Dad's first Spearfishing Trip (parts 1&2)

[MichaelBaranows]

I am sorry this has taken so long but I am writing as I work so it might be a little confusing and I might have left some parts out. I think this is the longest report yet and I probably have the least to talk about. My suggest is to get a drink and you might want to also want to read in shifts. I also at a picture of dad with his first speared fish. It is a photo but is above water.

Me and my dad went spearfishing for the first time together last Friday. I talked my dad into getting cert. with my last Feburary. But he wasn't too sure about about it at first but after the first time in the pool he has been wanting to go spearfishing. We have both made a few dozen dives over the last few months in freshwater trying to get used to our equipment and underwater world. A little over a month ago we were able to make our first rig dive in great conditions and see what we have been missing for years. Since then he has been busy working a shutdown at the plant not been able to make any dives while I have been diving with other people while they spearfish and I have been watching them hoping to learn a few things. They have even offered to loan me a speargun but I keep telling them that I am waiting to spearfish until I can do it with my dad cause we started diving together and I wanted to take this step with him also.

After working everyday for over a month my dad finally had a weekend off last week (8/27-28). We planning on going offshore for few dives but the day before while getting everything ready dad started the boat and we had broken waterpump so that put a holt on a trip Saturday and Sunday was called do to bad weather. I guess that God was just against us going diving last weekend.

So all last week I watched the weather and the seas looked like they were going to be nice to go offshore on Friday so both me and dad put in for a day of vacation from work. So Thursday afternoon I made a b-line to the house to load the boat and get ready for Fridays trip.

We leave the house around 600 so we would end up in Freeport a little before sun up and leaving the jetties around day break so we will be able to see once we are on the water. A little after 700 we are out the Freeport Jetties with somewhat smooth seas and only a few clouds on the horizon. At about 10 miles start to look like rain under a few of the clouds. So I start dodge a few clouds we get rained on a little but nothing to hard. Since I was heading to the East a little more than I had planned and was a good distance from the rigs I had planned to dive. I decided I would have to figure out a figure out a different place to dive. I noticed that was a little to the West of the V.A. Fogg in the area I had fished with some friends last week and I remember two rigs they we picked up a Ling and several snapper so I figured this might be a nice place to dive. So I cruised over there only to see that the first and bigger rig has signed posting "No Tie-Off". So we were off to the small tri-pod but it was still a rig and two weeks ago we caught several snapper and few Strawberry Group on the rig. When we get to the rig this is already a shrimp boat tied up to boat landing with probably 300' of rope. So I slide the boat in front of the other boat and dad hooks the rig hook onto the handrail. There is no current and the boat doesn't move enough to straighten out the rope. Dad is still sitting on the front of the boat to make sure the little current there is will keep the boat away from the rig.

To be continued...........

 

[MichaelBaranows]

(Continued from Part 1)

I drug the gear out of the cabin and started putting my gear together. Me and dad assamble out gear and plan our dive. The plan is to dive down to about 50' and see how where the fish are holding. And then procide deeper if the fish are deeper but only if we both feel comfortable. But we are hoping that we will see some Ling before this make a quick shoot and it back to the boat before continuing with the dive. Cause I have always been told that Ling are very curious and normally go straight to a dive when they enter the water. So once we are geared up I flip off the side of the boat so I can get a little water in my wetsuit cause I am starting to get warm wearing a black wetsuit when the tempature is in the low 90s. I swim over to dad's side of the boat and he flips over the side. He does seem so sure about taking the speargun on this dive so I ask that it be handed to me from the boat. I dump the air out of my BC and start to descend down the rope on the boat that we set up for safety stops and it is a good visual reference for me cause dad seems to normally have a little trouble equalizing his ears on his first dive. So while I am wait at the bottom of the rope at about 25' for dad to get his ears equalize I load the speargun and place it on safety. By the time I get this done dad has descend and we head to the rig. We swim towards the rig and start to see fish. Since the it is a cloud and not much sun everything looks a little dark.

There are large schools of spade and angel fish. I guess that no one every bothers them cause you can reach out and touch and end up bumping into them all the time. We don't see and Ling some we drip down to about 70' and since I had the speargun I figure I will see if I can stick a fish. The murk starts about 80' so I level out about even with the top of the murk and see a Red snapper that was a little bigger than legal size. I swing the gun around to my left and flip off the safety and squeeze the trigger and the spear shoots out of the gun.



As the spear leave the gun it pulls the cable to its limit and the spear drops. And I notice that the snapper is no longer where it was at. I pull the cable and spear from the murk and there is no fish on the end. I will have to work on my range cause the snapper was not in the limit of the spear so I missed. Dad is a few feet above and behind me and is watching everything I have done. I look over at him and he is pointing at 3 Ling and they all look big enough to shoot. So I hurry and reload the gun and flip the safety on and hand the gun to dad cause I can see on his face that he want to take a try. He swims toward the Ling and I see him leading them with the gun as if he was swinging to shoot dove. Then all of a sudden there is a look of dismay on his face and he starts looking at the spear gun. Seems that he forgot to take the gun off of safety.

