Jake and I discuss this pretty often so I thought I'd bounce this around in here and see what you guys think,
Dog snappers are one of our preferred target fish here. There are three ways that we encounter them.
1. The "lone ranger" who you happen to cross paths with on the reef. You may spook him out or you saw him and snuck up and got a shot.
2. The school. This is what we do the most. We have several spots where there is a resident school ranging from 40 up to 200 fish, depending on the time of year or.....I'm not sure what it depends on. Maybe someone gill netted some. After bumbling around with a school and getting one or two, we've come up with the plan of "never spook them", meaning we never show aggression. The best way is to get to the bottom and lay there but at a couple of the spots, this means laying on the bottom at 80 feet. A bit much for my skill level. But, I've found that I can drop to 60-70 feet with a kind of curled up body shape, hiding my gun and never making eye contact with the fish, and they''ll still come to me. There are always a few curious ones. Sometimes big ones.
But, if someone makes a charge, gun extended, eyes wide open, looking at the fish....they won't let you close for pretty much the rest of the day. I think that using the method I described that maybe they think I"m actually acting in defense of the approaching fish. It doesn't seem to alarm them. Maybe they think I'm a big jellyfish? hah.
3. There is another spot where right about 3 pm, the dogs come filing in, apparently to find holes to roost in for the night. In this spot, we just wait in ambush. If I see one in the distance I just get down, only about 15-20 feet to the bottom, and wait and ambush.
Do ALL dogs come in to roost at night? It would seem that they wouldn't stay out in open water on the drop off. I know they come in at one other deeper spot because I've seen the school inside the reef early morning and late evening, but I"m not sure of their movements and the water is much deeper even inside the reef. (50 feet) It's a bigger area and they can sneak right past us in the normally not so great vis. That cut has a lot of water movement.
We spent 3 hours at one deep spot on the reef yesterday. Jake shot one....er, make that two. He can dive to 80-90 feet and lay on the bottom. But Mo and Tino were with us. I told them just to watch but both got excited and I saw them both charging down, gun extended and wild eyed...haha. The school was unapproachable the rest of the day. I would see them off int he distance and dive down away from them to 60 + feet, look around and they were GONE.
Anyway, we had a fun day. Still got a few nice ones, and a few school masters....barracuda. Yep.