As I sit here Sunday afternoon watching the steady down pour of rain, I think of how God had just blessed the spearfishermen of the southern gulf coast.

All week the weather did not look good and it rained hard for two days prior to the 29th Annual Alabama Open Spearfishing Rodeo which was set to begin on Friday morning, June 4th. By Wednesday's safety meeting the marine forecast called for 2-3 foot seas and calming throughout the weekend with scattered thunderstorms. We could live with that. The divers were excited and the meeting productive. Dr. Ashton Blessey gave an outstanding talk on dive safety.

The following day divers of the Stickmen begin to arrive like clockwork. Charlie Carr brings his boat named "Sheneeda". David Biron brings the "FREE Spear-It". Ashton Blessey would be providing his boat as well for a total of three rides for the Stickmen. Our team members competing were Jack deVilliers, Matt Rytting, Sid Smith, Chance Henderson, David Biron and me. Ashton, Matt and Chance would be diving from Ashton's boat. Sid and Charlie would go on Charlie's boat and David would accommodate Jack and me. Our outlook was good and positive. So it begins Friday morning... wake up 0445, out of the house by 0515 and at the dock by 0600. This is the story as I lived it.

Our plan was simple, head south and start diving as soon as we see clear water. By 0830 I had boated my first fish, an amberjack. Category filled. David and Jack soon follow and we are pumped. Next spot more fish are taken as we shoot barracuda and snapper. Jack advises me that he has just seen a reef shark and had to push it off. I am on high alert but do not see the fish. I guess the push with Jack's spear tip did the trick. We shoot a couple of more fish and drag up. Jack shoots what I would estimate to be a 10 lb. mangrove snapper but it got attacked by a barracuda on the way up and all that was left was the head and gills.

The next spot was an adventure. I swim down and see David about 30 feet to my left. Just below him is what looks to be a GIANT cobia swimming with a smaller one as they commonly do. I make a silent wish that David would be looking the other way because the beast is coming to me. About that time I hear David's gun go off and the battle is on. In seconds his cobia was under me and I watch as it swims by, David in tow. I could have shot the smaller cobia as it passed under me but compared to the fish David had on, it looked like a minnow. I watch for at least 10 minutes as David is fighting his catch. The fish drags him out to sea and he'd slowly work it back to the boat only to be dragged back out again. This happened a couple of times. I swim up to David to see if I can be of assistance and he nods me off. I continue to hunt and dispatch another snapper. Jack shoots one too and we both get in the boat and watch as David gets a workout. We kid around as we watch Dave yo-yo back and forth to the swim platform while having a cool drink of water. "You think we ought to untie and drift to him?" I smilingly ask Jack. "Na, let him have fun" Jack replies. After a few more minutes Jack swims a Riffe gun out to him in case he needs to put a second shaft in which David promptly does and Jack returns to the boat. We wait a few minutes longer and it looks like the fish and David are done. At this point I untie the boat and Jack motors out to David who was happy put a big assed cobia in the cooler. Dave gets in, I take a top side shot with my underwater camera and we are off to our next spot. Our boat is being very productive as we continue to put fish on the boat at every weigh point.

Before long the day is winding down and making it to the weigh in becomes the new priority. David, not one for getting back too soon wants to dive some shallow stuff before we dock so we presume to do just that. This time we are diving what David calls "brown water" and Jack and I call "perfect vis". However, when diving in this murk with big guns you HAVE to know where all your buds are before pulling the trigger. We all play it safe and shoot a sheepshead while Jack gets a bonus triggerfish before we have to leave. The ride in was beautiful. We all had a good feeling about the days achievements and were anxious to weigh our fish. Especially the cobia.

