Steven Dreams Big at Lala Nek  

A 24hour haul from Heathrow to Richards Bay Via Zurich and Joburg finally got me back in Zululand on the eve of our sortie up the coast. It was the usual pre-trip evening with far to many beers being consumed, and much discussion of past ventures and future conquests.

It was an early start the next day and we reached our destination at Lala Nek by early morning ready to challenge whatever the sea could throw at us. Chaos as everyone scrambled for their gear and charged onto the beach, not to concerned how they were going to fish, dive, surf, swim at the same time………..only to be greated by……a howling South Wind. It was hard to distinguish between the massive backline and the white horses charging up the coast …………… this definitely wasn't a scene from my dreams.

Fortunately the first day was the last of the bad weather and conditions only improved from then on.

On the second day Ryan and I swam out through the backline and out towards the drop-off where Craig had shot a Couta earlier that day. Craig followed on his fishing ski, as the swim was too far for him.

The water wasn't to clean, with a visibility of 8-10 meters. After drifting along for about a half hour or so, with the flashers being worked overtime, we moved a bit further out. It wasn't long after returning to the surface that I noticed a Couta coming up to have a closer look at the flashers. I took a quick breath and descended towards it. The couta started to move off, and I angled down towards it, and leveled out. By now I realized it was quite a big fish, and thought I was saying goodbye to it as it started to disappear into the green. At last it turned to take one last look at me, and I slowly closed the gap as I drifted toward it taking aim. At the last moment I squeezed the trigger, hitting the fish dead centre a little behind the dorsal fin.

The fish had a short run and then maintained its distance as I returned to the surface, thinking I'd got a good shot off. I pulled up the line until I was swimming directly over it and dived down, and that's when I realized two things. The first was that my spear hadn't gone all the way through, and the second that I must have hit the Vertebrae as the fish still hadn't had a run of more than 10 meters. There followed a few minutes of "gentle fighting" the whole time expecting to see my spear pull out of the fish's side. Finally I pulled myself down to the fish, managed to get my hands around its tail and secure it by sliding a hand into its gills, then swimming it to the surface.

My pulse rate only returned to normal once I'd killed the fish and squeezed it into Craig's hatch in his fishing Ski. It was shortly after this that Craig got his spear into another decent sized couta to add to the one already in his hatch.

Over the next few days we managed to use a number of our other toys, catching some decent couta on the fishing ski's and some small kingfish off the beach. My motivation had however somewhat waned as I had achieved a decent fish on this trip, and was quite happy relax and enjoy being back in that part of the world.

Now that was what I'd been dreaming about!

I now write this story back in my office in London, but the memories of that trip should keep me going through the cold/wet winter ahead, and I'm sure by April next year the Story will have been fed enough Guiness and Stella to have grown to 45kg double headed, triple tailed monster couta!

Cheers,

Steven Kewley