South Padre Island Pics

[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)