Almost and then not even close

Went out on the water the past couple of days.  Had been a while since I was able to go out because I screwed up my hand a week ago.  Anyway it’s healed and I now wear thicker dive gloves. Went out with Andy ,Chris, Catherine and Fenway on their boat on Monday. They had been hearing reports of wahoo  schooling outside the reef line and went looking for them. We got lucky and ran into them in 150 feet of water. Couldn’t ask for better conditions, 80-90 feet of vis with little current.

The string of bad luck that followed is painful to relive. The first one I dropped down on was probably around 30 pounds or more. I pulled the trigger on a relatively long shot and the shooting line and bungee somehow became entangled and the spear stopped halfway there.  The next one …. the next one I should have been a bit closer or used a slip tip. Andy and Chris had similar luck.  All in all it was awesome and sucked at the same time. Catherine found some sort of crazy jellyfish that could follow people or run from them.

Then we came in to the reef and at one spot I saw a cluster of 4 black grouper just sitting there. I dropped down to the bottom as slow as I could and drilled the biggest one. He tangled himself around some debris and generally made a big mess. Chris  helped me me get him loose, but in the end I had to cut my shooting line. I have to take Luis’s suggestion and get the little tank for the boat. Getting a grouper out of crevice at 60 feet, is kind of a pain in the ass.  It’s fun as long as you can recover the fish, but sometimes it starts to get dangerous and sometimes you can’t get the fish. I didn’t have another line so I was out for the little bit of the day that was left. Just as well: my hand hurt so much I kind of wanted to stop anyway.

The next day we got up at the crack of dawn mostly due to Brad’s ridiculous morning schedule.  This time Jason came with, along with Catherine. We met Andy and his crew out on the water in the same area as the day before but there was no wahoo to be seen. My boat’s engine died and we sent jason on Andy’s boat while Brad , me and Catherine fixed it (OK, Brad fixed it, while we held things for him). Once Brad got the engine running we anchored on a wreck in 200 feet of water and started chumming. The water was dirtier today then the day before and maybe that is why there was no wahoo around. We chunked up bontio and jack crevelle and had a pretty good slick going but nothing swam up that we could shoot. What did swim up was one the most kick ass schools of yellowtails I have ever seen. Dozens of fat yellowtails hung out about 40 feet under us, and would instantly drop as soon as you tried to dive down on them. After a while we gave up on that spot and then anchored on another wreck in around 90 feet of water.  We chummed that one also and had massive schools of bait surround us, but the only other fish that showed where Amberjacks.

Then we went snorkeling on the reef, took some little reef fish for dinner and also saw about 5 gag grouper, all were short. I haven’t seen a lot of gags on the reef so this was kind of interesting. Catherine took pictures of some old anchors we found. She is enjoying her new wetsuit top. The only company we found that makes a wetsuit, open cell , two piece in her tiny size was immersion. The 3mm top fits her so much better then her old 5mm top and she is still warm so that has been a big victory.