Posts by hank

Nice thread. Thanks for reviving it, Don. Some very nice looking custom guns.
I also have a guitar habit so if I get any more spearguns, my wife may make a big bonfire out of the whole mess.
The guns are mine and my son, jake's. We each have a small gun and a big gun.
The Riffes are a C3X and a Standard 5. I started with them but Jake took them over.
The Wongs are a 55 GR hybrid and a 63 super magnum.

The guitars....well....I like to assemble "Partsocasters". All are Warmoth hybrids. One real Fender. Also have a couple acoustics lying around.
Playing guitar, spearfishing and hanging with the family. Life in the country.

Yep, junp in the water rigged for snapper, and a kingfish comes by. Jump in rigged for wahoo and all you see are dog snappers and black grouper....it's tough.

What about a reef gun?
Half kidding. That's a nice setup. But if you're shooting around the reef you have to be quick and grab the floatline to keep the fish out of holes.

Quote

Still alive...

I've never seen one that "blackish" before, Roberto. More brownish color down here. Very nice.

Welcome Dylan. Looking forward to your pics and stories.

Quote from Roberto Reyes

Hank
Very hard to tell, somedays there are sooo many fish, other days no fish, so
its hard to figure out how bad is it.
but, some studies have revealed places were 30% of population is lion fish, imagine that.
Also, seen videos of lion fish eating until fish tails are out of his mouth, stomack streches 30%
while eating.
And of course, you kill them and their bellies always full,always hungry, is not hard to imagine the
worse in a few years.

Display More

Whoaa. 30% of the fish biomass is lionfish? They are gluttons. I had two in my aquarium when I lived in Iloilo, Philippines. I would feed them baby shrimp that I'd bring home from the hatchery. I couldn't believe how much they could eat.

I guess our only hope is that the local fish will learn, adapt and hide from the new predator.
If you dive in the Philippines, the reefs are packed with them too, but there are still lots of other fish....unless it's been dynamited.

Quote from Chuckd

Wong GR Hybrid, 3 bands(use 1 or 2 on reef), detachable reel and a few shafts rigged for breakaway.

+1 :thumbsup2: 55 GR hybrid (that's the gun in m profile pic)
That's what I use here as my "go to" gun. But I also use a 63 inch super magnum for my feeble attempts at blue water.
I used a Riffe C3X and a Baja Plus before my son "inherited" them.

Two fathers and sons. The guy on the right in the picture, is the father of the guy in the back of the console.
Hopefully this is our wahoo team. The other son likes to drive the boat.... so we can drift.
Andre, the other father is from Jamaica and is 71. An inspiration. He feels bad sometimes because "I can't do what I used to do". But he's always the first one in the water.

Wong.

If you dropped one of those camo guns on the reef, you'd never find it again. Nice.

I had big plans yesterday even though we'd kind of missed the days after the full moon. Going to Turneffe, the fishiest place I know in Belize to see if we could scare up another king or maybe even a wahoo. But, my two buddies showed up 2 hours late so that blew the morning session and it's 25 miles out so we kind of have to run home before the evening session gets going or I'll be coming home in the dark.
My son and I gave it a look though. We jumped in and drifted along outside the wall for about a quarter mile. I had a flasher and we saw lots of baitfish, which more than a few times darted down for cover but I didn't see anything.
Jake got bored and decided to go for the dog snappers that had come out to check us out a few times. We found a nice school of them right where the reef top slopes from 40 feet down to about 90. They were playing with us and dropping down deep. We just kept diving down, acting uninterested in them and a few would veer off and come to check us out. I watched Jake nail two of them while I was on the surface. Nice.
A school of permit would cruise by every now and then and these horse eye jacks too. They were more spooky than usual and I had to go down about 40 feet to get a shot.
I lost one dog snapper. I used my big gun with the slip tip on for wahoo. It must have edged the spine and pushed the slide ring hard into the electrical tape I use so it WON'T slide. But it did and I think the slip tip didn't open. I hit him good but he slipped right off.
The day glassed off in the afternoon. Beautiful conditions.

If you look in the background of that picture, you can see two refrigerators in my kitchen. I'm the only guy I know who has two...(.Old "Hank, two fridges, Bauman)I have 10 people in my house but the one on the left has one whole shelf full of bands and band material. My wife used to complain but with the loads of snappers coming home, she's backed off. haha.

This is a great site, Dan. Mellow, informative. Nice.

If it's cool to do, I'll just post my fish here every week....if I'm lucky enough to get any. And keep this thread going.
The best thing about these sites for me is when guys.....or ladies....post pics and tell the story. It's a great way to share the experience and to learn from the guys who are a lot more experienced than I am.

ONLY 9 years? If you're as humble about the fish you shoot as you are about your experience, I really look forward to your pictures and stories. Welcome.

It's the best LB. Watching as he hit that jack was really fun.
My youngest son, 1 year and 5 months, loves to climb up and look at all the fish on the boat when we come home. MY wife said she was at the store yesterday and people would ask him, "where is your daddy"? He would say "fish....fish". haha.

Finally got my son Jake (pictured) out of bed and into the water yesterday. He was trying his new reel for the first time.
We were only in the water for about 20 minutes and each got a yellow jack and the groupers that are in the picture. The jacks came cruising in and I was about 20 feet down. I shot one and then I saw Jake come down and watched him hit one. Cool.
Then I went up to one of my spots where we see a lot of ceros. Only one came by. That's the fish on the far left in the picture.
Went back to the channel where the current was now pretty strong with the incoming tide for one last pass. I looked in the "house" where a lot of fish hide but an 8 foot nurse shark had moved in. Still there was a nice dog snapper in there and then I saw a 20 lb + black bolt out the other side and into the channel. Shit....haha.
I drifted another 100 feet or so along the little wall and saw two nice dogs. Dove down and met the one in the current. Nice size. Good day.

Nice fish. Where did you get it?
I'm not asking your secret spot...just the area in Mexico.

I'm always looking for a buddy here LunkerBuster. Come on down.

Thanks Roberto. Are you seeing any decrease in fish numbers there since the lionfish came in?

Was hunting in a cut on Saturday. Bad vis but then the current picked up strong with the incoming tide, so it improved a bit. Had the boat dropping me off near the outside and would drift past two productive holes. In less than half hour I got two nice snappers like this one, and two black groupers. Also earlier in the day I got a nice cubera (9 lbs) there.
Two refrigerators. One is for spearbands and carrots...and fish.

Went south on Sunday and the vis still sucked. This spot is a bit deeper so it was dive and pray there would be fish. I saw a school of dog snappers but they would disappear like ghosts after I'd surface so I couldn't really stalk them. Then I went down to about 40 feet and here was this little cobia.
We're pretty sure she was an escapee from the cage farm A lot of the cages were broken up by the hurricane two weeks ago. The manager there is my buddy so he examined the stomach and it was empty, like the fish doesn't know what to eat int he wild being in tanks and cages its whole life. It also had a wound on the tail like something had tried to bite it.

Jorge did a scuba dive with his wife. This is what they found. They're here. Shit.