SPEARBOARD OPEN 2007

[Shooter]

May 18-20



Last year I placed 72 out of almost 300!

Can't wait to see where the chips fall this year! Hopefully we will be having grilled grouper at Smith's open house!

[Shooter]

  Well the chips fell, not exactly where I had hoped . It all started with the weather. The boat that I am usually on cancelled due to high seas. You don't want to be 75 miles offshore in 5-7' seas.
   My buddy and captain of the boat was in the keys fishing dolphin when I arrived. We formulated a new dive plan for the open. I drove my rental to his house and loaded 12 steel 120 tanks, all his dive gear, and all my dive gear into to the car :o. (Another reason to never buy a rental ;D)I had to go to fort myers and letter a boat than continued south to long key.

On to Key West for fri scout, and sat open tournement.Dove the wreck of the caymen salvager on fri. ,and a private wreck at 180 on sat first drop. The wreck at 180 will be elaborated on in great detail at airport tom. Not many pics as my camara crapped out again. must be the humidity. Also met a 15' hammerhead on a reef dive! this thing was massive! If I stretched my arms as wide as I could I would have been able to touch both eyes! There should have been an airhorn blowing when this monster came into view. It appeared bigger than a semi! So then I shot it and killed it :o ;D. NO, JUST KIDDING!Just poking a little fun at the huggers ;D. It was a beautiful fish 8) and since I started eating grouper, I really don't care for lemon and garlic marinated shark steak anymore : We saw each other at the same time and appeared to be equally scared! he had his nose to the ground and was following my blood trail. He was probably startled by my cartoon like eyes bulging out of my mask :o

[Shooter]

First dive of the day is the U. SS curb at 185 feet to the sand.  Â  It takes us a couple at times to anchor up on the wreck.  The last time, the captain of the boatdove this wreck, He encountered a large tiger shark :o.  So tensions are running a little high, plus for me,  It will be my deepest logged dive to date.  The other two more experienced divers drop down the line like anchors to the top part of the wreck at about 150' by the time I reach the bottom.(Maybe three minutes)  They both have fish on and strung up.  The rest of the fish are now noticeably spooked.  I see a huge school of giant mutton snapper, or at least what I thought was mutton snapper.  So I put a shaft in one as I'm stringing up this fish.  I see what we dove to these depths for about a 40 pound grouper. by the time I am done fumbling with stringing up the fish and reloading(Narcosis bells are ringing in the background and my fingers feel very thick).  I pursue him off the top of the wreck and down to the sand.  It turns out, he hasn't gotten to be 40 pounds by being a stupid fish.  And even though he has a pea sized brain , his survival skills and knowledge of the wreck are far superior to mine.  He disappears around the corner as the bells start to get louder.  I check my air and realize it's time to go, but I spot another large snapper,  As I start to ascend and take the shot.  At this point I am still on the sand @ 180 feet with the wreck overhead.  There are entanglement hazards everywhere, and I managed to find one with my shaft.  I also know it's time to go, but instead of calmly reaching for my knife and cutting my way out.  I somewhat panic and start pulling on my gun to get untangle this only lasted for less than 10 seconds, but it seemed like 10 minutes.  Fortunately, the surge of adrenaline, managed to snap the fishing line.  so I made my way to the anchor line.  I was very upset at this point and breathing rapidly probably adding to my narcosis.  I finally managed to calm myself down and start the long slow ascent.  Unfortunately, when I left the bottom to get to the anchor line I violated my ascent speed and my computer wanted me to stop for five minutes.  Since I have an air integrated computer.  You would think it would realize that I couldn't afford to stay there that long and still make my safety stops.  Nice and slow the rest of the way up with about a 12 minutes stop at 20 feet.  Lot of time during that 12 minutes to think about a lot of things.  I decided not to make any more dives to that depth today.  I got on the boat and hit the O2 for about three to five minutes as a precaution. The other guys managed multiple fish on their next to dives and put them in very good standings for the tournament.  I however had a very good learning experience and survived to compete another day :.  I dropped 30 points from last year to place somewhere around 100.  Overall had a lot a great dives and seeing that hammerhead was probably the highlight of the trip.

[LKunze]

Shooter, you should change your screen name to Grouper! 

[MAXFACTOR]

Shooter, 
Thanks for the cool letter and description of your dive.  The easily identifiable (one problem with spear fishing), as I've been able to determine, is.... any combination of Narcosis; the thrill of the hunt, the gas supply; and depth;  could make you or put you into situations  when your swimming after the fish,  and getting closer and closer,  but not close enough for the shot, is that you end up  off in distances, or down at depths or start to exhaust gas supply ....that you didn't intend to go to.  SO,, you know me......    BE  CAREFUL....  because we need you here.

Keep sending me that grouper.  I still want to do that book thing with you! 
MAXFACTOR

[Shooter]

Getting lost is always a problem for me when I am spearing ??? I tend to get so focused on the fish and stalking it that I lose track of the jug line. It is somewhat disheartening when I am free drifting on safety stops...... Especially with a stringer of bloody fish chumming the water :o

The thrill of the hunt is also a big one. When your heart starts pounding out of your chest from seeing a trophy or having a shark come in aggressive it is hard to control your breathing. But then again it wouldn't be nearly as much fun ;D

Book thing?  ??? Shooter no read books ???