We take several diving trips to the Bahamas on my boat (24 ft 1/0) every summer. Dinner comes from our slings and maybe a few more on the last day to take home with us. Mostly we sight see, often going to more and more out of the way places, hoping to find those unspoiled places, never get enough. On the last trip, we got seriously into the fish only once, but it was really good. Here’s the story.
I jumped in the water with Frank, my 19 year old son, 40 ft depth, 90 foot vis, nice reef, shoot a hogfish for dinner and then another to make sure. No sharks yet, which was unusual for that area. Should I get another?? As I get back in the water, I hear Frank say “Here they come!” Oh well, we didn’t need another fish anyway. The sharks were not aggressive and there were a lot of fish around, so we stayed to play. Several hogs, lots of chubs and other reef fish, many dog snapper, big dog snapper, up to maybe 60 pounds. I didn’t know they got that big. A real neat spot.
Then a 20 pound black grouper showed up, then another, then a 30 pounder, and a 40, and a 60 pounder, biggest black I’ve seen in several years, all milling around under us, more and more fish showing up. They were too spooky for us to get within 15 or 20 feet , but we began to see where they were coming from and slowly worked our way, with the fish, in that direction. A hundred yards or so, 50 ft depth, big coral head, 10-15 ft high. Huge numbers of fish swirling around, big schools of grunts, goat fish, chubs, various snappers, plus all the big snapper and grouper. There must have been a thousand fish in sight, all in motion. It was wild. This was clearly grouper home. As they got closer to home, and maybe got used to us, we started to get closer. We got within touching distance of a couple of twenty pounders and easy spearing range of the 30 and 40 pounder. The 60 was too spooky. I guess that’s how he got that big. We played for an hour or two, feeling very lucky and very privileged to be there.
I’ve seen places like this before, but it has been a long time. We’ll be back in a couple of years; I hope they will still be there.
Connor
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July 15th, 2005