He then he tries to swim after the Ling to get a shoot and I rise a little above him so I can save a little air and also have a better place to watch what he is doing. He is having trouble getting into range to make a good shoot so he decided to shoot a Sheephead. He gets into range and the end of the spear gun is only about 3' from the fish. He shoot placement is nice and just a bit low. I then swoop down and place the fish the stringer. Dad reload the speargun and hands it to me. I look down at my tank pressure gauge and notice that I only have 1200psi and dad started out with a little more than me so I am sure that had should have about the same as me. I look over at his gauge and notice he has a little over 1100psi. He starts up above me and I go up a little slower looking for a fish before we have to make a safety stop and get in the boat. I am looking everywhere for a nice but I was without luck.

At one point I am looking at dad and he is turning around looking behind himself. There was a trigger fish biting at him but thankfully the wetsuit keep the trigger from sinking its teeth into his skin. As we are sitting there for our stop I notice every so often it looks like it gets lighter. So I look up and notice that is raining and it isn't the sun making it lighter but "lighting". And lighting is never a good sign on the open flat water or tied off to a rig in the middle of water cause we all know that lighting strikes the tallest object. We finish our safety stop and then start to the boat but I am leading the way yet dad does think I am going the right way and he is correct. When I pop my head up above water I am about 30' to the right of the boat. I see Carol (my dad's wife) with a death grip on the boat tower wearing a life jacket and soaken wet. So I drop down below the surface and see dad behind me so I correct my course and swim to the back of the boat. I let dad get in the boat first so he hands up his fins and climbs in the boat.

For some reason seems like I ended up carrying just about everything. I hand up the speargun, fish stringer, and finally me fins so I can get in the boat. Now in the boat we take off our gear and start to talk about what we are going to do. The seas were a little rough but not nears as bad as I have been thru. Checked the bilge to make sure there wasn't too much water and that the automatic pump was working fine. Everything was fine so we had to figure out if we wanted to wait out the rain and make another dive or head in which was in the same direction the rain was moving. We decided that we can start heading in and possible fine another rig to dive on the way if the rain stops. So I get the boat started and dad unhooks and we start in. Not as fast as the trip out but still around 18-20 knots. Since it was rain we stayed in our wetsuits for awhile since they keep us warmer. Even thou I only got to make one dive and didn't shoot any fish I would have to say it was a good day. (After this trip might have to find a different person to stay on the boat while we dive. Cause it might have been a little too stressful.)

Diving was out of the quest cause we planned to rebuild my grandma's fence. I am not going to write about this but I just want to say how amazing my grandma is at 75 cause she was out there helping us tear the fence down and pull nails. And also have a nice lunch with my aunt and uncle that my grandma fixed. Then after getting home I head off the to shop to get tanks filled and I also pick up my own speargun.

The plan was to dive again on Sunday but where so luck. We headed out a little later and did leave the jetties until about 930 cause we had a few things to do at the house. (Dad had left his fins hanging on the fence since we dove on Friday and the squirrels almost ate thru the finn straps. Lucky he has an extra strap.) The wind was blowing from the NE so the trip out was nice at about 24 knots. Get to the rig I wanted to try and there was a boat so I head to another and there is nothing to hook to on the side the current was following towards. So we are off to another rig and hook up and drop a safety rope with a 15# weight and the current is so strong the weight pulls the rope up to about a 45 degree angle. That current is little too fast so we move on to another one. We hook up and safety rope in and there is still a current but it isn't as strong. This time I clip my clip my speargun to the safety rope so I don't have to have anyone hand it to me from the boat. I suit up and flip over the side of boat and swim around to dad. We then tried to go down the rope but the current was strong that we had first thoult so we pull ourselves up the rope cause there was no way we could swim against the current. Once we got to the boat we climbed up the motor outdrive cause the current would have made it hard to use the ladder on the side of the boat. (I think it is time to design and build a fixed ladder and platform for the back of the boat.) Once in the boat we decide to call it a day and head home. The bad news is that with the NE wind it was rough and slow and took us a about 3 hours to get back to the jetties and we didn't bring any fishing poles so we couldn't even troll. (Dad talk to Richie and they went about 5-10 miles farther out and there was almost no current which we could have most likely handled to dive and they cause some nice Red Snapper.

Monday was Labor day and all I did was mow the yard and relaxed. Will have to wait until this weekend so see if things are better which they are calling for 2-3' seas.

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Jeepers, thats a hellova read...

Anyway, sounds like you guys had a great set of dives despite you not catching a fish. The sheepshead your dad speared is a very respectable size, kudo's to him PM a moderator to put your two threads together instead of having them seperated.