Lake Report and a PB

This isn't a "California" report per se, but it's close enough and it all involved CA people. Two parts after the jump.

Dan, Brandon, and myself hit the water at about 11am, and found ourselves in awful, muddy viz (0-8) with jetskis buzzing around us constantly. The air was 110, and the water was 81. Not the best of circumstances, but I'm not the type to give up easily. So I hugged the shoreline and dove shallow ridges and dropoffs looking for patches of viz and fish. I managed to pop three small carp with my 90 carbon fiber Aimrite, at which point I decided to unclip my 32" pneumatic, which I had never actually used before. I swam around with one gun in each hand "akimbo"-style for a bit. I dove down to a dropoff and spotted a large carp moving slowly below me in a murky haze. I took aim with the carbon fiber gun, and I got it with a solid holding shot from above near its hump. It swam around in a counterclock wise circle, then lightly thrashed on the ground, but it never freaked or ran for deeper water. However, it was at this point that I realized that this was a VERY large carp. Since I had it in my hand and it was loaded, I decided that a second shot with the pneumatic wouldnt hurt, and would be fun practice.

My first impression? Pneumatics are...weird. No recoil at all, but relatively poor penetration for the distance and shaft size. My friend who also recently switched to the dark side thinks that they have more power at range than they do up close.

Regardless, the carp now had two shafts in it and seemed resigned to its fate, even though the second shaft hadn't stoned it. I got it in hand and realized (again) that this was a HUGE carp. Dan came over and the first words out of his mouth were "oh...my...god". Lengthwise it was maybe only 35 inches or so but the girth, height and tail thickness were crazy.

I went to string it up on my float and thats when it went berserk. No, it went BALLISTIC. Every time the string got near its eye or mouth it thrashed and kicked and pulled me under water with it once or twice despite the fact that I was bear hugging it.

Eventually I got it to shore, and after getting our licenses checked by a game warden, we weighed it in at 23 pounds and change. It went 23 and 14 oz on one attempt and 23 10 on others. Eventually we settled on 23.5 pounds. I know bigger carp have been taken from this lake on spear, but this is well above the average size and is only 2 pounds shy of the official all tackle Lake Mead record of 25 pounds and 10 ounces. So all in all with the awful conditions and double shot on it this was a very cool fish for me.

Thank you Brandon and Dan for diving with me and taking photographs. Let's dive again soon, but someplace WAY cooler. According to my bathroom scale, I lost about 6 pounds this weekend.

This relates to the part where we checked for fishing licenses by a game warden. This was the first time ive ever seen let alone been stopped by a Nevada warden. Everything of ours was in order, but he remarked that they had been having problems recently with spearfishermen illegally shooting catfish and largemouth bass. As such the wardens were "cracking down".

Perhaps he was telling the truth and had actually caught people doing it, or maybe he was just trying to warn us a bit, just to be on the safe side. Either way I'm not surprised that there are some bad apples out there, and it wouldnt surprise me if spearos (or anybody freediving with a visible flag) will start to get stopped and inspected more often in the future. With the importance of fishing and watersports to the regions economy, I hope that they wont shut down spearfishing due to a few miscreants, but you never know. Due to the nature of the local laws there are unfortunately more ways for us to break the law than there are for hook and liners.

Overall message: they're onto us, so mind your P's and Q's.