I am a refugee from one of the other boards, I know some of you quite well and look forward to meeting many more of you. I don't know where to really start but I dive locally in southern California and do so from shore and off my boat, a 19' Boston Whaler Outrage. I think I've been spearing for about 4 years now, I can't offer tons of experience like some of you but I have made enough mistakes to offer help to the new guys. My favorite fish to hunt are yellowtail and am always relieved when summer comes so I don't have to suffer in the freezing cold white seabass water during the winter/spring.
I've got two dogs, live in oc, and work as a marine biologist. Don't worry I'm not the enemy, I used to work in a fishing tackle shop for years and grew up fishing for trout, largemouth bass, stripers, then onto tuna, etc. Eventually one of my buddies led me into spearfishing, something I will never forgive him for since I am now broke.
I also write short stories from time to time, like this...
The First and the Last
I peered cautiously down the slope. “When you first go down there’s a tree right there that you can grab onto in case you start falling.” my buddy commented. “Yeah great”, I thought. I’m freaking 42 years old, I have a boat and I’m still too stupid to not dive when I shouldn’t be diving. I shaded my eyes and watched the surf rolling in, it was a fairly big swell today. My buddy threw his fish over his shoulder and started the long trek back to his car. That was pretty much all the motivation I needed since I hadn’t seen a fish at all this season.
Most of the area around this particular area well…sucked. The areas that are accessable are hit pretty hard and you need a kayak to get there, the ones that aren’t you need a boat to get to. This was a new area that we had recently found and a few years too late because it was now scheduled to be shut down. You couldn’t even get to the kelp beds from the beach, you had to park your vehicle a half mile away and then hike across a field. Still there was probably fish down there and it was getting late, it gets dark earlier in the spring dammit.
When I finally got into the water I was still a bit nervous. I had timed the waves correctly and kicked like a madman thru the shallow reef and watched opaleye and zebra perch dart for cover. Somewhere under me were probably halibut laughing at the lone clumbsy figure making the long kick out to the kelp beds. After what seemed an eturnity I reached the edge of the bed and began calming myself. The water temperature was probably mid fifty degrees this time of year but I was sweating bullets in my 7mm suit. I flushed my suit and made my first drop, probably a whopping fifteen seconds later I surfaced again.
I really don’t have a pattern for checking out a new bed. Usually I’ll start on an upcurrent edge or follow a croak, or look for bait. This time it was the latter that led me to a fishy area. It’s funny, some areas are like a dead zone, I’ll see a few seniorita wrasse and maybe some perch but other than that…nothing. Evenually I saw a few spanish makeral make their way across the stalks and followed them. More and more bait appeared, rivers of gold, silver and green streaked under me. Schools of opaleye would cautiously swim towards me and then boom away, this is always an annoyance because I never see the white ghosts when there’s too many opaleye booming out like that. I saw kelp bass peering from under the top of the canopy and then drifting away when we locked eyes. Barracuda cruised in and flicked their yellow tails as they slowly sank out of sight. I listened carefully for the telltale barrummp barrummp sounds of male seabass croaking but the bed was pretty silent. Still it was a pretty dive and I enjoyed myself in my outdoor aquarium and I followed the bait around as the sun began to set. I told myself I’d make one more trek out to the edge of the bed and work my way back to shore. I took a breath, flooded my snorkel and dipped my fins as quietly as I could, a few kicks down and I became negatively bouyant and slowly sank.
I was looking straight ahead and caught movement to my left. The fish was dark but didn’t seem to notice me and was swimming lazily thru the sparse part of the kelp. I slowly extended the gun to about where I figured it would be next and braced the back for the shot. The fish cleared the kelp stalks, it's now or never. “Click, zip, whirrrrr” 5/16" of mori's finest shot out and the reel began spool out, I kicked up to the surface and let the fish run. I kept an eye on the line and the next thing I knew the damn thing spooled me and I was steadily being dragged underwater so I let go of my gun and grabbed onto the chicken line, 40 feet of floatline that I use “in case shit happens”. Evenutally the fish tied up deep so I dropped the line and pulled the gun up to the surface. I tried to calm myself down and after a few failed attempts I got deep enough to see that the shot was solid and the slip tip had toggled although the fish was still pretty deep.
Now I was in a spot and a stupid one at that. It was getting dark, I had a big fish tied up deep and no one to spot me, if I didn’t hurry I’d also have to contend with a exit out of the water in the dark. This is one of the situations that I always try to keep myself out of and knowing we had recently lost a brother made me extra sketchy. So I laid forward and concentrated on steading my breathing and after a while I tucked down and pulled myself towards the fish. It was at the end of my breathhold but I dispatched the fish and returned to the surface. I calmed myself down again and after a moment dove down again and unclipped the shooting line and began kicking towards the surface at a steady rate with the fish in my hand. There was no satisfaction greater than when I hit the top and took a much needed breath of air. I ran my hands over it and felt it's thick scales and sharp gill rakers. Now it was a long kick back to the shore, the fish was safely clipped onto my stringer and I could feel it’s weight pushing against me with every kick. Unfortunately the swell had increased and I watched a steady rip of four footers crash the shoreline, I tried to time it right but as I was getting over the bed a wave picked me up and threw me onto the rocks. “Well hell this is why I dive with my crappy shore diving fins anyways” I thought and hurled myself onto the shore and stood up bending my fins in the rocks during the process. I quickly got my butt out of the surf and dragged that fish to shore all the while telling myself that I'm getting too old for this kind of shit.
As I lay gasping on the rocks I admired the colors of that fish and let out a sigh of relief. Once I caught my breath I put my gear away in my bag and began the long hike to my truck. By the time I got there it was fully dark and I was beat. My calves were cramped, that weight belt was digging into my side, my shoulder ached from the weight of the fish and I was burning up, panting and out of breath. The fish would later weigh in at 41 lbs, my biggest shore dive fish to date.
Once in a while I think back about that day and I have to smile. It was the first time that I had ever dove there and it was such a pain in the ass I’m pretty sure that it might be the last time too.
But you never know, I’ve said that before too…
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