First time spearfishing Trindad & Tobago 2013

  • Sorry it is my story and I am telling it the long way..:D
    Planned a trip to Trinidad for a year to go shoot with my buddies Jason and Nadeem(Bequia Blues here)... Having grown up on the stories of the giant fish shot close to shore in Trinidad if you had the stones to brave the green dark low vis water, I decided my stones were large enough and the time had come for me to go hunt the big Cubera snapper my friends keep telling me about.
    Flew into Trinidad Saturday night close to 11 pm, 3 hrs late thanks to LIAT, if anyone of you have flown around the Caribbean no more explanation is necessary! By the time I arrived on my buddies boat, only to find out that my buddy Jason who's boat I was staying on was sick and would be down for the fist week at least of diving :( , unpacked, talked the prerequisite shit talk between good diving friends with Bequia Blues it was 2 am :@
    We were supposed to fish with Bequia Blues boat but his engines were in the middle of being unexpectedly replaced and would not be ready in time for our diving :(... THEN I was told I would have to captain my home as our dive platform as that was all we had!!
    My home for the coming 3 weeks of July



    Needless to say we had a late start the next day! I took the boat out of the dock and handed over the throttles to our driver for the day, Nadeems gal who happens to be my sister-in-law(Caribbean life)... I would like to describe Trinidad's North coast for you who have never been, it is wild forested mountains and hills rising straight out of the sea, full of impossible valleys and steep cliffs off of which is littered locals fishing with large bamboo poles, you look at them and wonder how on earth did they get to where they are and how on earth would they leave with a fish?! Then you see some young guy walking the cliffs with a fish as big as he, crazy and cool does not cover it :cool2:


    Now to the diving, the water is like dark tea or deep still river pool in the tropics at its best, we did not get it at its best but it was a calm day and the vis was ok for North coast I was told with 10 foot vis!! WTF!! :crazy: ...
    Look at the colour of the water a few feet from shore on a calm day

    Anyway, we hit as my buddy describes it a simple warm up spot after a few minutes of cruising up the North coast... It was very hard to get into this diving, you cant see five feet down most of the time and the trick is to head right up to the shore almost touching the rocks as this is where the fish congregate! Goes against everything I know about diving but not five into the dive I see Nadeem raise up out of the water a small(11lb) Cubera :@, but I cant let go of my natural clear tropical water instincts and keep trying to drop into the amazing structure at 25-30 foot below me which i can only see when I am within a few feet! Another 5 min and I hear a gun go off again and here comes Nadeem with a 3 pound Dog... So I give up and move to the 10 foot water touching the coast he has been diving in and low and behold there are fish!!! I see my first Hog fish(I had never seen one) decide he is to pretty too shoot :crazy: and would you believe my buddies gun goes off again? swims by me with a small Spanish mackerel... My friends and I are very competitive and regardless of the learning curve involved with this type of diving I know the shit that will be slung my way if I don't get my thumb out my ass and figure this shit out!! So with gritted teeth I start hunting and still cant figure this stuff out, praise be to Poseidon a school of Spanish Mackeral bomb me and I get a fish...hahahahaahahahahah my Trini cherry broke! Boy that was the sweetest fish EVER!!!
    Nadeem says lets go this spot is done, so off we go to the next spot. It was a beautiful dive with walls dropping down into the 40's and 50's teaming with every species of angel fish, big turtles and giant tarpon everywhere... My new contour underwater camera I had mounted on the back of my gun was getting amazing shots in the 15 foot visibility this spot offered BUT nothing to shoot so my buddy said, next!


    New spot... I am told this spot is very rarely dove as it requires very calm water to even attempt and I am given the low down on the dive profile... Underwater caves in 15 foot of water loaded with big snapper, leave the 6 pounders alone and wait for the big boys, oh and careful with the massive surge, not giving away any more info on that honey hole...lol.. It was surging pretty bad and as I dropped in where I was told there they were, snappers!! I found this deep cave at 15-18 foot(still cant get over how shallow they dive in Trinidad) and a big Cubera(over 50) poked his head out and as snappers do then disappeared into the hole along with some 10 LB Black Margates, it did not take much to disappear as the vis was about 5 foot and as we were under the shadow of a cliff it was dark.
    I breathed up and went back down with murder in my heart for that Cubera and a chance to pull even with my friend :muahaha:, when I found the cave again I lined up with the entrance and slowly approached, what I thought was a snapper profile appeared and disappeared in a blink... I fired on pure instinct and took whatever it was from behind... My line went instantly tight and my reel was buzzing, I thought to myself boy that cave goes far in! I tried to fight him as I had no idea how if he holed up how we would get him out, but fighting in a black cave blind in surge conditions soon left me with no breath left and I had to just settle for keeping pressure on my reel line and emergency ascend.
    Side note: my new spear diver reel with the high vis 2.2 mm line was the BOMB! easy to see and even after a lot of chaffing on rocks never let me down.
    On surface I notice my camera got knocked off in the fight in the cave and was forever lost :frustrated2:
    went down and crawled into the cave blind as far as I could squeeze in but no go this fish was wedged good and proper. Retrieved my flashlight off the boat and went back to figure this out...luckily I could get to the cave through a side passage and there was my fish, an eleven and a half pond Dog tooth snapper as it turned out, my first as we dont shoot um up North as they as cigatoixic. It had wedged my spear up into a crevice at the back of the cave and the flopper had deployed into the crack making it impossible to pull out. Back to the boat and yelled for the boat hook, went down with the hook and managed to grab the shooting line through the side entrance to the cave with the boat hook fully extended, thankfully the fish had strung itself and my shooting line was mono... At this point Nadeen said we need tanks if we had any chance of getting back the spear. Luckily my buddy Jason's boat always has tanks and regulators, with just a tank and reg with no BC or any device holding the tanks we wedged ourselves as far into the cave as possible but we were both 2 large to get to the spear. Nadeem cut the mono keeping a continuous line/loop through the fish and we saved the fish. That fish cost me my video camera and my bloody spear... This is me telling the bloody fish off!!


