Frickin' Jake.. spearfishing Belize

Quote from sdeisen

sweeeet, Id been hoping you guys would post some video at some point

Jake's getting it figured out. I'm in the Stone Age with all this techno stuff. I just learned how to text last year.

Jake and I were out diving with Mo and our old buddy DuQuesnay. We went north to a spot we've been to a couple of times. It's the channel where the big ships come into Belize City. Cuts are where we hunt most of the time on the reef.
I dropped down to about 45 feet and laid among the coral rocks. A nice grouper swims up to me and "Thwack", first fish of the day. Jake dropped down and laid in the sand at about 70 feet and shot a nice dog snapper.
We then swam out towards the sea because there was deep water on either side of us. I knew it had to end in a point, which, along with the channel factor, should have been a hot spot for fish. I hadn't seen that previously. So we swam out about 200 yards....and there were all the bait fish. Small blue lined jacks, little tunas, creole wrasse (always a sign that there are grouper). I dropped down and saw about 5 black grouper. Jake dropped down and comes up with a 16 lb cubera snapper. He was trying to get it off the spear as it was skull shot and the shaft was imbedded. I dropped down to about 60 feet and waited, hoping for another snapper. I saw a few black grouper and just as I started ascending, a HUGE black comes in towards me. Being out of breath, I couldn't go back down. I got to the surface and said, "Jake, take my gun down. There's a big black right below us".
Jake drops down and I watched him shoot this huge fish. The fish then bolted into a hole. Jake came up and told me he needed to go shoot it again and it was huge. I set to untangling his line and getting the shaft out of his other fish's head. I drifted about 100 feet off in the slight current. I swam back and Jake went down again...I watched him disappear into the hole, which worried the hell out of me not knowing how big it was...and it was 75 feet down. Turns out he said he could stand up in it and another 30 lb black was in there. But the fish was gone. It had torn the barb right off the shaft. SHIT. haha. That's the way it goes sometimes.
I pulled the boat up and got the GPS reading. Named it Jake's House.
We then noticed that the rock formation continued out even farther. After shooting a few other fish in that area, we swam out another 100 yards or so and the reef came up to about 50 feet. Jake dove down and saw lots of grouper and shot a nice dog snapper. It holed up immediately so I dove down to get it out. At about 60 feet I looked in the hole and then looked around. It wasn't a House, as we call the holes where fish stay....it was a fricken CONDOMINIUM !!!. Holes everywhere. A new spot..."Condominiums"...haha..
There were huge dog snapper there.
Anyway, we didn't get anymore fish but the cooler was full. Oh, we also saw two schools of cero mackerel...spawning I guess. I'd only seen that once before. They weren't the biggest ones...only about 6 lbs or so. Really nice to see.

Willy and the cobia. I like this picture. hah.

It's fun sharing stories and pics. That's why I love this site. Thanks guys.

Finally got back out on the water. I didn't get wet though, other than the spray on the boat ride. Resting my arm is really working and the pain is going away. So with Zen like discipline and concentration, I merely guided the young ones to a massive school of dogs and cuberas....ok, it wassn't that massive....and it wasn't even that big but I'm on a roll....., and diligently gutted and iced the fish.
Jake's going to have to fill you in on the details. But that is one fat dog that I'm holding. It was the first fish of the day and he shot it at Condos, the new spot we found 3 weeks ago. Apparently there were a couple missed cuberas in on the tale....and I heard even a large king fish got lucky and swam on down the reef.
But I look good in my fishing guide shirt....maybe i'm in the wrong business growing shrimp....what do you think? haha.

Look at DuQuesnay in the background. "the Old Man and his arsenal". He's 73 now and smiles like a kid at Christmas the whole day out there. Maritsa did some dives but needs to learn and get used to handling a gun. She was hitting 55 plus feet though. I'm telling you....the next Sheri Daye.....

Mo the killer. He's 10. I can't imagine when he's 18.

Quote from LunkerBuster

Love your reports guys.

Hank. After a few trips how does the boat feel without the water

Lighter
It's not that much different. Usually we're loaded with 4 or 5 divers, gear, ice, DuQuesnay's coconuts, extra gas etc so 3-400 lbs or water isn't that big a deal. I was more worried about the trapped water causing the glass to delaminate.