When we get to the scales, we see many of our competitors milling around the dock after weighing in their fish. A good friend and opponent, Jimmy Perkins of the Mobile Devilfish greets me at the boat. "Hi Mike, did y'all do any good?" "We did pretty well" came my reply. "We got some nice cobia, a 59 and a 60 pounder; " Jimmy says. "That's some nice fish" I reply smiling. Then I thought about what David Biron had said to me a couple of weeks earlier when I pulled in my big red snapper so I replied in kind to Jimmy "but I think ours is bigger" I watch as his expression goes from a grin to a smile but could still see the wonder in his eyes. Jimmy stood fast as we weigh in our amberjack, barracuda, snapper and sheepshead. The last fish to come out of the box was the cobia. By this time the current cobia record holder, Shon Turner walks up. "Shon, your record is in jeopardy, buddy". I laugh as Shon gets the "oh shit" look on his face and he immediately gets behind the scales to see for himself. "73.9 lbs." declares the weighmaster. 2/10ths shy of the record. Shon breathes a sigh of relief but we were still ecstatic with David's catch. We would no doubt take 1st place with a fish like that. We saw our team mates Ashton, Matt and Chance weighing in as well and they had some nice fish too. Did I mention that there was also a cobia jackpot that I had signed our boat up for? Although it was the first day of the tournament, we felt confident David's fish would hold. After all it would take a new rodeo record to beat us. There were ten other boats registered for the same prize.

Soon we were motoring back to the dock to trailer the boat and cart fish back to the house. It was now 8:00 p.m. and we decided to ice the catch to clean the following day. By the time we dealt with routine matters and hit the hay it was 10:30 p.m. Bedtime and back up at 0445 the next morning, Saturday.

The day began with the usual aches and pains and the groaning and moaning about how we're to old for this stuff. By 1000 hours we were 70 miles offshore and diving in over 400 fsw (feet of seawater). The first dive cured the aches and pains and we were back in the groove but we had company. The rigs this deep dump lots of food waste and as soon as we tie off, a rig hand dumps some over creating a feeding frenzy. Unfortunately, the sharks dig this stuff. We saw at least 10-12 various species eyeing us curiously but didn't let them deter our hunting. Jack brings up a almaco jack and we see literally 100's of barracuda. I'm looking to upgrade from yesterday so I stalk a big one and stone it right behind the eye. As I'm bringing it to the boat, I look down and see a pair of blacknose sharks about 20 ft. below. "Hurry up with that fish", Jack says. "Those sharks are looking hungry". I hustle up a bit and get my 3rd place barracuda out of the water and follow pursuit. David is still hunting and soon brings up a triggerfish. We decide to hit a different spot.

The next deep water rig was much of the same, lots of sharks and barracuda. This platform had about 20 workers busy at the bottom catwalk and they were watching us with great interest. I swam hard to get up current of the rig where the bigger fish were. We saw lots of fish but not many that we were looking for. I make a dive down to about 50 ft. and land right on top of what looked like a 4-5 ft. cobia. I line up and shoot it in the right side of the head and left of the right eye. It didn't budge and I thought that I had stoned it but as it rolled I noticed that it was not a cobia at all, it was a SHARK! "What can I say, the outline looked the same to me from the top". "Oh well" I thought. Jack wanted some jaws, he can have these. The only problem then was that when I got to about 10' from the surface, it came to life with a vengeance. GREAT!!! I had a fight like I haven't had in a while. Getting to the surface was the farthest thing from my mind. I needed to somehow get this thing off my line. I made one wrap around my hand with my cable and jerked with all my might and he would jerk me back to the rig. I jerked harder and he answered with the same. After about five tries, I managed to pull the cable through him and he bolted one way and I bolted the other. I surfaced right under half dozen workers where I promptly exclaimed "that was one fish I'm glad got away"! They all laughed and I swam back to the boat for a breather and some lunch. Soon, Jack and David were aboard and we hightailed it out of there.

