2017 Fresh Water World Championships.
A Freshwater World Championship targeting invasive species, an innovative concept to say the least!
I was fortunate enough to be part of one of the teams South Africa sent to this event and to be honest, it seemed like a gamble for me. The entire team had very limited experience in freshwater, then we were going to add a fish we had never seen and dedicate a full day to hunting it! But freshwater diving, how hard could it possibly be, right? Oh boy did I underestimate how little I actually knew!
So I landed at McCarran Intl airport a week ahead of the event to allow scouting time. The idea was to rest a day but having heard rumors of the top class divers attending and past performances made me anxious to get in the water as soon as possible, to you know, cool off, but I was about to cool off more than I bargained for!
I headed down to meet Mark just a few hours after landing. I was fortunate enough to have booked the best boat and skipper on the lake. Mark Edison was the most attentive skipper I have ever chartered and his knowledge of fish is astounding! On top of this, I then had my father on the boat. I was confident that I had the best surface support I could get!
Come to sunny warm Vegas they said, make sure you drink lots of water and use lots of sunscreen because it’s so hot they said. Great, so my 3mm Polo Sub should do the trick. Ummm… noo, that one was a little off. The average temperature we saw was between 16 and 19 Deg. C. Lucky for me, Mark had a great spot for me to defrost, where I sprawled out like a lizard on the front of his boat in the warm Nevada sun. I am sure at times Mark was unsure if we had booked a fishing trip or tanning cruise.
Lake Mead is very different to anything you might expect as a visitor to the area. The bottom of the lake is over 400ft at some points! The majority of drop offs are so steep that it’s hard finding spots where you could actually lie on the bottom. Most spots when you tried to lie on the floor, you would just slide… deeper… into the endless blackness of deep cold water.
When diving down, I would look to find a little cliff edge I could lie on and look down into the blackness waiting for something to show. Coming from a country with a fair amount of pearly whites that come from such deep dark places, I was nervous to say the least! Mark kept assuring me there were no alligators in the lake and this lead to my most significant discovery while scouting… Nessie. In the deep dark water of Lake Mead, if you lie quietly enough, you can hear his heartbeat. I wonder how he emigrated from Scotland and if President Trump knows he’s there!
Obviously, scouting was not as easy as we originally thought. It’s nothing like we are used to diving. Visibility varied from 0 (and I mean 0!) to around 8m. The term lake like conditions should be rephrased. Although breathtakingly beautiful, when the wind picks up, that lake can get pretty angry!
Bonani and I scouted for a week. The hardest part we learned from scouting was how unpredictable the fish could be. Your hot spots today can be fascinatingly bare tomorrow! After a week of scouting and discussing what we could shoot, it was time! In the words of Captain Mark, the easy part was done, now that we finished talking about it let’s see if we could actually do it!
The start of the comp
As if we had hit the jackpot, the weather for the dive times on the competition days was great.
Day 1 of the comp was striper day. This was going to be a hard day with not many fish having been seen and with me having no idea of how these fish would behave after being shot. Would they hang around? Would they attack me? Would they impale themselves on my spear?
1s t dive of the day and bang, in with a striper, yeow they are still here! Today’s going to be the best day ever… then came the next 2 hours. Without a single fish, the realization of how hard the day would be start to set in. The water was around 18deg C and fish were few and far between. Best part of the day was the hot chocolate Captain Mark had brought to help keep us warm and motivated!
I am quite sure someone sent out a memo warning the fish
about the potential grim outlook for their day if they dare pay a visit. We managed to scratch a fish on every second spot and ended the day with 7
fish between 2 divers. We were expecting top guys to be weighing in 10-15 fish each so were a bit disappointed going into the weigh in. We knew that if our spots had turned to desert, others probably had similar difficulties and so we were just hoping that we had done enough to at least keep us within reach of catching up on day 2.
With day 1 results in, all of the SA divers were still in the game and feeling very optimistic!
Day 2 was Carp day. We were expecting this day to be tough! With tales of another team having shot over 100 fish in 6 hours a few years back, this would be a day of endurance and focus. Then, someone pressed rewind and decided to show us rather a repeat of the day before. After the first drift, I looked at Bonani and we both asked the same question, where are all the
fish! We scouted this spot no less than 4 times and it always had fish… except this morning! We decided the best strategy was going to be to cover large areas and hopefully keep swimming into fish. We picked a big drop off where we had seen fish in the past and swam. After 5 hours disappointing hours, I had 40 fish on the dot, a far cry from the 100 that was the target. And then Mark made the best suggestion of the comp, we went back to the first spot… so that’s where they went! At the end I managed 23 fish in just under an hour taking the day’s tally up to 63. Still far short of the aim but
as it turned out, it was good enough.
The overall sheer quantity of fish weighed in on day 2 made me think the weigh in would go on long into the night, but thanks to exceptional organization, everyone’s catch was counted twice and the whole weigh in lasted only a few hours!
It is rare that I have no improvement points for a comp. The slipways were large enough and moved along well so that everyone could get their boat in within the 30-40min of arriving at the port. Weigh in was very clearly communicated and close to the slipway so it was easy for everyone to attend and record their fish quickly. The scoring system was simple and transparent AND there was food at the weigh in! I have yet to meet a spearo that doesn’t like food after diving!
But most of all it was great to see a competition where everyone was so welcome, a competition that encouraged team spirit , a competition that encouraged greater participation at all levels and ages and lastly a competition that shows the real selectiveness of our sport by targeting invasive species.
I would like to end off by thanking all the organizers for a well-organized event that was fun to dive and the competitors that kept it fun. In South Africa, we call the captain on a spearfishing boat, the top man, a rather appropriate term considering their role. A big thanks to Mark Edison of Adventure Angling for his advice, friendship, hot chocolate and putting up with me for 2 weeks. Big thanks to all my family for coming all that way to support, Chris, Jen, Sara and Theresa. Also a big thanks to Sid Ahmed, Yousuf Alkhaja and the gents from The Free Diver across in Dubai for their help with trainings, support and providing top class equipment that I can rely on, you guys rock.And lastly, a big thanks to my teammates, Bonani, Charlie, Guy and John for an experience of a lifetime.
Hopefully see you all again in New Zealand 2019!
Cheers! Dyter.
