MRXRAY
Contributor
Met Recharge and Brandon for a 7:00AM departure from Shoreline state park after what looked like a canceled trip for a while. We hit the boat ramp at about 7:AM where Hetland was waiting and the four of us loaded gear and headed out. There was a light to medium chop on the bay but we made good time and found the pass fairly nice and the Gulf had only small rollers. We made good time and we were at the Tug Born again before we knew it. Brandon and I were to splash first as this was Brandon's first deep dive (100 feet) so we took our time and talked a lot about the site and the dive before we splashed. The object of the dive was to shoot lots of fish and at the last minute I decided to leave the camera behind as I was going to try to recover an anchor that we had found on the wreck the weekend prior to the dive when Hetland I I dove it...... Again, I can't win with these decisions, although it was definitely the right one!
We splashed at 09:00 AM and into a ripping surface current, and low surface visibility with lots of hanging particulate to about 30 feet where the current stopped and the viz increased significantly. We made our way down the anchor line to find the anchor had drug a bit and we ended up swimming about 40 yards to the wreck. We made good time and were on the wreck about 4 minutes after splash. Viz opened up to about 35 feet, not what we had the weekend prior but very nice. I showed a temp of 74* at the bottom, and I was very comfortable in my .5mm. Depth at the top of the wreck is at about 90 feet and we discussed staying out of the sand so we moved toward the ship and above it at about 85 feet. As we neared the bow I could see a ton of fish on it but mainly smaller snapper in the 8-15" range. Brandon took a shot at a smaller fish on the bow of the boat so I moved aft a bit to have a look.....Bam! Nice big snapper came out of the hold and turned to check me out. I'm guessing the last thought he had was...Look at the shiny thing coming at me at 100 mph!.... Nice Fish on the stringer! As Brandon was looking around for another lunker I switched gears to recover the anchor that Recharge wanted for his boat. I got my lift bag all set up and started exhausting air in to the bag.....Hmmmmm not a lot of progress.....Ok lets try a little purge action......Hmmmmm this bag is bigger than I thought.....Hmmmm, where is all the air? Not in the lift bag. Crap! The Bag was broke so no anchor was going to be recovered on this dive! So, I went back to see how Brandon was doing, he indicated he only had about 1300 pounds and although I still had over 2000 lbs I thumbed the dive and we started back toward the bow of the wreck, on the way Brandon shot a nice Snapper and I had it on my stringer in no time and we continued on our way toward the anchor. Now we see the Bull Shark, I saw it slide in first and Brandon yelled to get my attention to it just a short time later..... I thought Crap, not again! I can see the anchor slide mark in the sand and we start down the runway slowly inching our way up as we go but before we can see the line we loose visual with the bottom, but not the shark. So our attention now turns toward this 8' Bull Shark circling around us in ever clouding water and we move in close together to make our profile bigger in the water......50 feet! We slow our ascent for our deep stop but Brandon signals me that he is down to about 800 lbs of air and he is breathing heavy as the shark comes in close for a look, I'll tell you that I was about hyperventilating at this point as well. Out deep stop is short lived as we slowly move through 40 feet. Now the viz has dropped so were playing ballerina in the water looking for our friends return but after a couple of close passes none of which I could get my gun close enough to poke he left and didn't return. We did get a nice view of the business end of him as he made one approach and smiled at us! Damn..... Another Kodak moment missed! Stupid camera was 30 feet above me now! So we did our long ass 3 minute safety stop with viz at about 5-10 feet and then hit the surface and waited to be picked up as the surface current had snagged us and pulled us down current about 50 yards. Brandon did great and was happy as can be that we had no issues and we got to see a shark! Me on the other hand I was ready to get the fish out of the water with me right behind them!
Once back on board we talked about the dive and Hetland and Recharge decided to splash here again since we had left some quality snapper below and Hetland was hoping for some Shark video! About 20 minutes later they returned with neither. Apparently something has spooked the fish off the wreck, but Recharge was able to salvage his anchor and sent it up right next to the boat! Nice job!
More to come!
We splashed at 09:00 AM and into a ripping surface current, and low surface visibility with lots of hanging particulate to about 30 feet where the current stopped and the viz increased significantly. We made our way down the anchor line to find the anchor had drug a bit and we ended up swimming about 40 yards to the wreck. We made good time and were on the wreck about 4 minutes after splash. Viz opened up to about 35 feet, not what we had the weekend prior but very nice. I showed a temp of 74* at the bottom, and I was very comfortable in my .5mm. Depth at the top of the wreck is at about 90 feet and we discussed staying out of the sand so we moved toward the ship and above it at about 85 feet. As we neared the bow I could see a ton of fish on it but mainly smaller snapper in the 8-15" range. Brandon took a shot at a smaller fish on the bow of the boat so I moved aft a bit to have a look.....Bam! Nice big snapper came out of the hold and turned to check me out. I'm guessing the last thought he had was...Look at the shiny thing coming at me at 100 mph!.... Nice Fish on the stringer! As Brandon was looking around for another lunker I switched gears to recover the anchor that Recharge wanted for his boat. I got my lift bag all set up and started exhausting air in to the bag.....Hmmmmm not a lot of progress.....Ok lets try a little purge action......Hmmmmm this bag is bigger than I thought.....Hmmmm, where is all the air? Not in the lift bag. Crap! The Bag was broke so no anchor was going to be recovered on this dive! So, I went back to see how Brandon was doing, he indicated he only had about 1300 pounds and although I still had over 2000 lbs I thumbed the dive and we started back toward the bow of the wreck, on the way Brandon shot a nice Snapper and I had it on my stringer in no time and we continued on our way toward the anchor. Now we see the Bull Shark, I saw it slide in first and Brandon yelled to get my attention to it just a short time later..... I thought Crap, not again! I can see the anchor slide mark in the sand and we start down the runway slowly inching our way up as we go but before we can see the line we loose visual with the bottom, but not the shark. So our attention now turns toward this 8' Bull Shark circling around us in ever clouding water and we move in close together to make our profile bigger in the water......50 feet! We slow our ascent for our deep stop but Brandon signals me that he is down to about 800 lbs of air and he is breathing heavy as the shark comes in close for a look, I'll tell you that I was about hyperventilating at this point as well. Out deep stop is short lived as we slowly move through 40 feet. Now the viz has dropped so were playing ballerina in the water looking for our friends return but after a couple of close passes none of which I could get my gun close enough to poke he left and didn't return. We did get a nice view of the business end of him as he made one approach and smiled at us! Damn..... Another Kodak moment missed! Stupid camera was 30 feet above me now! So we did our long ass 3 minute safety stop with viz at about 5-10 feet and then hit the surface and waited to be picked up as the surface current had snagged us and pulled us down current about 50 yards. Brandon did great and was happy as can be that we had no issues and we got to see a shark! Me on the other hand I was ready to get the fish out of the water with me right behind them!
Once back on board we talked about the dive and Hetland and Recharge decided to splash here again since we had left some quality snapper below and Hetland was hoping for some Shark video! About 20 minutes later they returned with neither. Apparently something has spooked the fish off the wreck, but Recharge was able to salvage his anchor and sent it up right next to the boat! Nice job!
More to come!
