So for the past few years to celebrate my birthday in style I've been going on trips to do some fishing and diving. This year we rented a boat out of Key West and spent two days in the Marquesas looking to get into some less-pressured areas. We got out there and it turned out to be more difficult to find fish than expected due to the vis, current, and lack of a properly functioning depth finder :frustrated1:
Anyways we towed around areas that looked good on the chart and were able to find some good structure eventually. One such place was awesome with a few coral heads that had reef in-between with cracks and short ledges. Spotted at least 6 grouper just hanging around initially. Signaled to my buddy about 50 feet away to come over to where I was at. As he was swimming he must've spooked the monster of a black grouper that ended up holing up in the coral head underneath right where I was. "Holy *#$% there he is...don't panic" was all I could think. We were only in 30' of water and this guy hadn't left the hole. I took some deep breaths, cleared my head and made my descent to check on him. Got down there, looked in a small crack at the bottom of the head and just saw his head up to his gill plate. He was just sitting there, feeling real secure-like. Went back up to the surface and had to regain my composure before diving again. Got down there a second time to check again and see how I could angle my pole spear to get a good shot into him. Figured it out but ran out of air and headed back up. My adrenaline began to get to me, knowing that this next dive it was going to be on with the trophy grouper I had been looking for. Headed down for the third time, and got my polespear into position. A Gatku 9-footer with a slip-tip that I had to bend under the coral head and over a small hill of sand to aim at him. I lined up right at his skull and let it fly. Nothing happened. "There was no way I missed, hopefully I stoned him." Wishful thinking. I pulled on the spear and all hell broke loose. I gave a slightly stronger pull as he made the polespear rattle in his full blown rage. Thinking that I should let him tire out a little I decided not to pull harder and headed to the surface. Connected to the spear was a short bungie and a 70 ft floatline attached to a homemade buoy. Looking back down I could see the spear rattling around, almost halfway into the coral. I wanted to put some pressure on him so I grabbed the line and tugged a little. To my utter disbelief, the spear gently slipped out of the coral. The tip was gone, all that remained was a long piece of spectra with some bloodstains on it. "Ok now you really need to not panic." It was the most gut-wrenching feeling but I kept some hope as he was definitely still in there. My buddy stayed over the spot while I went to get my other tip from the boat. Got back about a minute later and swapped them out. He dove down to check on the fish while I regained my breath from the swim to the boat. I saw him jump a foot when he peeked in the coral and thought that was odd. Turned out that a big moray decided to scare him. Turned out to be the most aggressive moray ever. Each time we checked a different hole in the coral he would pop out of it and scare us half to death. After an hour of trying to work around him we gave it up. There was no way around the moray. We even debated freeshafting it but neither of us had seen the grouper anyways when we did get the chance to look. No point in killing the eel too.
The thought of losing that fish is going to haunt me for years. Don't know if the knot securing the tip let go or if it frayed off in the coral but I was not too happy. Wasn't sure if I was asking too much of it with that big off a fish. Icing on the cake came later when I hit a second, much smaller black that took off into a crack, I pulled straight back on the spear and out it came with no fish, no spectra and no tip. What the hell was that about? I can understand (barely) that it didn't hold the big black :weeping:, but why did the system fail on the smaller one? Maybe it had some damage that I didn't see from some earlier trip. It had only taken a couple fish before but the first tip was brand spanking new (I decided to just buy a new one instead of sharpening my own tri-cut)
Anyways, it was a very bittersweet birthday for myself. I got my ass handed to me by a beast but also saw some awesome things, swam with a huge pod of dolphins in bluewater, and most importantly spent two days on the water with friends doing what I love. But damn I really wish I got that one grouper. Now I just hope he survived the whole ordeal so I can get him next time.