Well the diving in Key West has been off the charts the past month. The early cool weather has fish coming out of the wood work. There are grouper all over the reef. Of course the season is about to close which is bad on one hand and good on the other.
I know I have gotten better at spearfishing, and that is why I get more grouper now, but honestly it just seems like there is more. Every googan is getting nice grouper right now, that’s how many there are.
Anyways mostly going to write this post about yesterday. We scored a huge cubera yesterday, I mean off the charts big 108#!.
I was out yesterday and it was my third day diving in the row, we had done really well the two days before, and I had really pushed my endurance to its limits. Anyways we were out there again and frankly I was tired. We hit the first couple ledges and they didn’t have any fish on them.
On a whim, mostly because I didn’t want to burn any more gas, we headed back east a bit. I wanted to check jewfish rock to see if there was any yellow jacks on it.
A while ago I shot a 45# cubera in one of the jewfish rocks, so its kind of a habit to check it if I am in the area.
I had Niko drop me and the other two divers in the up current and I started swimming towards it.
I was diving with Cole Harrison(owner of triple c spearguns) and Alan Johnson both Key West locals.
As I swam up to the twin rocks, I saw a jewfish in the distance and then closer to the rocks I saw this huge snapper. I mean this thing looked enormous in the water, hanging out next to the rocks. I dropped on it and it didn’t spook, it actually turned and swam a little towards me like a giant mangrove.
I lined up and went for the stone shot, but in my excitement I shot a little low and into its gill plate. The fish shook its head and snapped my flopper and bent the hell out of my shaft. I chased it into one of the rocks, but then it started swimming out onto the sand. I followed trying to jam my “L” shaped shaft back into my gun.
It swam in the big circle, the whole time I was praying it didn’t just bolt. This big hammerhead swam in on me as I was chasing the fish. Usually a big shark swims in and you kind of pause and watch what its doing, until it moves off. In this case I just swam right past it in pursuit of the snapper. The vis was pretty good so I could follow it but if it really ran it would be gone. Then it did bolt, but it swam straight back to the original rock.
I chased it back to the rock screaming for another gun and the other divers. Niko threw me a second gun and Cole and Alan got to the rock.
Cole went down into the cave and shot the fish again. He came up to the surface and said “I stoned it”.
Then it came back to life and swam out of the one cave into another one, breaking Cole’s mono and bending this shaft. Then it started peaking out of one of the other cave entrances and Alan hit it again with another headshot. It backed into the cave and bent his shaft. That makes 3 shafts!
After that it was dead, the rest of the day was medicore with some blacks and yellow jacks. We headed in early.
