South Padre Island Pics

[jasondbaker]

Cool Shooter.  Feel free to stick a couple of those pictures up on the new gallery.

[Shooter]

Okay, Day three of the trip first  Scheduled boat dive.  Received the loran numbers from the unexplored shipwreck.  Made three or four passes over-the-top with the coordinates but were unable to locate the wreck.  Time for plan B. we headed to Pat's wreck which has a bottom depth of 140 feet.  Descending down the line in blue water, until you hit about 90 feet then it starts to get murky.  With the silty  bottom in South Texas, visibility on the bottom can be one to 2 feet.  At about 90 feet, the giant red snapper were circling, it was almost as if I was in a tornado of giant snapper.  There were so many targets, I had a hard time picking out one :o.  My gun was set up for Florida style free -shafting.  I also had a rock point tip on my spear.  I lined up on my first big snapper and let the shaft fly, a good shot with the shaft sticking behind  the eye, as the snapper went spiraling to the bottom,  I chased it.  It then veered into the wreck, threw the shaft and disappeared into the zero visibility on the bottom. :-[ fortunately I had anticipated this problem and had line with and ready for my next shaft.  On this dive, I only had one band on my gun.  I had taken a little bit a of cold decongestant medicine earlier.  And this was magnifying my slight narcosis.  I fumbled with reloading and shot at another monster snapper, only to have  Not enough penetration, and the shaft  pull out.  It turns out on big snapper, they recommend a tri cut, spear point, which is more like a broad head to cut through the heavy scales.  After repeating this scenario, two more times, and now down to 1200 pounds of air.  I decided it was time to go :'(.  I did not want to go back empty-handed.  I had already received a lot of ribbing about my different hunting techniques.... I was headed back to the line ready to ascend,  When another big one came by.  I had to chase it down approximately 20 feet before I could get a shot.  And unfortunately I had the same result, glancing at my air in frustration, I was shocked to see it had dropped down to 700 pounds.  I realized then I was cutting it way too close and started my ascent.  I had a four-minute safety stop at 70 feet, I stayed for two.  I figured if I was going to have to do an emergency ascent  I would rather do it from my safety stop at 20 feet.  I had a four-minute stop at 20 feet, I stayed for three and finished my dive with a whopping 50 pounds of air left in the cylinder. :-[

After a one-hour interval, and plenty of time to think over my poor choices.  It was time to go down again.  One of the other divers had shot a nice Warsaw grouper on his dive, and he told me the general vicinity of where he saw others.  I decided to go down to that spot at 130 feet,  Take a look and if I didn't see one head back up.  I got to the spot checked my computer had  10 minutes of bottom time.  No fish, I decided I would stay two more minutes and then start to ascend and hopefully pick up a big snapper on the way up.  Oh yeah, by the way, I added my other band to the gun on my surface interval.  I looked at the hole in the wreck one more time before I left, and that's when I saw him.  Killer instinct took over, and before I knew it he was twitching on the end of my line.  Not knowing what hit him.  If you look behind the eye in the picture,  You can see the hole that the shaft left.  I screamed triumphantly into my regulator and ascended up to 100 feet with a trail of green following me.(For those of you non-divers reading this, red blood looks green at depth).  At 100 feet I removed the shaft and put him on my stringer ;D ;D 8) 8)

[Shooter]

Day 4, a relatively shallow dive on the wreck of the deep six.  I was first in after they tied off to the wreck.  Was following close to the line noticing  a pretty strong current.  Visibility was only about 10 to 12 feet.  A good-sized snapper came by, and before I knew it, the tie off line was nowhere in sight.  So I drop down to the bottom and set my stringer down as a reference point.  Then a really nice trigger came by, so I let him have it.  There is quite a bit of small fish and bait fish in the area.  So I just leave him on the bottom quivering,  And reload with my spare shaft.  Now everybody wants to come over to see what Mr. trigger is doing on the bottom and a small feeding frenzy ensues 8).  This starts to bring in the shootable snapper from the outer edges.  I harvest my limit of red snapper, and with my poor judgment from the day before, decide to ascend with 1300 pounds, I am only in 60 to 70 feet of water, but I'm not sure of my exact location.  After a three-minute safety stop at 15 feet.  I look out of the water to see the boat.  Approximately 3 to 400 yards up current :o.  Evidently, I drifted a lot on my safety stop.  I could see people on the front of the boat.  So I hollered to get their attention and waved the yellow butt of my gun in the air.  I wanted them to know where I was before I started swimming.  And start swimming, I did, by the time I made it to the floating buoy line trailing behind the boat.  One of the employees had swam out to me with a rescue float.  I gave him the OK sign and kept Swimming.  I was glad I stretched out before the dive, and I had some good stiff strong fins on, and happy that my split fins were back in Minnesota in a closet somewhere 8)

[Shooter]

Some work I had done when the weather got bad. I had been working on the design for awhile. I will incorporate the design into my new logo for Sharkbait Technical Dive Safari's  :o