    One last quick stop as we had exhausted our favourable tide and fish glory hole for my stupid shaft, Nadeem then closed the day off with a lovely cavally.





    All and all a great day, lots learned and other than the fact that diving with the tanks to get my spear gave me an ear infection and the weather turning due to the Tropical Storm going by and losing a day to repair the helm AC...really!! that is important???!!


    Great weather predicted for the weekend so fingers crossed for epic diving to come :thumbsup2:


    A bad day at sea is better than a good day in the boatyard
    George Steele

    Edited once, last by Dude george ().

  • Man, that was an expensive fish.
    Unreal diving though George. I don't like caves....even on land. Great job recovering that fish. I keep a scuba unit on my boat too. We get fish that dive over the wall at times deeper than 100 feet. Haven't had to use it in a couple years now.....I have a Jake. haha
    But Dogs are so fast at holing up. Here in Belize we have 3 spots where we know they come in to roost in holes at night. It's their way. When I shoot cuberas and muttons....they fight but don't hole up so....efficiently?


    Thanks for the story. Have fun on the rest of the trip.

  • Hard slow grind today but always fun learning new grounds.
    Saw some cool stuff like a pack/school/congregation? of about 50 small rays whizz by me, had a little chat with a 9 ft green moray ell, I love those gentle creatures... Bequia Blues has a different experience with a big one as he kept shooting spanish mackerels and stuffing them in his wet suit(5)!!! The moray must have thought he was a mackerel and had a go at him, smells like a mackerel must be a mackerel!! :laughing:

    A bad day at sea is better than a good day in the boatyard
    George Steele

  • Awesome

    "Whiskey don't make liars, it just makes fools. So, I didn't mean to say it, but I meant what I said."
    -James McMurtry

  • Today we had a lot of fish getting off and LOTS of missed fish by me but BIG fun...Great day!!!
    I got so pissed from constantly missing fish today I was ready to trash my gun but had an idea that I tried and it fixed the shooting issues immediately!!
    First day out I had lost my spear in a cave to a Dog, I had a spare threaded spear as a back up to take a breakaway for bigger fish, this I had to now use to replace my flopper that had been shooting like a laser and cutting through the fish like butter. The new spear I rigged with heavy Kevlar cord as shooting line for all the ledges and caves... After rigging the gun with the spare spear I had great difficulty with penetration and accuracy. At the height of my apathy with the gun and myself, thought let me try my light thin spectra as this most closely resembles the mono that had been rigged before. Guess what? back to being a laser!! Seems the thick cord was sticking into the groove in the stock used as a line guide and messing with MY groove. Sometimes the simple seemingly inconsequential tiny detail is the whole game. Got me that nice Permit and Bequia blues got the other big permit






    A bad day at sea is better than a good day in the boatyard
    George Steele

    Edited once, last by Dude george ().

  • Haven't been out for days, went for a few min a few days ago and hunted down this little rascal.



    Today we got out in not so great vis and strong current but made it count, Stefan got the 7lb+ Spanish Mackerel, I got the flat 10 lb'er and Bequia blues took out a great 7 lb'ish snook... I have to confess in the silt like vis I murdered the poor Porgy mistaking the fella for a snapper :rolleyes1:
    Great day, but beat after pumping in the current all morning :toast:



    A bad day at sea is better than a good day in the boatyard
    George Steele

  • Great pictures, nice color on the Spanish Mac, now just make sure you don't hurt and sharks.;):D
    I love current....makes ya feel good when you finally catch the boat, and sleep like a baby at night.:toast:
    Cheers, Don

    "Great mother ocean brought forth all life, it is my eternal home'' Don Berry from Blue Water Hunters.


    Spearfishing Store the freediving and spearfishing equipment specialists.

  • Don sorry I forgot to add the disclaimer " no sharks were harmed during the wonton killing of these fish" :D

    A bad day at sea is better than a good day in the boatyard
    George Steele

  • Don sorry I forgot to add the disclaimer " no sharks were harmed during the wonton killing of these fish" :D


    Kill'em All.......let God sort it out.;) ;);..... I'm kidding for all the that don't know me.


    Cheers, Don

    "Great mother ocean brought forth all life, it is my eternal home'' Don Berry from Blue Water Hunters.


    Spearfishing Store the freediving and spearfishing equipment specialists.

  • Dan I will send you what I have tomorrow, that mack nearly spooled the reel it was huge fun..I was laughing and laughing while it ran.

    A bad day at sea is better than a good day in the boatyard
    George Steele

  • Nice fish, pics and story George.


    I never see those Spanish macks here in Belize. Only ceros....and we have kings and wahoo. Nice colors on that doggie. Looks more like a cubera with the darker red color.


    Nice boat too badehh. Post a pic of it. How big is it?

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