Spangled Emperor, world record submit story: (As told to Larry Carter)

After a quiet dive in the middle of the week, Saturday was a perfect day to visit a spot a bit far than usual…

Since the Northern wind had stop and the meteo was looking good the choice went to Fungwana an area 43 miles to the north of Maputo that is usually with very low viz but has plenty of fish.

Saturday arrived and as usual at 05:00 Am the boat was heading down the ramp for another adventure. With us was Ferdinando, an experienced fisherman, his grandson would be the skipper for the day and an invited guest, Benjamin Iglesias, a Spanish spearo and family friend, trying the African waters for the second time.

One hour and a half later we arrived, and after a few dives only Emiliano was managing to get some fish in those murky waters, so half an hour later we decided to check a spot in the area but a bit further out. It was long ago since we last went there so the expectations where great…

Arriving at the coordinates, Emiliano was first down, after went Benjamin…both scored Spanish Mackerel, and shortly after I was getting one too!
Dive after dive we all gazed at the beauty of the spot…a perfect vertical drop that started at 9 meters and went all the way down to 27 meters ending in the sand…fish all over, and good visibility…

…a couple of hours later I left the drop and went to the back side of the reef to check some scattered rocks laying on the bottom..Emiliano followed me…seeing some nice sized Slinger’s (type of local bream), I dive down and glide to the depth of 17 meters…I wait as the Slinger’s approach searching the area for something bigger…all the sudden coming slowly I see a shadow approach …I stop and wait…the Slinger’s are all around me, but my attention goes for that strange shape…some seconds later I can see it’s a Spangled Emperor, and a very nice one…it stops and turns away, I make some noises with my throat in order to attract him and it works..it turns back and comes a couple of meters more near me…I aim my gun a bit high for a long shot at the head…it stop’s and turns…I press the trigger and it’s a perfect shot!!!
...it drops dead right there…when I reach the surface, Emiliano congratulates me for the perfect shot and the whole scene he had just witnessed from above…has I pull the fish from the bottom and we see its real size, he just says:

“I think you just got a world record!”…we laugh for a while but in fact the question remained…

Back in Club Naval it was already late to get the scale so we phoned the guy from the fish shop to know if it was possible to do it there since it had the calibration seal and it was a certified scale, he was happy to help, and so we did. I called my wife to testify the weighting and another guy that works at the fishmonger served has secondary witness.
It weighted 5,812 Kg…I didn’t know what the actual record was but I had the idea it would be around 5,4kg…after taking some pictures and making a small video of the weighting, we left the fish at the shop in the freezer and headed home…

Looking at the IUSA website I see that the record is 5,700 Kg, very near to my fish…so I carefully read the Rules in the “WEIGHTS NEEDED TO DEFEAT OR TIE EXISTING RECORDS” and to my joy I only needed 56.69 Grams to get the record…it was awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Another possible world record…I couldn’t believe it!!!!!!!!!!!
Monday we went back to the shop to make the required measurements of the fish, take the pictures of the scale and in Club Naval the one’s of the speargun…

It was a marvelous fish in a incredible place on a precious day…