Pantoja myself and Freek headed out today around 8:30am. The sea was an oil slick and a big ray sighting right out of the inlet felt like a good sign. We did a few spots over reef from 60 to 30fsw. There were some sharp thermoclines starting at 10 feet from the bottom which precluded me from doing any aspetto as I was wearing a rashguard top and shorts. Vis was greenish with particulate but you could make out the dark reef patches from the surface at 50fsw which made staying on top of structure possible. Pantoja managed to get a mutton spine deeply embedded in one of his fingers that he couldn't get out and should require some DIY surgery once he gets home. Around 2:00pm some chop kicked up and the sky became overcast. It was time to go home. Everyone got some fish, hogs and muttons.
For me what made the day stand out was breaking in my new gun which I built with Davie's help. I used it on two previous outings last weekend but wasn't able to land anything. My very first shot was on a good size yellow jack from pretty far away. The shot was good and traversed the fish from the left top and out near the gill plate on the right. But I had this strange feeling that something was not right so I didn't put pressure on the line. The fish kept swimming in a large circle along the bottom not trying to shake the shaft. After three circles I decided to pull on the line a little and out came the shaft, the barb did not open. The fish took off and I swam after it at full sprint with the fish always at the edge of visibility. After about 100 yards it got ahead of me to where I couldn't see it any more and I gave up the chase. This made me lose confidence in the gun and I missed two or three subsequent shots.
Over the next couple of days I did a few modifications. I tuned the flopper to my satisfaction, the shaft was new and the flopper factory tuned in a way that I didn't like. I sawed off the last inch of the trigger which due to its shape was not in optimum position for me to squeeze, and fabricated an extension out of some scrap 3/16 ss plate. I then had a local welder do an excellent job of attaching it to the original trigger stump.
Today everything worked properly and I was able to land this 12lb yellow jack and a couple of hogs but those were at very close range. I was on the bottom at around 45fsw, one of the few times I braced myself against the cold, waiting for hogs to come in. There were about six of them heading straight for me and I was waiting to spot the biggest one when some shapes materialized above me a little lower than mid water. I forgot about the hogs and started up and saw a school of yellow jacks. I was not in good position and as I was bringing up the gun to line up with the biggest one it changed position and moved ahead of a smaller one. I changed targets and fired on the smaller jack. To my surprise I got a double. I had two good sized jacks, one on the line and one on the shaft. I remember thinking quickly, holy shit if I land two of these at once! but I knew right there that it was not probable, these fish fight pretty hard. Each jack took off in a different direction and the one on the shaft tore off.