It's April and the Spring diving season is here.

Jack DeVilliers and myself got a chance to get his boat out yesterday. We opted for some laid back beach
diving... from a boat, aren't we lazy?

We made a few stops along the way to visit the local dive shops, drop of tournament posters and on to
the launch we go.

This was a rare day, the water was crystal and the fish were active. I took along a small 38" speargun
while Jack hunted with a polespear.

We made about 30 dives in the protected area of the jetty as the current was ripping in. Saw lots of
sheepshead, bait fish and mullet... nothing spectacular.

We moved across the pass and found where the action was.  Only problem was the strong current made it a swimming treadmill as we hugged the rocks out to the underwater seawall... no go, too strong. We go back to the boat and eat peanut butter crackers and have a soft drink. I wonder if that's a very nutritious "regimen".

After a while the current at least slowed down enough to swim out the underwater wall. I saw a familiar site.
A nice sized flounder, covered up except for the mouth. I aim and fire... chalk up the first flatboy of the year.

We saw schools of pompano, sheepshead, spanish, mullet, blue fish, and red fish. One red looked to be #25 plus.
If only I had a bigger gun with more range. It was impossible to swim close enough in the swift current to get a close range shot, so we just watch them swim off.

In the channel it was like an aquarium with 30-40' visibility. I looked down and saw an anchor and chain hung in some structure. I dived down and spent one dive dislodging it grunting... surfaced and went down again. Good Lord, it must have had 15' of chain buried in the sand. I spend the next few minutes working the chain out of the rocks and
pulling it out into the sand, then the anchor. "I wonder if I can surface with this thing?", I thought. I go down and
pick up the anchor and grunt like crazy to surface. "No way". I made a mental note of where it was and moved on.

I see jack working the wall still looking for a fish. Since I already had one, I did a bit of sightseeing. I look to the bottom and see a good sized horse conch shell about 16" long.  Too bad the beachcombers couldn't get this one, it can be my souvenir. I swim the shell to the boat and come back. Another big shell, this time a welk about a foot long. Looks like I'm having a shell day because before it was over I collected 4 good specimens.

The water temp was 68 degrees. When it hits 70 the flounder move and if you can be there it's payday. Can you say jubilee?

Before we pack it in, Jack gets the boat and rides over, throws me a rope, I swim down and secure it on my anchor and salvage complete. Freediving for anchors, ain't it a shame for the boat it used to belong too?

Since we both were experiencing signs of hypothermia, we called it a day and reflected on the days events over a cold beer.

All in all, it was a good start to the new season.