23 Nov, "Flounder Massacre at the Three Barges"

[mos11b1p]

We departed Sherman Cove in a 22 foot boat in 2-4 seas. (Ron's of "Ron and Phyllis." You would have met them at Denise's bday bbq bash.) The waves were HORRIBLE and every five minutes left us "resoaked" from head to foot.

Cmu captained the boat, located the wreck by GPS, gave the drop ancher command, and commenced her first spearfishing dive of her career. At the anchor, I tied off my speargun, secured the running end of my cave diving safety reel line, and led the search pattern for the wreck. Amazingly, cmu had put us within 75 feet of the wreck and we quickly located it and tied off. I gave cmu the "wait here" command hand signal and followed my safety reel line back to the anchor to retrieve my speargun.

The FOLLOWING basically "captures the tone/theme/spirit" of cmu's first sprearfishing dive. When I returned to the safety reel, speargun in hand, cmu proudly displayed her FIRST KILL, a nice flounder. (she would later report that she went to shoot it and it got up and swam away and she CHASED IT DOWN....took the shot, "stoned it dead" and swam back to the safety reel as though she had never left the spot I told her to "wait" at.

The photograph tells the rest of the story. As fast as I could get her flounders of the lil Hawian flapper tip and onto the stringer and get her gun locked and loaded for her again...she was off to bang another. We made two dives on the Three Barges site. The first one I burned up a set of AL80 DOUBLES and came back with 500 lbs. Cmu jumped only a SINGLE AL80 that was already down to 2500 psi before the start of the dive and came back with 500 psi. Our second dive was cut short by a severely leaking inflator hoze on my gear. I never saw the leak though. Cmu could not communicate the problem to me such that I understood so gave me the "Dive is over let's get the hell UP!" hand signal. I thought SHE had a problem! So I followed her closely to make sure I was "there for her." LoL I finally noticed the leak on our safety stop. By that point...air was literally POURING out of the failed connector. wow! lol

The picture tells final thousand words of our dive report....but let us summarize it THIS way: Three or four respectable flounders made for a WONDERFUL DINNER with cmu, myself, Ron and his wife Phyllis. THe OTHER 11 flounders were insignificant... (the size bugman shoots on the Whiskey Wreck.)

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Yeah, but flounders on the Whiskey are scaled in gold with bellies filled of the most perfect pearls you can imagine. They also contain the best meat on earth! Mysterious the Whiskey flounder are!


Great catch though! Looks like you gals had alot of fun! If you're going out specifically for flounder, take a pole, its far more effecient!

 

[Hetland]

Great job for a first trip. Looks like you guys had a good time despite the gear problem (possibly the curse of the Whiskey Wreck still rubbing off???

Now isn't that MUCH more fun than feeding cheeze whiz to goldfish and looking at rocks all dive long? You don't even need a 9 foot regulator hose to go spearfishing

And what was that part about reloading Cmu's gun for her???? How do you expect her to load that 52" Riffe (that she will want 2 seconds after spearing her first aj) by herself if she doesn't get any practice

 

[MRXRAY]

Great Report.....Makes me HUNGRY!!!!!

 

[mos11b1p]

Great catch though! Looks like you gals had alot of fun! If you're going out specifically for flounder, take a pole, its far more effecient!

I caught that "gals" comment, smart guy. Aint no "she-pee" valve in THIS man's drysuit. (Basically because this man doesn OWN a drysuit yet. )

For this trip, I selected from my quiver my 6 foot long shaft with three prong paralizer tip to load onto my 56" Riffe. From buttstock to tip of the three prongs is over 7' long. I quickly found that holding the gun by the butt stock and coming in over top of the the flounder and just "stickin' em" without pulling the trigger was most effective. However... at the beginning of our second dive...just coming to the end of the safety reel line where cmu and I had left our spearguns clipped at the bottom (left them there during our topside surface interval) I saw his beedy lil eyes lookin up at me. We must have floated right past him when we tied off on the first dive and floated back over top of him AGAIN on our way out...but this time...I spotted him. Cmu was behind me on the line and I scrambled forward, unclipped the lil blue "baby speargun", locked both bands and turned around directly facing cmu. I pointed straight down below us both and pulled the trigger.

Matt, it sure is fun to poke a pencil sized whole (causing little tissue damage at all)through a five pound flounder leaving him tied to the end of three feet of "shoe lace" and watch him go crazy! lol (It weighed 5 pounds exactly on the digital fishscale. Not quite a "door mat" sized flounder, but a proud take nevertheless.)

Just for the challenge I chased around a nice little grouper for most of the dive and finally got a kill shot on him. Have you ever dropped the hammer on a fish using a three prong paralizer tip? It is incredible. The tip obviously does NOT go "through" the fish...it can't... so what happens is ALL the kenetic energy in the shaft is transfered on impact to the target and just KNOCKS THE HELL out of the fish. I mean that fish doesn't know what hit it. I usually only use one band with it. It's enough.(unfortunately...the grouper was...well... a lil too small to be a keeper. who made up this 22" rule on Florida grouper anyway?? That is rediculous!)

For the record... cmu does a LOT of things "amazingly well" in the water...but loading a speargun rubber band will NOT be one of them any time soon. She is VERY HIGH MAINTENANCE in the water. She thinks all she has to do is point and shoot and hand it off to me. lol (just kidding cmu. ) We are thinking about geting her her very own underwater field hockey shaped fish club. She also confessed that "spearfishing is intensely task loading...you have really gotta be on your game with bouancy. No wonder you have such good bouancy in the cave, dave....it's from spearfishing." (Nice to know these Dixie Divin' Cave Cutties appreciate the FINER points of scuba diving...the points found on the ends of spearshafts... She had a RIOT! Even said "I'd rather do this over cave diving ANY DAY!!!" Lol

 

[mos11b1p]

oops.. pencile sized "hole" lmao.

 

[Hetland]

[/I]She had a RIOT! Even said "I'd rather do this over cave diving ANY DAY!!!" Lol

Har! I guess I can't tease her too much over the comment though, now that she has started her trek towards the dark side.

I remember the first time I shot a speargun I tried to reload it without touching anything (and maintaining a constant depth). It took about 15 minutes (no joke), but it taught me a valuable lesson about spearfishing and diving in general.

 

[cmufieldhockey8]

Mat, a pole spear definitely would have been good. I did enjoy the thrill of pulling a trigger however.

Why in the world would I want to string the fish and reload the gun when I can just give it to my buddy? :blinking: Actually for my very last shot I had loaded the gun allll by myself. That tubing is so tough! I do better with the finesse diving of the caves, not the brute strength required for spearfishing.

Hetland, you're either a caveman or you're not. We don't expect the rest of you to understand. :cool2:

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

I do both, but would rather be cave diving

 

[Missdirected]

Very good report. :yelclap: I've become seriously addicted to the spear-fishing. it has been a year this month that I have been killing fish and I can't get enough! I learned while diving in NewEngland you don't actually need to shoot or spear flounder at all. If you have the right bag, you simply tickle their tail and they will swim right into the bag. I was shocked to find this out but it is true.

Stas - I'm with you on pulling the trigger :cool2: fwiw - it use to take me a few to reload my gun but now I can do it in no time. Actually, I just put a quick-load on one of my guns and love it.