 HEAVEN AT HELL’S GATE — Moçambique’s latest development — By Dave Lewis
THERE is a certain sound that today’s travelling sports angler will immediately be able to identify as being the sound of success. It is a very distinctive sound, unique even, a sound that in recent years has become synonymous with those anglers who fish the many beautiful coral reefs, surf breaks and tide rips which are found throughout the tropical regions of the world.
It is the sound of metre after metre of a strong braided line being violently ripped out through the rod rings, despite the resistance of what you’d thought was a brutally heavy drag setting on your reel.
One moment you’re burning under a hot, equatorial sun as you swiftly retrieve your industrial-sized surface popper in a frenzy of white water, or perhaps you are rapidly working a speed jig back up through the inky blue depths. Next moment, in an explosion of white water or an arm-wrenching lunge, a powerful predator nails your lure, turns and runs for sanctuary.
Desperately you hold on to your rod as beads of sweat mingled with eye-stinging sun cream runs down your face, thankful you are wearing gloves to help maintain the grip on your rod, praying that somehow your tackle will stop the seemingly unstoppable fish you are now connected to.
It’s a truly adrenaline-fuelled scenario, and one which was frequently re-enacted on my most recent trip to the sportfishing paradise that is Moçambique.
Sensitively built and perfectly integrated within the heavily-wooded hillside at the very tip of the Santa Maria Mashangulo Peninsula in southern Moçambique, Hell’s Gate Lodge is destined to become one of the world’s great sportfishing destinations. Just a narrow stretch of water separates Mashangulo from neighbouring Inhaca Island. You only have to watch as a swiftly ebbing spring tide surges and boils its way back out into the Moçambique Channel from the vast expanse of flats and lagoons inland within the Inhaca Reserve to discover just how Hell’s Gate Lodge got its name.
Read the full story in the March/April 2010 issue of SKI-BOAT …
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