My father, Derek Howe, and two of his friends own a 44ft charter catamaran named “Bengithi”, which has been chartering out of Pemba, Mozambique. With hurricane season approaching, I flew with 5 friends from South Africa to Pemba to help sail “Bengithi” the length of Mozambique to Maputo. As we had ample time, we cruised around a little and on the 6^th of December myself, Gareth Wills, Bryn Mcgibbon, and Wesley Kriedeman left the yacht on the rubber duck to go freediving along an atoll. Bryn, by the way, had flown from Australia to come sailing with us. 

Although I have speared for enjoyment occasionally over the past few years, I had not been in the water with a gun at all in 2007, until 6 December. 

After being in the water for about an hour in one location, enjoying my first real close up encounter with a group of about fifteen sharks, we repositioned ourselves closer to the edge of the atoll. We were drifting along a drop-off from 6m to 10m deep and after perhaps another hour, Wesley had speared a very big Green Jobfish and I had speared my biggest Giant Trevally so far of around 10kg. Happy with our success for the day, I said to Wesley that we should unload and go back to the yacht. 

I unloaded both rubbers on the Rob Allen Railgun that I was borrowing and swam towards the rubber duck. As I neared the duck I noticed the biggest GT I had ever seen approaching the duck from the opposite direction, cruising along the drop-off. He swam right up to the duck and had a quick look at what he must have thought was an interesting pile of debris. At this stage the fish was about 8m away from me. 

Cursing my unloaded gun and seeing that Wesley was some distance away, winding up his buoy line, all I thought to do was stick my head out of the water and shout to Gareth and Bryn, who were casting poppers off the duck, “turn around, look over there”. Gareth, seeing a “dark shape” from above the surface, simply flicked his popper at it and began retrieving. I ducked my head back under the water, expecting to see the fish dart off into the blue. But he was just lazily swimming past me.  

Now that he was closer and I could see his truly majestic size, I realized that he was not at all threatened by our presence or the 11 small sharks in the vicinity. He was the “Massive” Kingfish and he intended to cruise off in unhurried style.  

With him slowly passing me by, I figured I might just have one chance to load a single rubber. I carefully, but quickly, grabbed the lower rubber, forced the butt of the gun into my unpadded chest and made absolutely sure I landed the cable in the spear notch. Bringing the huge GT back into my line of sight, I saw that he was about to swim out of range. I ducked under and swam down a few metres in his direction, aiming, reaching forwards and praying that he didn’t strip me of gun, line and buoy in one second flat. 

I fired. The gun was immediately ripped from my glove and I grabbed the line a few metres back. With adrenalin surging through my heart I gripped the line hard and realized that I was holding him from his run. He was weak. I had hit him right on the edge of my range and the spear didn’t even penetrate all the way through his wide body, but it had obviously nicked his spine and he couldn’t fight with his full strength. 

Wesley and Bryn hung around me to keep the sharks at bay while I pulled the GT up to my body, gave him a bear hug and brained him. Even a number of wounds to the head wouldn’t fully drain the life from him, so we hitched a rope around his tail once I had him next to the duck. Once he was loaded aboard the duck, we sped off, back to “Bengithi”, to show our friends this truly massive fish.