PvilleStang
Contributor
5 of us went out on the Orion last Friday to go visit some of the rigs. The first one we hit was about 28 miles off shore beyond Double Yellow. The bottom was at 180, and had probably the best fishlife for spear fishing, but definitely looked like the commercial snapper boat had just been by. I managed to spear about a 30" jack, and the only other luck of the trip came to Capt. Steve who reeled in a baracuda, a small ling, and a small red snapper. Viz on that rig was easily 150'. We pulled up and went in towards shore a hair to a slightly shallower rig, who's floor was at about 160'. There, there was no large fish to consider shooting. The only large fish that was here was a resident of the rig. He (or she) was a nice 300+ lb Jew Fish (part of the grouper family) that just hung around 110' and swam around the working pipes. Next we moved in slightly more (still beyond double yellow) and tied into a rig with a 140' floor. This one had a nice shark swimming around, which has been giving us trouble. The gills had the typical 4 slits, but the nose was not really that much in front of his mouth. I think we came up with the conclusion it looked most like a Silky shark (it was not a ling since its gills matched the pattern of a shark). He was swimming around 100' and had some nice sized fish following it. There were some nice sized jack, (maybe 45-50 lbs) swimming around off the rig, but I didn't bother to bring my gun, and I'm glad I didn't since I had more fun following the shark around. The viz here dropped to 80-90 feet or so, and got down to maybe 20 foot around the bottom near the muck layer. Other than that, it was a beautiful day to be on the water. We had showers on the way out, but everything cleared up, 1' seas, and sunny the rest of the day.
