With Johannesburg receding behind me, I leaned back in my seat and thought about my six-year-old self, born in Mozambique during the colonial era, sitting scared on my dad's ski boat as we set out for the deep sea from the Clube Naval in Lourenço Marques.
Now I was headed for a four-day fishing extravaganza on the Rani Resorts-owned Broadbill, a 42-foot catamaran, on the St Lazarus Banks on the edge of the continental shelf off the Quirimbas Archipelago. This 250km-long string of islands is set in a pristine marine wonderland.
In Pemba, we met our captain, Andre Hanekom, and his crew - Andre Junior, the wireman, and Annette, our cook. Hanekom is a 16-year veteran of these waters, expert at locating good fishing spots in all sea and weather conditions.
We set sail and the lures were set out. Within the hour, off Ponta do Diablo, we were into shoals of smaller game fish, commonly referred to thereafter by our group as "ragged-tooth guppies".
But we were after bigger game fish - rainbow runners, green jobfish, marlin, giant kingfish, greater barracuda, dorado, sailfish, bonito, wahoo, yellowfin tuna and the notorious dogtooth tuna, all common to these waters. All were to be strictlycatch-and-release trophies.
After a few hundred kilograms of assorted game fish have been caught, the crew start using different techniques to catch specific fish. On an average day, about 400-500kg are caught.
We fished until the late afternoon, when the yacht finally anchored for us to swim off Quisive Island, 50km from Pemba. Annette set about preparing dinner as we sat back to enjoy sundowners and the private thoughts of fishermen. Early the next morning, we set out for Matemo Island, our last port of call before we headed out to the deeper waters of Lazarus.
As we trolled past Quilalea there was a flurry on the lines - yellowfin tuna and rainbow runners. Mid-morning, we sailed in to Matemo , eager for the renowned St Lazarus Banks - an undersea mountain which rises from 2.4km deep in the Mozambique Channel to within 6m of the surface.
We stopped for caipirinhas and seafood at the Matemo Island Resort while we waited for the wind to drop. While everybody else ate prawns, I tried the seafood curry - delicious.
Due to the unseasonable winds, we only left at 11pm, sailing into south-easterly winds and incredibly high seas - for a night of hell. I drifted to sleep only to be woken by a crewmember after two hours. There was a full deck of rods at the ready and a school of dorado hunting like a pack of wolves.
Deep sea fishing has its rituals. At any one time there are nine lines out set with a variety of lures or conas, each specifically built for the species we hope for a chance to do battle with. When a rod line screamed, our wireman would clear all the other lines and one of us would take the seat. It is not uncommon to have doubles, triples or even all nine rods start screaming at once. But it is the rod that screams the loudest or the one that goes down deepest that is retained for the game.
By lunch time, we stopped but started up again at sunset. On my next call, the rod screamed all the way to the bottom.
"It's a doggy, it's a doggy!" called the captain and they strapped me into the seat for my battle with the Indian Ocean's most notorious predator, the dogtooth tuna, so viciously toothed that, without care, you could lose a hand or foot on deck. The fish tried to reef me by bouncing on the ocean floor (it is not uncommon to find coral embedded in the fish once you land it). Eventually, I was reeling in a dead weight. More puffing, and I slowly reeled the fish in. "Oh man, a foul-hooked yellow fin tuna!"
After dark, we anchored and spent our third night at sea. At sunrise, we were fishing again and spotted some hump-backed whales going south.
Next day we returned to Pemba to spend some time relaxing in the Pemba Hotel Spa.
This trip gets my big-five rating: big boat, big fish, big sea, big money, big satisfaction.
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