After a quick flight on a free upgrade to first class we arrived in Cancun Easter Sunday for vacation. After some discussion Cancun seemed like a compromise for my wanting to go fishing and my girlfriends longing for a resort. We broke the bank a little but it was super fun. Sunday we spent getting situated and had some local food, Panochos de cochinito, which are like a bean stuffed pupusa with carnitas style pork taco toppings and a local drink made of passion fruit, pineapple and chaya a local green.
The next day I was to head to Cozumel for snapper and grouper hunting, however, due to my poor planning I missed the ferry to Cozumel from Playa Del Carmen. But I was able to move my dive with Spearfishing Today, thanks to Ms. Faride, to Playa Del Carmen. It was a fantastic dive with tons of massive permit, yellow jacks, horse eye jacks, rainbow runner, barracuda, trigger fish and a couple billfish. First spot was outside some protected areas that didn’t turn up much. I did see our guide Diego stone a massive barracuda but it came to life as he was puling it up to the boat. I couldn’t get a second shot in it as I was on the other side of the boat and it tore off and got away (bummer).
We then went to dive a wreck, a first for me, that layed between 90 and 40 feet from the surface. This is where I saw most of the fish. However, these fish where deep. I could not get to them and the current was so strong we spent the majority of the trip doing drive bys on the sunken wreck. I then manage a trigger fish towards the end of the dive and took the skunk off of my back. Diego was able to shoot a yellow jack with Granis, one of the ladies on the boat putting a second shot to secure it. Some of the other guys on the boat took a couple triggers and a small barracuda. The water was gorgeous and full of fish but I just couldn’t connect on any of the monsters I was seeing.
The next day we went to Tulum to check out the ruins and do a snorkel trip in the protected park. Saw some more jacks and snapper and we where shown some colonial canons that had been found after the last hurricane uncovered them shallow in the reef.
Wednesday we went for an early morning spearfishing trip with Arpon Spearfishing for grouper and snapper. I saw a 30 plus pound dog snapper but he was high tailing it out of there and I couldn’t even swing my gun on him. Then I saw a bunch of small grouper and took a shot on a medium sized one but missed. Javi the guide from Arpon helped me get my shaft out of the rocks after the miss which took a while and was really nice of him to help. One gentleman, Steve, and his son, Kurt, where on the trip with me and his son Kurt managed a nice pan sized jack and a rudderfish (looked like a Hawaiian enenue) on his first spearfishing trip ever, he was really stoked. After that we moved on to a deep spot in hopes of some larger fish. We didn’t see much of anything and the current was almost nonexistent, apparently current is very important in this area to see larger fish. I did a few drops and managed my personal best depth of 70 feet, which was super cool. On one drop I had spotted what looked like a decent fish from the surface and hit about 65 feet or so when I started leveling out. I had my arm stretched out and was about to pull the trigger on this beautiful hog fish, what would have been my first. The hog fish starts to turn and look up at me as I had dive-bombed it when I hear a gun go off and see a shaft hit the fish. I then realize Javi had shot it from about 5 feet under me. I was pretty bummed out but he says he didn’t see me. After that no other fish where spotted and we called it a day and headed for the docks where tarpon and cubera snapper where eating fish cuts from the gutting table. Javi then took us to a restaurant where they grilled up the food for us and we had an amazing lunch.
The following day we went to Chichen Itza and took a ton of pictures and then cooled off in Yodzonot cenote , which was full of small catfish and tilapia and had walls of sparrows flying around. Really cool experience. I also met some fishermen close to our hotel who managed a ton of fish and just chit chatted with them about the Yucatan and all it has to offer.
This trip to Cancun was really awesome, despite my fishing handicap. I look forward to fishing in Mexico again soon and hopefully getting the big one.
Slide show of some pictures of the trip:
http://s241.photobucket.com/user/aegaeta/slideshow/Cancun
