ESRArecords

EUROPEAN SPEARFISHING RECORDS ASSOCIATION

Red Porgy

Red Porgy
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Red Porgy
Reference : 2016.06.22
WORLD RECORD
Scientific name: Pagrus pagrus
Weight: 5.4 kg
Diver: Mihail Gonatos
Location: Azores
Country: Portugal



My trip to the Azores was unforgettable as I was so lucky to shoot two big snappers (Pagrus pagrus) in the same shore dive The story begins likes this. Friday 17th June. Me, and three of my mates get on a plane to the Azores. First stop is Horta, and the following day we take a flight to our final destination, Flores. Later, on the same day we arrive, we pick up our spearfishing guide David Ochoa (www.ochoadavid.com) at the airport, and we are all stoked to go directly for a shore dive. The following days we go spearfishing from shore and by boat. After a few days, we decide to go for an early morning dive. I do not consider this a big thing as we already had some good days so I think it ́s OK that I have a little sip of red wine. When I wake up I ́m a bit wasted, but the others are already waiting in the car so I have to give it a try. We arrive at the spot, which is a bank close to shore. I’m pretty lazy but all my senses come to life as I hit the water. I swim around the big blocks and try some waitings at the bottom at 10-15m dept. This is way too hard for me at this stage so I decide to shoot some smaller fish and swim out to deeper waters so I can get a chum line started. I get a small barracuda and a mullet. After only few minutes waiting at the surface is see a small fish eating of the chum-line far below me,and I turn On my Go Pro hoping something happens. After a little while, the fish comes back and gets closer to me. Suddenly it turns right at me and I realise it ́s a good fish. I make a duck-dive, but the fish gets scared and swims to the bottom. I kick a few more times to get deeper but the fish swims faster. I stop kicking but I keep falling as I have negative buoyancy at this depth. As I stop kicking my fins, the fish slows down and turns around getting pretty curious now. I pull the trigger and hit the fish with pretty solid shot. After a short fight, I put the fish on the stringer and after something that feels like 10 minutes another fish comes by again. This time much closer to me, so I get the shot almost from the surface, and I also hit it nicely this time. I have plenty of fish now so I swim back to shore. At this time I don’t have any clue about what I have shot, but I think it ́s probably some nice fish when David yells “Are you kidding me??”. He was super stoked I managed to get this world record fish at one of his favourite shore diving spots. The other guys did great too. This fish was shot with a 150cm Rob Allen speargun using a home made break away system with a home made floatline and bouey we named “tampon”. Later we drove to the local fish market to get the fish weighted and measured.
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