The next spot didn't show much either and was more or less much of the same. While David hunted one side, Jack and I hunted the other. The current was a little too strong to give us free reign of the water and it took a lot of effort to get up current, so we did the best we could. Now get a load of this... Jack swims up to where I am so I drop back to where he was and I look up for some reason and see something that looked like toilet paper coming out of a pipe on the rig. "NO, IT CAN'T BE" Then I saw it... a turd coming down right behind the paper. CRAP!!!! I swam like a man possessed to vacate the premises and got the heck out of there. Now there's a first. I've never felt so "shit on" in my life. Not to mention the memory of the event the rest of the day. Nevertheless, a little turd never hurt anyone, so I dived a lot to somehow feel cleansed of this close encounter of the turd kind.

After that, we decided that these rigs were not for us and headed back in to some more reasonable depths, like 120' or less. That's when our productivity improved and we started boating more snapper and amberjack. Our last three dive spots of the day were on some shallow spots in the 50-60 foot range. This is where we tore it up again. Jack brings up a red snapper and I manage to find a 20 pounder near the bottom. It never saw me coming. David would be next to boat a red snapper today. We take a couple of pictures and David wants to keep hunting and shoots a nice bonito.

We pull up to one of our last spots and it is murky. Jack was on the bow getting ready to throw a rope. "Hey, there's big shark over here " Jack calls out. "REALLY?" Dave and I say back looking at each other with a "big deal" look on our faces. How many have we saw today? 30??? What's one more? "It's about a six foot bull" Jack comes back after a second look. Wait now, that's another story. After all we are not suicidal. Dave and I both jump up front to take a look. We see a big cobia with a smaller one right by her side. "That's it, Mike" "Go in and get that fish" David commands. "Are you sure?" I reply. "Hell yes" David responds. "Jack thought it was a shark, so he shouldn't go". "That's your fish Mike". I look at Jack to see if he was in agreement... and a f*** you look was in one eye. I read his mind as he proclaimed "bullshit!!! The race was on. At this point David too was gearing up. I had my belt on and was getting my fins together when Jack was suddenly sitting on the other side with gun in hand. He grabs his belt, I grab my gun and shit starts again. I'm ready and over the side I go. In my haste I made a little too much splash... the splash that probably spooked the fish. So there we were, all in the water. Needless to say if there was something here it was going to die. We covered that spot for a good 20 minutes and never saw a thing albeit it thousands of bait fish from top to bottom. We all got back into the boat and rode away to our next spot. On the way Jack makes the statement, "Yep, we ALL had a chance for a 50 lb. cobia" and smiled. "That is until Mike got in". "He sounded like a 55 gallon drum hitting the water". I laughed along with everyone one else as I knew that was a fact. After all graceful entries is not in my forte as a rule.

It's getting late now so we run in to the dock to make weigh in. We meet up with David's family at the dock and his sweet wife brings us some chocolate chip cookies. They were staying on the Island for the weekend.

Back at the weigh station divers were lining up to weigh in. We weighed our fish and it looked like we would stay on the board for now. Once again, it was 8:00 p.m. before we made it home. This time we would not be able to put off cleaning fish. Sid and Charlie were all cleaned up and sitting out back when we arrived. Jack and I grabbed a sloppy joe courtesy of my wife, Robin and I plugged in my Mister Twister electric fish cleaning knife while Jack did it the old fashioned way at the fish cleaning table beside my house. I used the concrete picnic table as my work area.

For the next two hours we cleaned fish like mad men. We estimated about 300 lbs. just between Jack and me. We finished and threw our fillets on ice just in time to watch the De la hoya vs Sturms fight. A nice break after a hard days work. Rack time tonight would be around midnight.

Sunday arrives with my telephone ringing off the hook. For some reason divers like to call me for directions and get updated results. Jack shows up about 1000 hours to help me haul off fish carcasses. Luckily for me, I live next to some big woods, so we didn't have to go far to dump. Then it was back to the house and wash gear and ice chests. We get through in time to make it to the awards ceremony where David won 1st place cobia and 1st place other snapper category while I brought home 3rd place barracuda and Chance wins 2nd place barracuda. Considering we were diving and competing against 75 other divers, mostly SCUBA types we were satisfied with our results. The cobia jackpot winnings paid for our weekend. SWEET!!!