World Records for Greater Amberjack
Antonio Concepcion Soria
Current world-record greater amberjack for men—161 pounds
(73.09 kilograms) Canary Island, Spain Feb 13, 2003 by Antonio Concepcion Soria
My name
is Antonio Concepcion Soria, I am 28 years old and study marine biology. I am from
Tenerife (Canary Islands) and my passion is spearfishing. I am a member of the
spearfishing club APNEA-SUR . The Seriola Dumerili (medregal in the Canaries) in this
photo was caught on the 13th of February, 2003. I went spearfishing on my own at 16:00 pm
in an authorized area for spearfishing, the tide was reaching low (expected at 17hr 15min)
with a high tide coefficient (it would be full moon in 4 days.) It was sunny with a mild
north-east wind that is very tyupical in the Canaries. The visibility was poor for our
waters, only 10 meters, and there was a slight current towards the south-west--a little
disturbing.
The spot I was heading to was approximately 800 meters from the coastline, so
I started to make some dives to warm up while I was swimming on my way. The bed of the sea
was sand with some seagrass (fanerogramas) at approximately 18 meters deep. While I was
over a depth of 22 meters, I saw a school of a type of sardines just below me formed into
a ball. I dropped to mid-water descending slowly towards the deep by inertia, at
approximately 20 meters I saw a Seriola swimming slowly. I let myself go a bit more when
the Seriola turns slightly to the left to look at me. I gave a couple of kicks of the fins
in order to be at shooting range with my SPETTON i20 cm speargun shooting a 6'5 mm spear.
I aimed at the Seriola searching for the eye (just behind) looking for the brain
and shot, the spear entered slightly behind the brain. The fish opened its mouth staying
still for 2 seconds and then began to swim. I rushed up for air and the fish followed me
nearly to the surface before diving down to the deep.
The spear did not go completely through the fish but it was deeply stuck and in a
good place. I looked at my watch knowing it would be a long fight, it was 16h 40' pm. The
fish was swimming slowly towards the horizon tking me with him, I was kicking hard in the
same direction to save the equipment from suffering a breakage and losing the fish. From
time-to-time, it stopped buth when I tried to pull him up he launched forward but not for
too long.
I looked at my watch again, more than 40 minutes had passed. I was pretty tired and
as my gloves were broken in some areas, my fingers started to bleed because of the nylon.
The fish was at a depth of approximately 35 meters now slowly swimming toward some rocks.
I had lost a piece of my fin and it was difficult to keep pace with the fish in these
conditions. I hooked the nylon around one of the weights of my belt and let the fish carry
me along while I was trying to fix the fin with my free hands--it worked!
As the fish was heading towards the rocks and the wreck there, I was afraid that
the fish would break the nylon shooting line. I turned and tried to head him toward the
coastline pulling him behind. The fish was losing strenght and slowly started to give up.
Looking at my watch it was 17h 40' pm and I was still fighting against a fish I had not
seen since I shot it. There it was huge! as it came belly up but still moving slowly.
From the surface, I pulled the nylon up and the fish came up like a cork and stayed
on the surface belly-up. I came closer and held the spear, and the fish was dead. Swimming
with the fish toward the shore, I again lost part of the fin and made the last 100 meters
with only one fin.
I finally hit the sand at 18h 05' pm, it had been an hour and 25 minute fight. My
neighbors were watching me form their balconies, being a testimony to my last meters
swimming with the fish toward the shore. I was guessing it could weigh 60-65 kgs, but when
we took it to the scale and weighed it properly, it was finally 73.09 kgs.
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Jose de Sousa
Meritorious award for Greater Amberjack for men—99.5 pounds (45.2
kilograms) by Jose de Sousa
Greater Amberjack (seriola dumerili)
August 11, 1999 I live in Lisbon, but every year I’am going two or three times to
Azores for spearfishing. Azores is an archipelago 1,000 miles from Portugal coast, 2.30
hours by aircraft. There, we can find good visibility inside water, sometimes almost 30
meters, 22 water degrees in summer, and big fish, like seriola, barracuda, some kinds of
grouper.
