Frickin' Jake.. spearfishing Belize

Learned a good lesson today. When I flush my motors with a hose connection, the water seems to get pretty warm. But when they're in the water, they don't. Hardly luke warm. Bummer for Doc on Sunday because he got stung by a lion fish as he was pulling it in. A big one. No hot water so he toughed it out all the way to my house. Put a very hot compress on it a few times and he said it helped a lot. But PAAAIIIINN. Those things suck.
We found three schools of dog snapper but apparently so had someone else in the days before we saw them. Only one was sort of.....not so educated. But that's the place that's 90 feet deep or so and always has sharks. That's where Jake got the cubera.
Going to have a make a "fricken' Mo" thread if this keeps up. He shot this in a hole. We were on the boat as the sun was dropping and we hear, "hey Dad...". "Mo? where the hell are you"? He was lost in the glare but not far away. Jake swam over and wrestled this nice black out of the hole where he shot it.
Doc cleaned up on his usual array of trunk fish, yellow jacks, trigger fish. He got more than the rest of us put together.
I got a nice porgy. No pic...:(....biggest one I ever shot. Having it for lunch right now.

Quote from Liquid

You guys seriously need a gopro. I would love to see some of your dives. However, seeing only the pictures of the fish afterwards let's my imagination wander into tantalizing journeys of epic spearfishing.

Yesterday we could have produced some nice video. Well, Frank (Hardline) could have. :thumbsup2:

We found these beautiful big schools of dog snapper. The first two, at different cuts, had I would guess 150-200 fish each. The first one just went down but the second one was more curious. The would follow us and come up to about 20-30 feet depth. There was a school of spade fish too. I was diving to about 50 feet and trying to act harmless hanging above the 90 foot bottom....which works a lot of the time...but I couldn't get close enough for a shot. But if I'd had a GoPro it would have been pretty nice because the whole school was swirling around just out of range. We have one but I have to get another chip for it....Jake says. I don't know how to work it.
But last week I dived down to look under this rock at about 45 feet or so. I look out into the sand and there was Jake. We never go down together. But I watched him look around....and I saw the hogfish too...:D...he'd look....then back to the hogfish. Finally he shot it. It would have made some good footage

I was actually thinking of just leaving my gun on the boat and diving yesterday. I seem to have forgotten the days, when working as a scuba instructor in the Philippines, how we would have been so stoked to see what we see every time we go spearfishing. Shooting fish isn't the only joy of spearfishing. It's really just a small part of it.

24 lbs gutted. Followed it around for a little while. Finally got up current a bit and dropped down to where she was hiding behind a soft coral. Then on the surface as I was bleeding it, Jake yells to me, "hey, I was following that fish for 15 minutes". haha. He said he saw one twice that big.
Strong current I think from all the north winds. Even around the corner from the cuts the current was pretty strong. Hard to breath up and get a good dive.

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It doesn't get any more calm than it was yesterday. Just Mo, Jake and i. Found a nice school of dogs but they were having nothing to do with us. Jake was diving 80 feet for 1:50 and 2:00 but they wouldn't come in. We did pick off a few strays though.
Jake got an 18 lb, gutted, yellow jack.
The best fish I got all day was a yellow tail snapper. hard to get close to them And a nice school master that I had to play with among the rocks at about 50 feet. That cubera was probably the dumbest one I ever shot. It was just swimming along midwater. Jake dropped down behind it. I dropped down to try to herd it back towards Jake and it kept coming. Pretty easy shot. Yep.

And DAN....as you can see Mo is wearing Tino's old wetsuit. I gave the new Speardiver one to Tino and I HAD to wear something.:laughing: But it was nice to give Tino a new suit. This one is a bit worn.

I have to watch my computer while waiting on the surface. it's like, "damn, he's been down there a loooonng time…is he ok"? :laughing:
It's weird because we haven't been diving even every week. I don't know how he does it. I feel good when I get 1:20….

It's time for me to go to Venezuela....

I'm setting up a trip to Glovers Reef after the full moon of Jan. I know a guy who has gotten some wahoo the last couple years I'm stoked just to pull out my big Wong and Riffe blue water guns.

Wow, Redrider. Thank you for the very kind words. I got chicken skin (goose bumps?) when I read your post.

Merry Christmas to you and yours. Safe diving.

Rough and rainy. I thought the water would be really dirty with all the rough weather and rain we'd been getting But the vis in the cuts with the incoming tide was crystal clear.
Saw a HUGE mutton. I was drifting in the light current and saw some chubs off in the distance. I see snappers hanging around the same place as them a lot of times so I closed my eyes and drifted down to the 30 foot bottom. Right as I open my eyes and look up, I see about a 6-8 inch caudal fin of a mutton swimming away. Shit. It was at least 15 lbs.
Got two nice hogs though. Doc and Du Quesnay cleaned up on this school of yellow jacks. There were over a thousand.