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There's a massive fish on the end of this line, easily over a hundred pounds. And although it is perfectly legal to catch, I can't show it to you, if I did the powers that be would never allow this video to see the light of day. So instead, this story is about the second-largest fish that was caught today, which was still pretty big. These guys are commercial Balinese spearfishers, selling the fish that they spear is how they make a living, which is important to keep in mind when you see the huge amount of fish that end up on the boat at the end of the day today.
Anyways, right now I'm floating around on the only fish that I'm personally going to catch today, a yellow spotted trevally. It's the tastiest of all the trevallies, but I'm not the only one who thinks so. About 20 minutes before I speared this fish, one of the other guys speared a leather jacket, half of which was stolen by a shark, and 20 minutes before that, one of my other buddies speared a jobfish, which was completely eaten by sharks. Basically, there are a lot of sharks here and that's obviously what I'm thinking about, as I yank it up from the bottom, as fast as I possibly can. This fish is destined for sashimi.
This island right here is Bali and this island over there is Lombok and we're diving somewhere in the middle of the two. It's about 12 miles from one island to the other, which is extremely narrow, considering the huge amount of water that passes through this channel every single day. And this is relevant to the story because for this reason the currents here are unbelievably powerful and as I've mentioned in past videos you do not want your fish to get tangled up on the bottom when the currents are pumping, because you may never be able to untangle it. The best way to avoid sharks stealing your fish and to avoid deep tangles is to get a headshot - it's also more humane because the fish doesn't suffer that way either, and when your shot placement is really bad, there's a chance that the fish might tear-free. But as I mentioned, these guys are planning on selling their catch and so there's yet another reason for them not to spear the fish through its body because at the market its value is cut in half if there's a spear wound through the filet rather than the head. Despite all this, bad shots unfortunately are sometimes inevitable.
When I see my buddy's float get pulled under, I know that he's got a big fish on the line and when he asks me to dive down for a backup shot, I suspect that his shot placement is not very good. This means that there's a good chance it'll get tangled on the bottom and there's an even better chance that the sharks will get to it before we do. And if we do pull it up as fast as we can to avoid the sharks in a deep tangle, we might yank the spear right out of the fish and lose it forever. And so, as he pulls the fish up, I dive down and as I get closer to it I begin to realize how huge it is. This is one of the biggest giant trevallies I've ever seen! I also realize how bad the shot placement is - the tip of the spear is barely hanging onto the guts of the fish by a thread. My buddy is definitely getting half-price for this fish at the market.