Frickin' Jake.. spearfishing Belize

    Finally got out. Jake's had a sinus infection and we've all had the "Cold From Hell" that isn't that bad, but the damn thing just won't go away.


    Anyway, we hit three spots. Only saw a few nice dog snapper, some BIG….and DEEP…haha…(I love that line) black grouper. But after not diving for a month I was only diving shallow for a minute 10 or so. Jake was still hacking sinus blockage but he was clearing it up.


    Mo got a nice barracuda. He swore it came after him after he shot it.


    Rough and windy…..and this morning was glass calm. Naturally….it's Monday. <img src= " height="23" srcset="https://spearfishing.world/forum/images/smilies/emojione/1f606@2x.png 2x"> Check out the fins Dan. He using the smaller Omer foot pockets on the stiffer blades. Doing good. He's going to be a killer. He'll be 12 in June.
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    We saw two schools of small rainbow runners. I shot two and had it for lunch today. Really nice. Andre swears they're just like salmon.
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    There s more fish under the ice. I got a couple nice ceros. Jake got a decent grouper and another barracuda. Andre shot a big ramora….haha. He's says they're good. "in Jamaica we eat them like….blah blah….haha. He's cool
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    Cleaning up. Jake's birthday. 25 years….
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    I get a lot of laughs about my tall console. But I swear, it beats sitting low in the stern. I can see waves coming better when in really choppy conditions, divers….yep.

    Got into some muttons today. Lots of them. I got 4, Jake got 5 and Doc got 2. Mo got q nice cero It was pretty cool. There were seven boats there fishing and jake and I were diving about 50 feet from one. We waved and everything was cool. Next thing I know, there's a guy in the water next to me. Jake was bringing up a nice mutton from about 70 feet and went back to get my line out of a rock. The guy was pretty stoked to see free divers. It could get ugly…hook and liners and spearos in the water but it was all good. :thumbup:


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    Really nice haul. We're they AlL deep? Hope fishermen got a few too. Great harmony. :thumbup:

    Quote from Oscar

    Really nice haul. We're they AlL deep? Hope fishermen got a few too. Great harmony. :thumbup:


    We got them in 45-70 feet. Near a wall. The fisherman told me they weren't catching at that time. Current was wrong. I didn't notice much current at that time. It picked up a little later on.


    I think they were catching though. When we got there we saw quite a few figate birds in the air which usually come in when you're gutting fish.

    Fishermen chummed them in for you probably, maybe you should try a little chum half hour before you get in next time?

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

    We did. We had a bunch of squid that had sort of spoiled from our shrimp brood stock feeds. The muttons were on it as soon as it got near the bottom.


    I have to start using shrimp more often.

    From my experience, muttons are the most prone snapper to show up when you chum. Back in the days when I dived Puerto Rico, we used to spear a cuda and chum it for muttons. It was like magic. They showed up from nowhere. :)

    Marco Melis

    A bad day fishing is ALWAYS better than a good day at work.

    Dumb question for all of you Snapper experts. A long long time ago after the dinosaurs disappeared and during rotary black desktop telephones we would literally catch on HL as many red snappers as we wanted in schools that literally turned the water red. This was very common during the dry season in the Bay of Panama between December and April on the Pacific side of Panama.


    The snappers were found in huge schools and they all had spots and looked like the Mutton Snappets but I've never heard of Mutten Snappers in schools of thousands. We called them Spot Snappers for lack of a better name. Later when I started freediving we would see them - but often passed them up since they tended to be small - around 8-10 pounds or so since we had so many other and larger fish.


    Is there more than one species of Snapper (Red) with spots? Has anyone else seen vast schools of the red snappers that turn huge areas of the ocean red? ?(


    Thanks.

    I saw some posts recently of some snapper records being broken, the snapper were in huge aggregations like you describe and similar descriptions.

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

    I've seen schools of muttons of maybe 200. Not like the thousands of cuberas we see here in Belize at Gladden Spit. (this is the reason the whale sharks come. To eat the eggs as they spawn)


    And yes, the average size is 8-10 lbs or so but there are some huge ones of 20 lbs or more.


    We also get schools of dog snapper up to 200 fish.


    We have another small species here that they call silk snapper. It has a spot like the mutton but is more silver and thinner. I can't find a pic of it on Google but Doc and DuQuesnay tell me it's not small muttons. ??


    But yeah, the dogs, muttons and cuberas are not nearly as wary when they're in spawning mode. At least for one or two fish. After they see you kill a few they sober up. Until the next full moon……

    Quote from LunkerBuster

    Snapper will do that to spawn. Literally thousands in a spiral


    Thanks


    Muttens? Maybe that's what occurred - but it looked like a big feed with multitude of birds on top ad frenzy under the surface. Probably not too many places that occurs or as often anymore The Silky Snappers still do that in the Bay of Panama but much smaller numbers and not very often :(

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