Anyone ever dove the Tarpon out of PCB

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Biggen

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Panama City Beach Florida
Just curious about it anyone had any good general info about diving the Tarpon. We are tossing around the idea about doing some spearing on her. We're getting tired of not taking home many fish from our current numbers so we are wanting to head west and dive over some hard bottom in hopes to find some larger fish.

What is the proper method of tieing off to her? I know its an underwater preserve so touching or damaging anything is against the law. From what I understand there are some underwater mooring buoys on the wreck. Do people just tie off to those? How does one find them if their underwater? I'm gussing they would show up on the bottom machine fairly well.

Any info is appreciated!

--
Rodman
 
Do you guys keep anyone on the boat? Out in Orange Beach, its not uncommon to keep a live boat and just toss a weighted bouy onsite. Just be sure the divers know not to grab the bouy line otherwise it'll drag off your target.
 
SuPrBuGmAn:
Do you guys keep anyone on the boat? Out in Orange Beach, its not uncommon to keep a live boat and just toss a weighted bouy onsite. Just be sure the divers know not to grab the bouy line otherwise it'll drag off your target.

We don't keep anyone on board... :-(

From what I have been reading it looks like the mooring buoys are about ~30' under the water. They should easily show up on the bottom finder when we pass over them. The only other option we would have is to anchor a little ways off the site and swim to the wreck. Something I don't want to do. I'd rather just jump over and hook us to the buoy...

The tarpon presents a unique problem for me as I don't believe any buoys are floating on the surface and one can't tie onto the wreck itself. I'm used to jumping over and tie onto a wreck and I've actually never tied onto a mooroing buoy before. It can't be much different or any harder but I always research things as much as I can if they are new. I imagine tieing onto the Tarpon is similiar to tieing onto the Orinskinay and those moorings buoys are floating underwater as well.
 
The mooring bouys on the Oriskany are easily visible from the surface, despite their depth, as well. So it might not be hard to find the bouys on the Tarpon either.
 
Iv'e been to the tarpon a couple of times, never seen the mooring bouys, so we always anchored 50 feet or so off the wreck. As far as spearfishing goes, seen some decent AJ's there but not much else. Not much left of her on the bottom either. Stream engine and the wood deck from her.
 
We dove it a few years ago, and I think we tied off on to the wreckage. Not sure if we knew it was protected at the time. Either way, losing the boat was more important to us. Not sure there is much to spear there, though. There is nowhere for the fish to hide. It is a good dive otherwise, since its historical and one of the few real wrecks in the area.
 
We ended up hitting some other spots to the east of the tarpon. I didn't want to fool with her this time. Maybe next time we head out we can give it a try...

From what I have heard there are some pretty big fish hanging out on the tarpon and to the north of her up towards the grey ghost. That area of the gulf begins a large "hard bottom" area with multple ledges and reefs made of limestone. Gives plenty of ledges for the fish to hide out on. We are trying to get away from the more populated public numbers as to get some bigger fish...

Thanks for the info guys. We will give it a try another time.
 
Mmm ledges... ledges = maybe lobster... mmmm...
 
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