Dejavu

[bluh2o]

My mother taught me not everything is learned, that we're born with a temperament. As a boy I hunted. I caught tadpoles, frogs, snakes and Lizards. I walked with my eyes down looking for things to catch, treasures to find. I go diving off the reef I go to get away from the island loop, the road, the phone and the demands of human life. I go to the ocean to be minutes away from home but beyond contact from anyone. Part of the food chain. From urban life to wilderness in a few kicks from shore.
A while back I called two separate dive buddies on a morning made for diving and both were busy. They say don't dive alone. If you'd as soon swim as walk and if near shore waters are more familiar than inland mountains or city streets, which is less dangerous? So I went to a place I go. I could tell you where but then I'd have to…. dress you in an Obama for President T-shirt and drop you into the only saloon in Wasilla, Alaska. But I can describe it to you.
Coral grows away from the island shoreline putting up a barricade against the surf. Waves wash over it toward the beach. The escaping water carves a channel over time, usually near the source of a fresh water stream where coral growth is poor. Currents inside the reef pull toward the channel as tidewater drains. Bits of seaweed, bodies of sea animals, and other organic matter swirl off the reef and are pushed through the channel into the deeper ocean in a mushroom cloud of food-source. The larger the reef, the deeper the channel and the higher the concentration of nutrient rich channel wash that blooms out into the blue. With a little imagination you can begin to get a picture of what that cloud of deliciously stinky nutrients means to the larger fish passing by outside in the deeper water.
I like to dive a particular channel near home when there's a moderate current pulling through. Large fish stalk their prey better if they can hover in a current without much effort. With a slack tide all you see in a channel are relaxed Kumu (goat fish) swimming in full color up off the bottom, Kole out in the middle away from the rocks, Weke crossing without a care. Signs like this tell me larger predators are elsewhere.
Some days when the conditions are right it seems like someone shook all the images off a big fish card right into the water in front of me. It's like a parade! Kaku, Turtle, Ulua, Shark, Ray, and more all in the same mask view. But back to the fish story….. It's a bit long, got to go check the water. I'll post again tomorrow.

 

[cdavis]

Oh, you dirty dog. How could you keep us waiting!

Connor

 

[apneaboy]

I'm sure i've read this story somewhere before anyway??

 

[bluh2o]

Maybe someone new hasn't read it?
Now where was I?
That day in October when I couldn't find a dive partner I left the beach and entered the water carefully. Fish spook each other in a chain reaction from the sand all the way out to the deep. Drifting out as if moved by the tide, imperceptibly slow yet unstoppable. I took precautions to get to my underwater hangout without spooking anything. I skirted the deep water, swimming out over the shallow reef that borders it. The channel walls that drop vertically from sea level to depths of 40 feet are rough and full of cracks and caves. My "fish'in hole" is at the bottom of a tunnel through the coral that runs from the top of the reef diagonally down and opens up in the bottom of the channel wall.
Most big channels have features like this. By swimming into caves and holes along the top of the reef it's possible to sneak down below without being noticed.
At the top of the tunnel that morning there were fish swimming about which normally would be deep below in the dark. Taape', Aweoweo, and Aholehole. This day they were exactly where I would be if there were predators down below.
I inhaled and slipped down through the tunnel until it opened out on the bottom then stopped with my back to the wall facing out into the moving channel. There, settled down on the rock bottom in the shadows I play like "Nohu", the scorpion fish. The ambush predator who lays still and hidden.
The first look out into the greater channel area is the most exciting. Any fish could be there depending on the conditions. Old timers have told me of throw netting 90 pound Koshibi (Yellow fin Tuna) that had chased Opelu into shallow water and of a 14" tiger shark who got himself so far up the channel he could barely turn around.
On this morning it was feeding time. Several kinds of Ulua were feeding. There were packs of small silvers, yellow dot , and Omilu hanging under shady overhangs or darting about. A Kaku (Barracuda) hovered, Mu moved near the bottom cautiously. I watched as long as I could then gently pushed away from my perch, turned around and surfaced.
On top I took off my mask and looked around at the view. The landscape looked more colorful than before. I think it's because red colors underwater are blocked and after diving in greens and blues the contrasts intensify. The world gets brighter. As far as I was concerned I'd found what I wanted, I was away from work, the fish were home and I'd gotten there without scaring them all away.
I considered taking a fish. The summer barbecues had been filled with Omilu and mu. But winter was coming and when the surf picks up it usually means chicken instead of fish for our table. I resolved that if the right Ulua presented itself I'd attempt to take it. It being early in the day, I had the time and the energy to deal with getting it back up the hill to the car and dressing it out on my lawn when I got home.
Evidence that it was an unusually good day for game persisted. Normally my presence for more than one or two dives scares away all the timid Taape'' and Wechy. But this morning they were quite stubborn in their resolve to stay up in the shallows with me and out of the deep water. I sat on a rock with my head out of the water absorbing the visions of reflected clouds and emerald cliffs off the slow wobble of the water. Rain began to fall in advance of it's shadow adding a shiny grainy texture to the scene.
and then.....

