Thanks gentlemen. Ernesto passed by north of us. We just had some rain and light winds. I hope to get out tomorrow or Friday. After hurricanes pass us, the weather gets nice and calm.
Posts by hank
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I have a 10 and a 12 year old that I'm getting into spearing.
The 10 year old loves it but I have to restrict him. He uses a Riffe C3x or a Wong 55 hybrid. I was thinking of buying cheaper, shorter guns for them but.....haven't gotten around to it.
I've gone over gun safety with them many times and they're very good about not pointing it, even unloaded, at anyone, etc.
I put long 9/16 bands on the guns for them but Mo, 10, still can't cock it. I do it for him and swim with him. But one day he hit a yellow jack....maybe 7 lbs? and it pulled the gun right out of his hand. The drag was set too tight on the reel. Lucky we could follow the fish and get it back.
Then Tino shot at a big barracuda about 30 feet deep. The shaft stuck in the bottom a but and he just let go of the gun and swam up. I told, "what if you had hit and not stoned the fish? the gun would be gone over the wall".
Patience is required. You're baby sitting and not hard core spearfishing with boys that age.So, having rethought a lot of this, I do agree that a pole spear would be a better choice.
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NIce. Freak hog. I've never seen one that big down here.
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Nice Judah. Thanks.
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Here in Belize, spawning aggregations of cuberas happens at full moon and about 4-5 days after. The full moons of March thru May are when tourists come to see whale sharks feeding on the cubera eggs as they spawn. This happens just before and possibly after sunset.
And this is why I was out yesterday. There is another cubera spawn going on at one of my secret spots. <img src= " height="23" srcset="https://spearfishing.world/forum/images/smilies/emojione/1f606@2x.png 2x">
It will happen for the next couple full moons. I can go a week after and during new moon and the fish will be there but not in spawning mode and they'll be more spooky, harder to get......but not impossible. -
Well, yesterday was my birthday, AND the full moon but Jake and I both got some virus on the evening before and were puking and had the screaming shits. Both a bit dehydrated yesterday so had to hold off on the snapper quest until today. Jake was still vomiting a bit between dives. He's a maniac but was getting down on the snappers. He was tracking a 30-40 lb cubera and just as he was about to shoot, his gun hit a fan coral. haha. Anyway. I got a triple crown too...mutton, dog and 4 cuberas. And a nice cero. What a day. "snapper birthday".
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Cool story. I'd have expected to hear something like this first with a redneck and an alligator gar. I don't understand why the cuda let him get close enough to stab?
Maybe he'd tired himself out trying to get off that little sandbar covered with algae, or he was getting sick. He had a few spots on his side that looked almost like he was bitten by another fish. But I've seen those lesions on tilapia when we raised the salinity too high.
As a matter of fact, the salinity in our canal has been low due to recent rains. Maybe that weakened it a bit?I wish I had gotten it on video. I'm new to this iPhone shit and the damn thing was sitting in my truck, 15 feet away while we watched it all go down. Tino is stoked though. He's a "MAN" now. haha
This...I THINK it was this one....barracuda was becoming a bit of a legend here. A lot of the farm guys had said they'd seen a big one in the canal. And about a year ago, Jake saw a big one near the surface on the edge of the canal and poked at it with a piece of rebar. It actually came back and bit the rebar. Nasty temper. Maybe was this one.
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I think this fish grew up in our canal. He couldn't have passed through the pump if he was more than a fry in size. And we're 14 miles from the reef. No parrot fish or coral and algae eaters come into our canal. Sprats, grunts, a few small jacks. I think it should be ok. We got an 80 lb goliath out of the same place in the canal a couple years ago and no one got sick.
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This morning Jake, Mo, Tino and I were headed to the beach to try and catch some tiger shrimp fry with my newly constructed net.
As we were nearing the pump station for the farm, Cesar, the farm manager was pointing out into the supply canal. We thought he was saying "crocodile" but we threw rocks at it and it didn't move. Finally we saw the tail fin above the water. Here was this big barracuda stranded on the sand bar. After the pumps shut down, the water level in the canal drops pretty fast so I guess he got stranded.
Tino swam across the canal with a kitchen knife I keep in my truck and stabbed....or I should say, SPEARED it in the head....with a fricken kitchen knife? Ever hear of that before? haha
. It started jumping around so he sat on it and brained it. Jake jumped in and swam over to cut its gills. Blood literally squirted out like a small faucet. I'd never seen that but I've never cut one's gills out of the water like that.
We didn't weigh it but I'm guessing over 30 lbs.
Mo swam out first but he was hesitant to stab it. hah.
