07/13/2009 La Santa Fe - Quick outing

    Pantoja, a couple of friends not from the forum, and myself did a quick dive yesterday starting at 1pm ending at around 4pm. There was hardly any current and the seas were flat. There wasn't much fish but the diving was enjoyable. You could make out the bottom relief from the surface at 50ft but horizontal viz wasn't too good. There was lots of particulate in the water which added a distortion effect.


    Pantoja managed a small cobia and a few hogs and I got some misc fish. A noteworthy story is the cobia. I was in midwater just starting my dive when I heard a shot. The next thing I saw was a huge ray swimming by with a shaft stuck in its wing. I didn't understand but the next moment I saw the cobia which was further up on the mono. The ray was cruising slowly and I was very close above it. I could see the shaft clearly, it was about 6" in from the edge of the left wing. I had this crazy idea of shooting at the same spot to free the shaft. Of course that made no sense so I dropped my gun and grabbed the shooting line from Pantoja's gun. I started pulling on it backwards as hard as I could. The ray then picked up speed and due to our combined efforts and the shaft being in the thin part of the wing it tore off. Later Pantoja told me that the cobia was right above the ray and he was timing the shot for the ray to have its wings on the downstroke. Then just as he shot the ray flicked up its wings.


    Awesome story, I did that aswell in Key Largo except the cobia was under the ray and exposed on the upstroke. I timed it very well since it was under a spotted eagle ray.


    Should have kept the ray, I read they taste like fried shrimp.

    Davie Peguero

    is it legal though ? if it was legal I woul have shot the ray insyead ,it was quite big. I cuba i shot them all the time . I told dan how I used to do it and he told me it was crazy . then he told me it would be a great story for the forum , but I didn't like the idea cause in the other forum they even called me names for the thing i said . i think I'll talk about it later since i don't really feel any pressure here. i feel amongst friends. davie, they do taste great and it's all meet in the wings , no bones. it's really good. a pain in the butt to clean sometimes though. but the best part of the day is that we fixed the boat and we cleaned the bottom to , so we are ready to go . maybe it'll bring about a couple more stories for the summer .

    I put this together quickly: Spearing rays regulations. Looks like some rays can be speared in Florida.


    The one that Pantoja shot by accident was a huge southern stingray. I looked for a picture of one and found this. Funny how that's exactly what the ray would look like after our incident.



    I also saw a big manta ray yesterday.

    Sergio, it is legal. I emailed fwc that question last year. I'll post there reply when I can.


    As long as it's not a spotted Ray or manta you can shoot them.


    How big do they have to be to be able to get a good sized of usable meat? From my understanding only the wings can be ate?


    Good fishing. Good to see you back in the water.

    well here i go . what i did back in cuba was to shoot them , any kind, they have a lot of flesh and no bones , so it was always welcome. I snever sold it , my buddy did sell it a couple of times but i always gave it away as wwell as sharks to friends or neighbours who didn't have the money to buy any fish. well , the procedure was as follows: it's kind of hard to fing the kill shot but still , there's a spot right on top of the head , but making a triangle behind the eyes that works just fine . the thing is that it has to be still on the bottom to hit that spot and 40 percent or less of the times you don't get it. so what i would do is to use my gun loader to help me gain controll of it. when it has a shaft stuck in it it goes crazy trying to get you with the stings (when they are big they have more than one , even 5 or 6 ) so i had my buddy hold it at about 15 ft or so and then with my gun loader in the hand ( it was just a piece of cloth) i'll swimm around until I grabbed the tip of the tail and then the stings with the cloth , I hold it real tight and then twist around as fast as i could ro tear them off . once they don't have the stings they are helpless , so ............knife with them right in the water , the things is that they are to big to carry whole so , we just cut the wings ant that was it. the other method was to grab the tip of the tail with the cloth and then pull it to me , but having a knife to cut the stings out . I did this with the spotted eagle ray 'cause they have a loooong tail. remember that in cuba it's legal all around so , i didn't do anything wrong.

    Well, you told me this before. I think that it's daring and risky to grab the very part of the fish that can hurt you, but that is the part you need to bring under control. I wouldn't want you to end up like Steve Irwin. Is it feasible to shoot it again in the tail and try to break it? Or at least stretch the tail by pulling on the line so it has less maneuverability?

    sure , but is it going to stay still so gst to shoot it there? it's just like a cuda, just got to be carefull . actually , now we got a boat , so it'll be easy to just pull it to the side of the boat and work from there.

    I'm willing to try to take one once and see what the yield is. I just don't like killing a big animal that has little yield. I know you told me it has great yield but I just have to see it. I shot those little rays in Cuba (do you know the species?) a couple of times and it wasn't worth it. They also had babies inside them both times. What I would like to shoot is shark :)

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