Well trying to write this post first thing the next morning so the events are fresh in my mind. Had probably one of the more memorable days diving yesterday, out of week of just awesome diving. I did not have my camera with me, but I did have Andy’s Camera so I do have a couple photos , I am wondering if I should just buy a little underwater point and shoot because frankly it’s a pain to bring the big housing out. Unfortunately his camera has some sort of mini-sd card and I don’t have an adapter for it, so might be minute before I put this post up.
For one I don’t know if I am a better diver or there are a lot of grouper out there because I have been lighting them up. It seems like every rock or patch has one of more grouper on it. No really big fish , biggest I have gotten this season has been around #25, but they are everywhere. Earlier in the week Andy shot a 18# red grouper missing the world record by a pound or so. I would say the closure is working, and I am fine with having them put the closure in the place.
Let me see what has happened this week, for one the vis has been around 80 feet and there has been light to no current. Pretty much the best diving conditions you ask for. There are muttons everywhere and I mean every where. In hawks channel, on the reef on the roll off. We haven’t gotten any real large ones but they are plentiful.
I was shooting muttons and big grey snappers on the roll off in about 75 feet of water and this big kingfish swam up to me. At first I though I could stone it but at the last second it turned and I got a body shot. The fish had to be 50# it took all my reel line and then ripped the plastic that the line was tied to . I tied the line on the reel wrong like a dumbass , so there goes all the reel line and UHT shaft. It wasn’t that bad though the UHT shaft had already been bent and bent back, and I had used it for quite awhile.
Then there was yesterday, the day was going pretty well we had been diving shallow stuff all day with great success. We we were getting reds and muttons everywhere. There were also huge schools of hogs everywhere looked about 11.9 inches, along with a million porgies and the occasional cero mackerel swimming through. Stoner had gotten one or two red pushing 15 pounds. We had all gotten numerous muttons there was a couple hours left in the day and I took the controls and steered us out to around 50 feet of water.
The first deeper spot was kind of slow saw one nice grouper, but it ran right away. Then I shot a yellow mouth grouper and John who was diving with us missed a big kingfish. Then we pushed out to 75 feet of water we had drifted about 5 minutes before I saw a nice black and red. Andy dove on the black but then came up saying it looked small. I think he needs glasses because that black looked around 15# to me. I dove on it and followed it over the roll off and ran out of float line at 80 feet and took a hail Mary shot. No dice. Then it was was nothing but blue water for a couple minutes and I saw Andy diving on something . I watched him for a minute and then saw he was following a big black. He nailed it and it went into a cave. After the dust cleared I dove on it and could see its massive tail , I came to surface and told everyone it was still on there.
I saw this weird shaped shark swimming around the grouper. It’s shape wasn’t familiar, and then I realized it was a tiger shark. Niko jumped in with a tank and the gaff, and swam down to where the grouper was and shooed away the shark and got the fish out of the hole. Once I saw he was coming up I let myself drift away looking to see if anything was attracted by the commotion.
I dove once looking at some short reds and hinds milling around, when I surfaced I saw a silver shape swimming away from me, a kingfish? Nope it was a nice wahoo swimming away. I was tempted to follow it but instead I just stayed still and waited. Sure enough it turned around and started swimming right back at me. I turned and pointed my gun in the direction I assumed it was swimming and didn’t even look at the fish. The wahoo swam almost up to the tip of the gun. I shot it from probably 4 feet away.
Then to top it off on the way in Johnny said he saw a huge shark finning. We though it might be another great white so we ran over to it. It was whale shark! It had to be over 20 feet long. I was fully dressed and drove while everyone else jumped in. It had one short cobia swimming with it but whatever , what an awesome sight.
Got some photos with Andys Camera, not as good as the e-pl1 but better then nothing.
