Just when you thought nothing could improve

1. Clever wishbone arrangement from Freedivers. There can be few things more frustrating than a wishbone breaking. Shane has come up with a neat solution. The wishbone utilizes Dyneema that is threaded through the knuckles and the ends knotted, not moulded into the knuckles like a traditional wishbone. Now all you need to do, if your wishbone snaps, is thread a piece of Dyneema through the knuckles, knot the ends, and you are back in business.

2. Vampire barbs. Again an innovation from Shane Breedt. This spearo thinks laterally. Instead of a normal flopper, 2 V’s are cut into the flopper and bent open. Should your flopper not penetrate a fish properly, the barbs will hold the spear in the fish. This should do away with those frustrating ‘spear dropping free after a good shot and fish escaping’ events.

3. Chicken float. Great for winding your flasher arrangement on. Makes it easy to use and store. Rob Allen produces the chicken float I see in most specialist spearfishing tackle shops.

4. Rob Allen break-away rig bag. This small bag holds an additional length of rope. The bag can be attached between 2 floats and should the fish prove strong enough, the elastic attachment breaks allowing the rope to run free from the bag. This means you can spearfish without excessive coils of rope hanging around to ensnare and drown you.

5. Tuna boogy-board from Tommy Botha. A great addition from a spearo that has been at the pinnacle of spearfishing and forgotten most of what many of us still need to learn. Tommy produces a boogy-board for hunting BIG fish, usually Yellowfin Tuna, off Cape Point. This board could easily be used on any big pelagic fish. Simply put, it is a massive float with a cleat system for the retrieval of the long bungy (30-100m stretch) to assist the diver in recovering the fish. The rig is designed for use with a break-away rig.