Mo and Tino's father's name was Matamoros, or Moor KIller in Spanish. We've changed it to Matabarro....
Country boys.....
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Dude george,
It is nice to take advantage of an invasive species.
We have the full facilities here at this shrimp farm to raise the shrimp to broodstock size and rear the larvae. I have 12 years of experience managing tiger shrimp hatcheries in the Philippines and Malaysia.They have been replaced by Pacific Whites as the preferred farmed shrimp. White shrimp carry a serious virus called Taura, but you can genetically select survivors and get virus resistant populations that won't die.
Monodon carries another nasty virus called White Spot but it's an RNA virus that you can't breed resistance to. Fortunately,, the ones here in the Caribbean came in from some clean stocks from Asia. Probably back in the early 80s.
I have three now. haha. Hopefully 2 females and 1 male. But I'll get more. -
In the Philippines we could get them from the wild. 2 to a pound.
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Penaeus monodon, or Tiger shrimp, endemic to SE Asia, and the Indian Ocean all the way to Madagascar and East Africa.
But these guys are now native to Belize. It's believed that they were introduced in the mid 1980s to a farm in Nicaragua. They have since spread to the Gulf of Mexico and are being caught in trawlers there. And as far south as Brazil. They seem to be healthy and clean of new disease as we're not seeing anything affecting our white shrimp in the same ponds.
One farm down near Big Creek caught the large one in the picture. The white shrimp is Penaeus vannamei, endemic to the Pacific coast from Mexico down to Peru. This is the shrimp that most farms are now producing world wide.
As you can see though, the tiger is about five times bigger. They grow up to 3 grams per week where the vannamei grow about 1.5 grams.
The other one is only about 3 grams in weight but we caught it in our ponds here. He's a recent entry to the farm probably due to the rainy season starting which results in plankton production, which the larvae need to feed on in the wild. We then sucked him into our pumps and into the farm.
Jake and I are in the process of making a Philippines style fry catching net, known affectionately as "bulldozers" in Iloilo where Jake was born, to catch the smaller tiger fry along our beach here.
We're hoping to catch 50-....500 or so and grow them to broodstock. This is pretty exciting for us because the value of big monodon (40 grams plus) is about three times what we sell 12 gram white shrimp for.
But all this damn research and development IS cutting into my water time and spearing.
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Very nice Marco. The fish.....
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Nice. I had a sailfish come right up to me a few weeks ago. No floatline or
bluewater rig, just my 55 and a reel. I just stared at it and watched it slowly swim away. Like this one, those are once in a lifetime meetins. unreal. Thanks -
Dan, he did shred my shooting line a bit. As soon as I saw him outside the house, I went down, grabbed him and sliced his gills right under his chin. He was already pretty weak and not struggling too hard.
I pulled him to the surface as my gun went down on the other side almost into the hole. I undid the pigtail, pulled up the shooting line and shaft and then grabbed the gun and reeled in the line on the other side. I had to put my arm through the gills and out the mouth of the fish to free up both hands. -
Went to one of my favorite cuts which had really clear water yesterday. Saw this nice black inside the House, a rock formation that has a large area underneath. I hit him and he bolted out the other side but got tangled with the shooting line around a rock. 35 lbs gutted. I swam back to the boat and Mo was looking the other way in the water. I grabbed his fin and pushed the fish into his face. Hah. He almost jumped up out of the water. He told me he thought it was a shark.
Went to another shallow spot and got the 8 lb snapper. NOt too big but I felt I accomplished more getting that one than the larger black. I saw him about 40 feet away and slowly stalked him. He was moving away and coming back. I would dive to the bottom and wait. Finally I was down and he couldn't resist. He came over the top of a coral spur and right down at me. Stoned him. Tino shot 4 small mangos too. He's getting good.
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Enlighten me on shark behavior. What would the shark have done it he jammed his spear point into it? Ran away from the discomfort or attacked? Thanks
I don't think there is a sure prediction of what a shark will do. I've poked a two foot Caribbean reef shark, which was like poking a sack of sand wrapped in baseball glove leather....and it swam off about 20 feet, turned and came right back. I've poked a 6 foot reef shark and it took off and didn't come back. Most times I would guess they'll leave but you never know for sure.
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My Wong 63 s magnum has been a lucky gun for me. I've hit some nice fish with it and am still working on cashing in my wahoo cherry.
And it has a "pussy tab" for us old farts, girls, kids and pussies. <img src= " height="23" srcset="https://spearfishing.world/forum/images/smilies/emojione/1f606@2x.png 2x"> so it's easy to cock. -
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Nice Judah. Looks like a fun day.
