Venice Report Sunday 6/27

[Fish Steeler]

Myself, Griswold, LSUnate, and Gris's non diving bud Ray, made it out of SE pass in Venice this Sunday. The seas, as usual weren’t as predicted, but were manageable in the 22'fter. We made our first dive on SP60D. The water was brown on top, murk to 30 feet and not much light after that.

Gris and I made the first drop in the 3knot current. The rig we were on was a double, basically two rigs attached by cat walks above. The swift current was running between the two rigs. As we descended through the current we lost each other, to be honest I totally lost the rig messing with my gun. I resurfaced at the down current rig and wound up diving solo.

I was immediately surrounded by AJ's at 40ft. I pulled the trigger on the biggest one I saw. It was probably the best shot I've made on an AJ in my short spear fishing career. I put the shaft right where I thought it belonged (confirmed by Gris on the boat). We'll as has been my experience with shooting AJ's. I just pissed him off. So I rapped him on the rig and let him dance for a while. After watching him fly around like a kite for 10 minutes I cut his throat. Not seeing anything else but AJ's, I was done.

I resurfaced about 40 yards down current from the boat. The boat was tied in on the up current rig. I tried to hump my 75#'s of gear (tech BC w/ pony bottle) and the 40# fish against the current for about 5 minutes and that’s all I could take. I grabbed the closest rig leg to me and called for Gris, already back on the boat, to send me a line. You know we just met that day, and he was nice enough to pull me all the way back!

I get on the boat to find Gris with the biggest AJ I've ever seen in person. I've seen a picture of a bigger one on this forum but this one was a monster to me. We tried to weigh him with a 50# scale and it broke before the fish was halfway off the deck.

The rest of the dives were all the same, AJ everywhere. I did take a shot at a nice grouper that had spotted me and impaled my shaft into the rig…I should have led him. I will not post a picture of my AJ since I am posting a pic of Griswold's! I'll let him tell his story...



P.S. It was good meeting Rock Bottom and some of the other Hell Divers. Thanks for the boat parking spot!

[Griswold]

As Fish Steeler said, the current and murk were pretty nasty on top. We started down the rig leg together and busted through the nasty stuff at about 30 feet. I looked inside the rig while he was loading his gun and saw the biggest trigger fish I have ever seen. I hadn’t planned to hunt triggers, but I decided that I’d save a future diver’s ear and take this one out. It turned out to weigh 6-ll. When I looked around after stringing the trigger (through the mouth) and reloading the gun, Fish-Steeler was not there, but lots of big AJ’s were.

I setup with a cross member between me and the fish and waited for one to come to me. It didn’t take long for one that looked a little bigger than the rest to give me a shot. In a split second he pulled me halfway across the beam – not what I had planned. I managed to get him tied off to the beam and waited a while before trying to get a grip on him. Should have waited a while longer – I took a good beating on my first attempt. Finally got may hand on its throat and reached for my knife. It was gone. I was only 40 feet down and directly under the boat, so I left the AJ tied off and went back to the boat for another knife, did the patented FredT throat cut and it was over.

Since between the two of us, we had only seen 20 square feet of the rig we had intended to dive, I decided to back dive the rig and believe it or not, found my knife sitting on top of the beam that the AJ had pulled me across.

I dove Saturday with Rock Bottom and Sunday with Fish Steeler. Nasty currents, thick murk, equipment problems, missed opportunities on big fish, terrible vis, great vis, calm seas and blue skies, thunderstorms and rough seas, personal best trigger and AJ, new friends and memories for a lifetime. Yea, I’d say it was a pretty good weekend.

Momma and the kids are gone until after the 4th. Anyone have room on their boat next weekend?

[Wet Spot]

Nice AJ!

[LSUBigL]

Man that's a monster AJ! Awesome! My brother was really pumped about shooting his AJ, and he's got me all juiced up to go! Glad y'all were able to have a good time. I look forward to meeting y'all in the future.