Hi guys,
It's been a while since I got to shoot some fish, and 10 days Hawaii diving every day left me itching to kill something. So when judah(lunkerbuster) asked me if I was down for a early afternoon shore dive out of Hollywood, I was all over it.
I decided to drag the wife and daughter along, and make it a family affair. The water was calm, and relatively clear inside of 20ft. deeper than that, and vis drastically went down. Fish were out, and as soon as I reached the 1st reef line, I was bussed by about 50 Spanish mackerel. Pretty cool to be reminded how it feels being schooled. After landing a Mack, we continued on, but found vis getting worse the further out we went, that combined with the moronic boat drivers, made us stay shallow. Soon after turning around, I spotted a large eye from the surface, peeking out from behind a seafan, nothing else. It only beings 20' made the stalk kinda hard, so I just dive bombed. Once halfway done it became clear it was a good sized gag grouper, and he wanted nothing to do with me and started taking off. I used a large coral head as cover to close the distance, and made a long spine shot. The shaft did not penetrate the spine, and I watched in horror as the fish took off without my flopper engaging. He finally managed to shake the shaft, and holed up under the coral head I had just used as cover. Not wanting to give him a chance to relocate, I used Judah's gun to place a 2nd shot, and the fish was in the bag. 28" gag in 20' at one of soflo's busiest beaches in the middle of summer. Who would have thought. Judah managed a few nice eating fish as well, and I'm sure he'll chime in to give some details.
Coming back in we apparently had a shark trailing us, and the lifeguard cleared the water. People on the beach we pretty excited. I never saw the shark, but people said he was right behind us. Go figure.
