Pat wrote up a trip report:
Wayward and I and two friends planned to get out early Friday. At 6am Stu calls to say he is almost at my house then Adam, Flounder Pounder, calls to bail due to intestinal complications. The fourth guy was a no go since he was in Tampa when I talked to him last and didn't have tanks yet. I go to throw my gear in the truck before Stu pulls up and am alittle scared to see frost on everything, lows were supposed to be around 42 and I am 2 blocks from the beach. It is freakin cold as I chip ice off my windshield in my board shorts. We load up and head to the boat, I warn Stu about the Ice on the dock end up busting hard within 2 minutes. As I lie on my back on the frozen dock, aching, I ask myself again if this sport is worth it. We fire the engines and cast off, as I put the engines in gear the starboard one dies followed shortly by the port one. We are now resting very still in the center of the canal, out of reach of the docks or sandbar without a swim. We both kinda figure that water has frozen either in the lines or seperators...or somewhere but should be fine some time soon now that we are at least in the morning sun. After 10 minutes or so I am able to prime the bulbs again and off we go. The wind has a hard bite to it and it not out of the east or south at 5, like I was lead to believe. It is straight out of the north at 10, and my aching back tells me it is going to be a bad day. The wind dies though as we head out and the seas stay around 2' or so. We get to the span we plan on diving and can see the anchor line a looonnngg way down.
We suited up before leaving the dock, but decided to fish it for a few before diving to give the sun a chance to minimize the frost bite. The water was 62 according to the bottom machine. Stu catches a 3' sandbar shark pretty quick, which I divine means lots of fish to shoot on the bottom . We give up on the sun and decide to go for it before long. As we go down the line we are both amazed by the vis, which had to be around 60'. We are surrounded by fierce looking school of AJ puppies, which we ignore. Then we both head across the top of the span eyes scanning the wary gags on the bottom. At this point they can se us way better than we can see them. When I get to the end of the span I descend to the span and decide to try something I learned here on the board to bring them to me. I start stirring up the sand all around me with my hands until I am totally obscurred in a cloud of silt, hoping somebody will get curious. Sure enough as the cloud settles out a nice gag magically appears 5' away and I take an easy stone shot and string him up. I head alittle higher in the column and swim down the span again to see Stu defending himself from a rabid reef donkey. It ends with the slip tip toggled inside the gills so stu just strings it and clips it to the anchor line then starts doing the shovel nose relay race from span knuckle back to his stringer. I spot another gag in the sand and try my stalking technique. We normally have 15' vis here so my stalking technique is about the same as Mr. Bean as a secret agent and I end up loading the second band and stoning it from 20' instead of closing the gap. I grab a mangrove too as I return to the span and round out my dive with a shovelnose before we head up.
Niether one of us pulled the anchor free of the span so dive 2 was a back dive that was pure comedy. Stu looked for lobster but was denied while I managed to forget everthing I ever learned about spearfishing. I chased a gag that had a mohawk but lost him, niether Stu or I lost one so somebody else must have cut his fro. Then i chased a red grouper for a second before I realized I was in Fed waters. Next I poke a flounder twice but lost it because I depended on my flopper instead of getting below him. I finally got another instead and lost a freeshaft when I missed low on a hail mary at a gag in the sand and couldn't find it when i returned. I think Stu was laughing at me from the top span although he said he didn't see what I was doing. I was pretty cold and low on gas from all the chasing, note that I am not saying "stalking", so we pulled the anchor out of the span and headed for the boat.
