I have been around the Mentawaii islands in Sumatra Indo for the last 2 months of my 3 month trip. This is one of the most surf rich island chains in the world and with clear water, i always bring my spear gun and fins. I have a variety of pics here to give some charleston peoples a view of a place they probably haven’t been.
The waves have been pumping and when the waves are smaller the visibility for diving has been amazing, 100-200ft. I have been doing all freediving and shooting fish with a Mares Pnuematic gun with a reel that i got from lowcountry scuba. Most dives in 25-50ft depth. Amazing coral life with many caves and overhangs and dropoffs. I shot a 57lb bumphead parrotfish on first day to one of the islands. Some nice snappers and the striped fish pictured is called a sweetlips. They are all good eating. There was no food on the island i was staying so basically eating bananas or a coconut for breakfast and then 1 meal at the end of the day. The fishing was a necessity to have any protein to mix with the rice. The people are very poor and eat very little. Many days in a row i was able to find a big school of fish that always stayed in the current. The “rest” in btn my dives was swimming against the current looking underwater to stay with the fish before the next dive down. The drawback of using the reel was that after swimming 1/4 mile out to the reef i would have to go in after shooting 2 fish. I would tie one through the gills on my drawstring of my shorts and then swim the other one. This was tiring but made the fish hunt much better b/c i was more concerned with quality fish for eating.
I was on my buddy’s 80ft charter boat the first 2 weeks of my trip and we trolled everywhere we went . We caught 2 cow dolphin 1 day and lost a 40lb bull right at the boat due to tackle failure on old worn out tld 25’s. We caught some GT’s (giant trevally) as well but no big ones. The week after that trip my buddy got into a big school of them and pulled up 20 GT’s btn 15-50 lbs on rapala plu
will, wheeler over here and we going to lakey peak 2morrow am and my cali buddies have some boat access secret spots over there we gonnna go to when the peak is too big
“sucks to be you guys” was not the intention…more like " hey, this is what else there is out there that u haven’t necessarily seen or heard of", the world is very big and i get my intrigue and desire for traveling to new places from other people sharing their trips and stories with me…
Thanks for posting, that’s one big parrot fish. They used to trip me out how load it sounds as they “munch” coral.
Job related or just plain out for fun? Looks like memories of a life time.
When the human race dies out it will
be because it was brainwashed to be
so totally, completely, utterly safe
that it no longer dared to keep on
living.---- Author Unknown.