In last August I came back again try to catch a big seriola, In the past, I have caught
more than one hundred seriolas with considerable weight, like 22, 25, 28, 35, 36 and 42
Kg. In last ten years, I have hunting in that place, always I got there a luck and good
performance!
On a sunshine day, I went to the spearfishing with my friends, whose I met a long time
ago: Luis Meneses us a local skipper and Carlos Santos, friend who was going from Lisbon
with me.
About ten o’clock in the morning we arrived to the sec (shoal), three miles from
coast. Here the sea is very deep, about 300/500 meters, but in several sec points we can
find deep between 15 and 35 meters, where we can spear hunting; sometimes, this points are
us a big fish sanctuary!
When I fall in water, quickly I caught a seriola using french "agachon"
technique: I dived to a canal compose by big stones and there I waited, immobile, for a
fish. It’s a patience game because in most of the times I returned to the surface
without see any fish which desert my spear. However, I have lucked in my first
"agachon", because I returned to the surface together a seriola with 22kg. Here,
we can feel the current! Sometimes it’s impossible to do spearfishing here because of
the strong current; we go inshore and come back later when the current is stopped.
After my first catch, I spent twenty minutes repeating "agachons" in a
extension area about 300 x 300 meters, between 15 and 25 meters deep. After two hours, I
have caught three seriolas with 11, 18 and 22 Kg, four "bicudas" (seems like
barracuda) between 5 and 7 Kg, and two "bonito" with 3 and 4 Kg, and I have seen
a big seriola which doesn’t come to my "agachon"; it was enormous! Since
that moment, any time I have dived, I was looking for the blue and, immobile, I was
waiting for the most big seriola of the day: nothing!
I was using an "arbalete blackline" speargun with 7mm seccion thaitiane spear
and two 20 mm seccion gun; I never used a gear (reel) but yes, 30 meters of transparent
plastic cable (aquarium tube): one of the extremity is attach at speargun and the other is
attach a very little float (this is not a spearfishing float, which resistance to the
water tires the spearman! Is a simple net fishing float with ten centimeters of diameter.
This one doesn’t tire the spearfishing man, and plastic tube is always extended). So,
if I need to leave the gun in deep, I can return to the surface controlling the gun and
the fish with plastic cable which elasticity give 30% length more. Is a good technique for
this kind of big and strong pelagic fishes. However, one time six years ago, I have losted
two spearguns in just an hour because cable was broken: one of the seriola which broken
the cable had about 70(!!) Kg: a monster! The great advantaged this systems is about gun
handling (the gear is heavy!) and because of this I can return more quickly to the
surface.
After fifteen minutes trying to see again the big seriola, my effort and persistence
was compensated: about twenty-two meters deep, the seriola curiosity brings to me.
However, ten meters of distance between us, doesn’t permit the shot: one more, the
"agachon" was not enough! I should try again! In the next four dives I
didn’t see the big fish, but when I was near to give up I found it once more; my last
chance? Yes.
At 25 meters deep the seriola was coming to me but once more outside my shoot gun;
about 30 seconds I was immobile trying to attract the fish......without result! So, very
slowly I went to the seriola: I had nothing to lose!
The fish moved back and I accelerated my approach; the seriola seemed me confuse about
my reaction and tolerated a few meters: a fatal meters! Indeed when I was three meters
distant I shot with great pressure and my spear crossed the fish head: even death blessed,
trying to escape; I returned to the surface with plastic tube in my hand; hear and slowly,
I was pushing the tube, meters by meter, bringing the seriola to me; when I put my hands
in your gills, was an authentic explosion in surface; however too late. Two minutes after
the big seriola was on skipper hands inside the boat; on scales is weight: 45,200 Kg!
