Went out spearfishing yesterday with Albie, Pat , Gabi and Catherine, finally. We had big plans and gassed up the boat to run to the Marquesas Keys but there were reports of crappy water out there. Instead of taking the lakes passage we went across the front of the reef. There was crappy water with 10′ of visibility covering the reef and out to 200 feet of water with no blue water in sight. So we turned around and ran east.
I have never actually been east of the sambos so it was pretty cool to see new stuff and also a bit frustrating not knowing where the good fish are. We found some nice rocks in 35-50 that showed a lot of promise but this cloud of white water moved in on the bottom and once you swam 25 feet down it was like a whiteout. The vis dropped to less then 10 feet, which sucked. The area had big schools of false albacore and yellowtails, there was definitely some big predator fish somewhere. We headed in a bit shallower and there was a band of good vis, but if you went too far north the vis dropped to less then 10 feet. There were bands and patches of good visibility surrounded by areas covered with a white cloud.
We drifted for awhile and also dragged Albie behind the boat on a rope. We found some decent bottom but not a lot of bottom fish. Since I just got a new smoker we decided to get a bunch of mackerel to smoke in it. The mackerel where everywhere and since they have a small size limit and large bag limit you could pretty much shoot at everyone that went by. It was a great change of pace, as I spearfish more I get more selective and focused on the more prestigious fish I tend to pass on a lot of smaller less desirable fish. Which means you can swim around forever without pulling the trigger. Yesterday was 180 degrees from that. I shot at every mackerel I could, often taking long hail mary type shots. They are just cero mackerel so if you miss, who cares? It was a blast.
Albie got a decent mutton snapper, and I had nice mutton tear off, we saw a couple spooky blacks not really a good day in terms of fish but the most exciting stuff to happen was the shark encounters. We were spearing for awhile in one spot and a hammerhead shark showed up. He was small compared to the ones we saw in the summer but still about 8 feet long. He was minding his own business on the bottom which was great, and a smaller about 15# kingfish swam in. I took the shot and hit the king but it tore out after 30 seconds or so. I should have totally let go of my float line but I was hoping to keep the shark from eating it and tried to put a little pressure on the fish, dumb mistake. Once it tore off the shaft was hanging down and the flopper got the shark excited and he chased after it so I pulled it away and reloaded my gun. The shark left for a minute and I swam down to look for it and here it comes back, so instead of standing my ground I started to back up and it started following my fins, I felt like the fins where exciting it so I stopped swimming and the moment I stopped swimming away it turned away. Then it checked out Catherine and then it checked out Pat and then it left. Probably one of the more awesome things I have ever seen.
Catherine video taped it, I got a bunch of video clips taken over the past month I have thrown them together and will try to post them later today.
After a bit we changed spots and got more of the same in terms of fish, but got a small bull shark to visit us. He was probably around 3 feet long. Then another unidentified shark around 6 feet long came to check Catherine and Pat out.
It’s funny we haven’t seen any sharks in a few months and we see 3 cool ones in one day.
