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Written by: Bob Diaz
Category: SpearBlog 2009
Thu9Jul2009

July 8, 2009

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Bob Diaz | SpearBlog 2009 | July 09, 2009 | Print

Seas: 1-2 feet
Winds: 5-10 SSW
Temp: 85 F
Viz: 10 feet
Today we headed out with the whole family (families) in tow because the seas have been so calm. We headed out around 10a with a plan to be back close to home in time for high slack tide. Our goal was to hit some offshore spots for snapper and hopefully head back closer to home for some hogfish and hopefully grouper. Unfortunately, I am sure we are all familiar with the best laid plans of mice and men and what happens to them. Anyway, we hit our first spot in about 32 feet and were able to bag a few nice mangroves before the school appeared to have moved on. I say appeared, because the viz was still no more than about 10 feet, so after we scoured the reef for a while, we decided to move on in search of more and larger snappers.

At the second spot, I started having having some difficulty in lining up my shots. Basically, I felt like I would have better luck if I dropped my gun and tried to knock the fish out instead of shooting them so needless to say, I didn't do too well at this spot even though there were a few respectably sized mangroves (I didn't say I couldn't see them, just hit them). Luckily, I wasn't the only diver in the water and the others were able to make up for my temporary lack of shooting aptitude at this spot. The water seemed to get a little bit dirtier while we were at this spot so we decided to move on to one more spot. I don't know the count at this point, but I was pretty sure it wasn't anywhere near our bag limit so I wasn't too worried about having gone over the limit.

At the last spot, I was thankfully able to overcome my issues and start hitting the marks I was aiming at. By the time the other divers had figured the fish had thinned out at this spot, I made my way (albeit with some difficulty) to the boat with 7 fish (6 in my "catch bag" and the last fish I had shot still on the shaft). We checked out the count and were just under the limit, but we figured we could cut some of our younger passengers a break and head back anyway. Of course, by this time we skipped the second part of our plan since we had already kept everyone out for about 4 hours. But we weren't too disappointed since this was our best single day catch so far this week.

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