Jose de Sousa
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Notable catch for Greater Amberjack for men—65
kilograms (143 pounds) by Anthony Alexander
On a recent trip to the Cape Verde Islands, Rob Wyly and I had several
successful days diving on various Islands. Our most notable landed catch was
a Greater Amberjack of 65 kg or 143 pounds. This fish was taken in around 65foot of water
on a 1.3m Rob Allen Railgun with one 16mm rubber and using a7mm spear. The fight that
followed was extremely dogged with the fish
fighting in an up down method. I finally got it to the surface and boated it
some 20 minutes latter thanks to a well placed shot, otherwise it would have
smashed me up. Our scale was broken so we used a local hand scale which went to 50 kg's.
We cut the fish in two and lost a lot of weight and fluid in the
process. During our trip Rob shot one of around the 80 kg mark which
unfortunately came of. Had it not been for the scale we could probably have
upped the bar on the current world record with some 14kg.
Regards
Anthony Alexander
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Notable catch for Greater Amberjack for men—50 kilograms (110 pounds)
by Dia Captan
Tuesday the 12th of December, 2006 was a day that
I am sure that I will cherishfor the rest my life. Marc and I have been working on a new
documentary for almost a month, and so far the largest fish landed on video was a 17 kg
king fish. On Tuesday the 12th of December 2006, Marc, Sam, and I met in Kfirabidaa at
11am and the sea was flat with great visibility. As Marc and I hit the waters, we swam for
15 minutes before taking our first dive at 16 meters, followed by a second dive at 18.5
meters. As we started taking our third dive and the film started rolling, I noticed Marc
Making a quick turn and started extending his speargun, so I followed him slowly and to my
disbelief I noticed a very large amberjack swimming only 7 meters below us and moving
directly towards Marc. I continued to film without making a single movement and noticed
through the LCD screen that the amberjack was approaching Marc closer and closer. At a
certain point, I thought that marc should have gone for the shot but instead, and since he
was very excited, he decided to wait a little bit more and aim better. 2 seconds later
Marc went for his shot while being only 1 meter away from the amberjack and bam the shaft
went directly into top of the amberjacks gill plate few cm’s below the amberjacks
eye, just on the yellow line. At this moment the amberjack froze for a second and started
swimming away slowly and then madly started opening his gills left and right. At that
moment I recalled another 50-60 kg amberjack that I shot in Monsef last month, and I could
still recall how it opened its gills for the shaft to fall off. I was worried that the
same thing could happen again and started swimming towards it to shoot more movies just in
case the amberjack got loose. As I started moving closer towards it, the amberjack started
swimming away and few seconds later I started ascending to see Marc swimming very fast
since the Amberjack has taken the whole 50 meters of line and there was nothing we can do
but to swim behind it. The first thing I told Marc when I reached the surface that
it was a great shot, and Marc replied yes, but it will get loose! We continued swimming
for around 30 minutes behind the amberjack and at a certain moment Mark slapped his hand
on the water and told me that the amberjack has gotten loose. Oh my god I said, and
seconds later he felt the pull once again and we kept swimming behind it until it finally
got tired and marc started pulling the line towards him very slowly. 2 or 3 minutes later,
while still filming Marc succeeded in bringing the Amberjack to the surface since we
didn’t have a spare speargun to go for a killer shot. I gave Marc my knife and he
swam slowly from behind it and jumped above the water to stab the knife as deep as
possible in its head and started shouting in celebration. Oh my god, what we thought could
be 30-40 kg amberjack turned out to be a monster and we started celebrating in disbelief.
Later we realized that the shaft went only 6 or 7cm deep into its gill plate, and
luckily, the single flopper opened and being very patient with the amberjack paid off and
the flopper didn’t break. Few minutes later, I embraced the amberjack and decided to
surf on it to shore. It took us almost 1 hour to return back and when we returned we saw
our friend Sam waiting for us in disbelief. It took the three of us to pull it out
of the water and we started taking pictures with it. We went to Mina to weigh it. When we
put it on the scale, we realized that it was a 50kg amberjack. We went to my place,
took a shower, put on the firehouse, ordered dinner, and watched the movie 6-8 times.
It was one of these rare days in ones life when pure luck and perfect conditions
all meet together.
Dia Captan
Tripoli, Lebanon
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