across the swells or more likely fly across them. We did have one moment when we went off the top of one of the waves and dropped over 3 metres into the trough. Never a dull moment.
Once ocean side we did not have a lot of choice of dive spots with the shore being so pounded. However, we do have a favourite reef that comes up to 28 metres (92ft) from over 60 metres. We have taken good fish off it in the past but being so deep it is hard work diving it. I certainly find it hard work though my dive partner Antony seems to take it in his stride. It helps being 25 years old and having a lung capacity of 9 litres. It is the depth that keeps the reef from being hounded. Occasionally the big fish are up near the surface but usually you have to dive deep for them.
Mike put us right on top of the reef and without even diving we could see a large school of bonito, hundreds of them. Most of the school would be around 2-3 kg, I dived though them and that is where I found the kingfish. The vis was a very ordinary, no more than 8 metres. But who cares when there are fish everywhere.
The school of about 50 kingfish circled me. I looked through them and found the biggest one in the school. He was a damn good size, but it was hard to see how big he was or even how big the others were. I thought that this one was about 15kgs while the others were all around 8…but I was to find out different.
I swung my gun to follow the fish as the school swum closer. He did not come that close until he swum past me. I lined up, however it was not a great shot but it looked like it would be the best shot I was going to get so I started squeezing the trigger. I was behind the fish and the range was quite long.
It was then I saw Antony’s gun, just the end entered my field of vision. It is funny sometimes how close someone can be and you don’t see them due to your mask. The fish had swum directly in front of him. It was a perfect shot for him so I held back. I cursed and thought that there were only a few people I would do that for and those were the people that I knew would do the same for me if the roles were reversed. I watched Ant take the shot and there was no mistake.
Sometimes you curse your luck. When you have everything lined up for a great weekend of spearing and Mother Nature dumps bad conditions on you. What can you do? You have to make the most of a bad situation. Here we were away for a weekend of spearing and on both Saturday and Sunday a raging 5-6 metre swell was pounding the shore and in many cases rendering the bars at river mouths up and down the coast too dangerous to navigate.
A bar is a submerged or partly submerged ridge in a river or along a shore. Where rivers flow into the sea you will often have large build-ups of sand. These are bars. More boating accidents occur in NSW Australia on these bars than anywhere else. When the seas are up these places are treacherous; however, on the northern coast of NSW there is one particular river access over a fairly tame bar where even in such big seas it is possible to access the ocean.
On the Sunday we escaped over the bar. There were huge seas breaking on a large bank on our left, and to our right the shores were being pounded with massive moving walls of water. With Mike Bonnici at the helm of his 17 ft Sea Devil we knew we would either cruise across the swells or more likely fly across them. We did have one moment when we went off the top of one of the waves and dropped over 3 metres into the trough. Never a dull moment.
Once ocean side we did not have a lot of choice of dive spots with the shore being so pounded. However, we do have a favourite reef that comes up to 28 metres (92ft) from over 60 metres. We have taken good fish off it in the past but being so deep it is hard work diving it. I certainly find it hard work though my dive partner Antony seems to take it in his stride. It helps being 25 years old and having a lung capacity of 9 litres. It is the depth that keeps the reef from being hounded. Occasionally the big fish are up near the surface but usually you have to dive deep for them.
Mike put us right on top of the reef and without even diving we could see a large school of bonito, hundreds of them. Most of the school would be around 2-3 kg, I dived though them and that is where I found the kingfish. The vis was a very ordinary, no more than 8 metres. But who cares when there are fish everywhere.
The school of about 50 kingfish circled me. I looked through them and found the biggest one in the school. He was a damn good size, but it was hard to see how big he was or even how big the others were. I thought that this one was about 15kgs while the others were all around 8…but I was to find out different.
I swung my gun to follow the fish as the school swum closer. He did not come that close until he swum past me. I lined up, however it was not a great shot but it looked like it would be the best shot I was going to get so I started squeezing the trigger. I was behind the fish and the range was quite long.
It was then I saw Antony’s gun, just the end entered my field of vision. It is funny sometimes how close someone can be and you don’t see them due to your mask. The fish had swum directly in front of him. It was a perfect shot for him so I held back. I cursed and thought that there were only a few people I would do that for and those were the people that I knew would do the same for me if the roles were reversed. I watched Ant take the shot and there was no mistake.