pcolastory

Fall is here which means that the weather conditions are not
on the side of the spearfishermen as a rule.

While David Biron and myself do not prefer to get out on
weekends, we had no choice due to the fact that Sunday looked
to be the only day suitable for diving this week with 2 foot seas.

I was beginning to regret this decision when we got to our first dive
spot called the Three Barges which had 4 boats on it and no room
for another. We tried to anchor away from the structure with the
plan to dive around the edge but we couldn't get our anchor to hold,
all the while irritating the fishermen who appeared scared to death
that we were going to get in the water. "Y'all ain't going to dive
here are you?" they would yell nodding their heads. This place was
beginning to look like trouble.

With no choice but to move on, we headed out to deeper water.

Soon we arrive at the Navy Tug where it was the same scenario...
boats aplenty. We motored to the rear of what looked like a
dive boat. "You guys dive down and tell us what's there.",
the boat captain requested. Just the invitation we needed to
hear. We anchored behind him.

Dave goes down for the exploratory dive and returns to tell the
captain that all he saw was a "bunch of sand with some bonito darting
around". The captain responds that we should go down on the wreck
in front of his boat.

Dave and I swam to the bow of his boat, out of the way of all
fishermen and right on top of the structure 70' below. It was
85-90' to the bottom. The visibility here was around 20'.

Thanks in part to the discussions about diver safety and shallow
water blackout (SWB) we have been more in tune to diving safer and
keeping a closer eye on each other, so we have been trying to figure
out the perfect buddy system. We have had many conversations about
watching out for each other and tried the one up and one down approach
but with the visibility as bad as it is we would dive out of sight of
each other. Today would be different. We would dive down together.
I really like this method and it works for the most part. At least
better than any other system we've tried. Of course when one diver has
a fish on, the other is still fishing while the one with a fish tows it
to the boat so I guess no system is without flaw.

Anyway we dive down to the top of the tug and see thousands of bait
fish and about half dozen grouper sitting on top of the wheel house.
I'm about twenty feet away and parallel to David. I watch as he is
eye balling the grouper in a big way looking for one that stood out
among the rest. They all looked alike to me. About that time a big
barracuda caught his attention and then bolted. We surface.

We dive back down and the grouper have disappeared and there's not much
other fish activity around. We make a few more dives and David can't
resist shooting a 35 pound barracuda. He hauls it to the boat and we
take some in water photos before pulling anchor and moving on to our
next spot. We thank the boat for letting us share the spot before we leave.

We drive to he Joseph Meeks wreck and it is loaded with fishermen, so
we move on over to the Avocet sitting in 100'fsw, a little deeper than
the tug but a short distance away. We try to wiggle in between a couple
of the boats. The boat to our left reels in a nice black fin tuna.
Dave gets busy cutting his cuda up for chum. I jump in to take a look
but our location to the wreck was less than optimal and we were unable
to find room far enough away from the other boats to anchor up so we
had little choice but to relocate to another public wreck. "Public"
meaning that every fisherman and his brother knows about it. The GPS
numbers to these locations are readily available at any bait and tackle
shop.

Our next destination would be the Russian Freighter. We were happy to
see only one or two boats in the area. We sounded the wreck and threw
the anchor. This is the first spot where we are finally able to throw
the anchor and have it hold. The structure was 30-50 feet away from the
bow.

Dave encounters a 6 ft bull shark on his very first dive.
The fish swam toward him and he pointed his gun at it and the fish
slowly veered away, circled around for another look and then darted off
into the murky water. He gives me the report and we decide to continue
to fish and see what happens. It was the first wreck we were able to
anchor on all day and we were not about to have a small 6 ft. shark
scare us away from the good stuff!

The visibility here was not that good. We had a murk layer and 4' vis
for the first twenty feet and it cleared to 30 after that. The wreck is
sitting in 80'fsw and it's about 70' to the top; so we were diving down
to 70-75' where the fish were. David was out to the right of me about
30 feet. We dived down and I could see him at depth. He surfaced
claiming to have missed a red snapper as I was hauling a nice 10 pound
mangrove to the boat. We dived back down and I dispatched another.
While I was in the boat, throwing my fish on ice I heard David yell
that he had missed another big red. "I'm tired of hearing excuses
David, go get a fish!" I said smiling. He was off with a vengeance.

Meantime, a big party boat has seen us pulling up fish and motors
back and forth in front of our boat with its crew. This was distracting
at times, but just in case, I made sure of eye contact upon surfacing.
Dave had raised our dive flag upon arrival and at least the wind was
blowing in a direction that kept us from breathing up on fumes as it
passed down wind. Still the boat was in closer than the 100' required
by law. What do you do?

Back in the water, I swim over to the honey hole as David is hauling
a 14 pound red snapper back to the boat. I dive down just a few feet
from the bottom and as I'm coming back up I see a nice red coming my
way. I line up and it turns off, I take a hail mary shot and miss.
Go figure. A few minutes later Dave and I are both back on the spot.
He comes back up with 13 lb. red snapper and I continue to dive. I miss
another fish and getting aggravated. I should have never got on to Dave
for missing because now the karma is on me. We make a few more dives
but have driven the fish off the spot so we decide to move on. This
added to the fact that we were diving deep repetitive dives and I
just didn't have a good feeling about keeping this pace up. I relayed
my thoughts to Dave and we both agreed to move in shallower.

Our last spot was the first of the day that was so packed with boats...
the Three Barges. Located in 50'fsw this would be much easier diving.
The visibility here was probably the worse of the day with only 5-8 ft.
on bottom after swimming through a 3-4 ft. murk.

There was only one other boat here, so conditions looked good. We
jumped in and went to work, both of us bringing up red snapper. While
Dave was on the boat putting his fish in the cooler, I shot a
triggerfish. I promptly handed it up to Dave. Another reason we
don't like to stay on the boat too long... we end up being the deck
hand for the guy in the water. Soon Dave was back in with me.
I swam down and shot a red snapper and it looked like a bad shot
so I pulled the fish up close to get a good grip on it and was
swimming it to the boat. About that time Dave pops up and excitedly
announces that there is an aggressive bull shark down there. I was
at the ladder by this time and was out in a flash. "I'm tired of
diving anyway", I said smiling back at Dave. He was not amused.
"That shark was coming after me, I had to poke it with my spear tip
to get it off". He explained how the 8 ft. bull was swimming
toward him and acted like it was going to turn away but then turned
back around and came toward him, a classic attack move. "He was hungry
acting". I replied that the shark probably reacted to my shot fish and
Dave was the first beating heart on its radar. Of all times to be
swimming a fish by hand to the boat, I felt lucky.

Due to the poor visibility We had on the bottom and the fact that we
didn't want to get spooked or bitten by the aggressive bull shark we
called it a day. Had the visibility been 30'+, I think we would
have grabbed a gun and the camera and gone in to take some photo's of
the shark :-) but that was the second bull seen fishing today and
it was larger than the first.

All in all, not a bad day considering we had to compete against rod n
reel fishermen and bull sharks.