My 14 year old son and I were diving on a small reef about 6km off Yeppoon. It was early morning, low tide and not such good visibility of 7-10m, but as soon as we got in the water it looked good with plenty of skittish baitfish and a few birds in the area. We anchored the boat on the top of the reef @ 2m depth. We had a drop off to the west of 15m and to the east of 20m. The reef is only 30m long and the whole area does not get any deeper than 20m. There were a few birds working on the west side of the reef and we dived there first. On my 4th dive I shot a nice golden trevally. It wrapped around a bommie before I could control it. I was not able to free it quick enough and lost it together with my spear. I swam over to my son and suggested that we now share his gun, one dive each at a time. This was his brand new Rob Allen 1.1m reluctant to share with anyone under any circumstances christmas present speargun, so I had to use some cunning and suggested that he have a few more dives on the west side of the reef and we then swim over to the East side of the reef where the birds had now started working and I would have a look there. We were delayed by a large coral trout that did not get quite in range, but eventually I got my turn and we swam over to the western side. As we got there we swam into a ball of small 4 inch baitfish. I dived down and saw 4 mackerel of @ 7kg below the ball. I swam back to my son, handed him his gun, and hung back watching. The way he tells it is like this ' As I got to the baitfish I saw a large flash as a big fish swam into the ball. We saw each other at the same time. All I could see really was the head, the mackerel had stopped as it saw me. I let out some air and slowly dropped deeper, brought my gun up and shot it behind the head. Then I shouted 'big mackerel', hung onto my buoy and my Dad and I followed it. It took off across the reef to the east side. After about 15 minutes it slowed down started circling and got jammed into a ledge on the bottom. We dived down, got a good hold of it, and swam it back to the boat. We did not dive any more that day, just went back to our camp and enjoyed it all. It weighed 37kg and was 1.64m long'
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. Congratulations to your son.
