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Sun20Jun2010

June 19-20, 2010 - Uncooperative clarity

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Bob Diaz | SpearBlog 2010 | June 20, 2010 | Print
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 10-15 E/SE Viz: 20-25 feet Temp: 84 F

This weekend was looking really good from the forecast all week. Winds were supposed to be no more than 10-15 ESE with seas holding up at 1-2' inside the reef and a not-too-terrible 2-4' outside the reef. Unfortunately, as good as that sounds, it's not always the only determnining factor in having a good (or great) spearfishing weekend. Even though all the signs were pointing at another picture perfect weekend, we would be reminded that no matter what some things just can't be counted on or predicted.

 

I was headng out with a couple of friends from the campground this weekend, so we decided to keep it relaxed and just hook up in the morning and decide where to go. So I put the boat in the water first thing in the morning and head out to stock up on ice for the weekend. I get back to the campground and start rounding up the usual suspects so we can decide what we would do today. After a little discussion, we decided to head West to see if the clean water had continued to be pushed in that direction by the wind and tides. We hit some regular spots as well as doing some scouting of new spots we came across along the way. Unfortunately what we found was that pretty much everything West of Moser Channel had dirtied up considerably from last week. Viz was no more than 20-25' and that was at the cleaner spots.

June 19-20, 2010 - The viz wasn't with us this weekend, and neither were the fish
We hit one spot in about 40' that looked extremely promising upon arrival but after a whole bunch of descents, I only had one Mutton to show for my effort. It's really tough diving repeatedly to 40' with so little to show for it. Especially when you aren't even really getting to enjoy the view along the way. You can't really appreciate a large reef 90 seconds at a time (or at least it's difficult to). We continued to hit spot after spot, moving on relatively quickly either because of the scarcity of fish or the minimal visibility.

On or about our 4 stop (I'd lost count by now), we finally came into some fish. Nothing of any size, but at least we were seeing some life. The shallow depth didn't hurt either. It's not quite as difficult to dive 25' repeatedly. Being as selective as we were, we still weren't finding any fish of any size we would consider truly acceptable but we would end up taking our limit because we did have to make dinner. So when all was said and done, we ended up with our limit in mangoes, a few Cero's and a mutton. I did chase a grouper, but unfortunately she was a second sighting while I was chasing a mangrove and having to surface with less viz than depth made me lose sight of her and that was that. On the bright side, it didn't take me too long to clean the fish today :). 

Father's Day Sunday, we awoke to slightly higher winds consistently blowing in that 10-15 mph range with occasional gusts well beyond that so I decided to give the family a break and not make them deal with slightly rougher seas by making them go along with me in search of clean water (which I had heard reports of to the East). So after making Father's Day breakfast (yes making, not having made... :), I spent the rest of the day tweaking this and fixing that to make sure that I don't have to spend time that I could be diving doing these things instead.

We also spent a good portion of the afternoon helping SeaTow right a capsized boat in the marina. I hope to get some pics of the adventure from other onlookers to post sometime soon. It just goes to prove, the devil's in the details. Anyone can forget to do something as minute as putting in a drain plug and get into trouble. It also goes to prove that you have to keep your head about you when things are going wrong, lest you make a bad situation even worse. It was only after stopping the boat to attempt to trailer it, that the boat actually got to the point of capsizing. Most likely, a few more minutes of running on plane and then jumping in the water with plug in hand could have kept the situation from escalating, but these things can and do happen.

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