 

[bluh2o]

Sorry, got distracted by a little election, here's the rest.

Clouds are a bonus for any hunter. Shadows and darkness down below hide reflective shifting eyes that might give away a good hiding place.
Rested then and taking advantage of that passing squall, I breathed in gently and swam back down. I tucked myself under a dark overhang at the bottom and relaxed.
I have to think about some muscle groups in order to get them to loosen up. "Lower back" and it loosens, "neck and shoulders" and it loosens. Loosening all those muscles means they'll all require less oxygen which adds more bottom time.
I was lying on the bottom hiding under that ledge and being distracted by ridiculous thoughts. I was spacing out on why a guy at work was so obsessed by a band like the Grateful Dead or some such thing. I guess running through those thoughts are part of that process of relaxing. Anyway, as I was going over something stupid like that a massive Ulua glided from right to left across my field of vision. My entire field of vision. The fish was cruising the holes and bumps on the channel wall, almost reading it like braille. It passed inches from my mask.
The big silver fish had black and grey mottling as if to mimic the last cloudy change in weather. It moved slowly past and was flanked by a slightly smaller partner, just under a hundred pounds. They angled off into the jade colored channel water away from the wall, banked in a curve to the right with the current and came back around. The larger one came up under the first overhang with it's nose into the current. It held a position there where a Cleaner Wrasse stations itself to detail the gums, teeth and gills of giant silver Ulua.
At the same time the smaller fish angled below it's partner and came toward me. I wasn't sure if I was being viewed as food or as a curiosity. At a range of two or three feet the big frown an Ulua is born with can be a little intimidating. The huge eyeballs move and the scrapes on the lips gotten from rooting lobster or Octopus out of the sharp coral show up very clearly. As this Ulua didn't seem like it was going to stop I lost my nerve and moved. I gently lifted my spear horizontally in front of my face to have something besides my nose be the first thing the fish's frown bumped into. I was astonished when it stopped at the speargun, opened it's huge mouth and gently clamped the shaft in it's mouth! It moved it's head from left to right, scraping up and down the guns shaft as if to feel it and find out what it was. Given a little shove, the fish backed off and turned out into the open water. By then I was out of breath and carefully turned back to the surface.
Back on top with my heart beating faster than I'd prefer I decided to try for the larger fish. I rested and inspected the spear before going back under. It's a small gun for such a large fish, a Riffe Standard Arbolette with three bands, a reel with 120 feet of heavy stainless steel cable and a heavy spring stainless shaft with an Ice pick tip spliced on. It was in poor shape from a summer of diving and being put away salty. The shaft had been bent like a paper clip a few times and straightened again by tweaking this way and that. But the tip was perfect.
I got a good breath and inched down to my perch. The two Ulua were still there, the big one in the shade of the overhang with it's huge mouth open letting the cleaner wrasse work and it's partner milling around up stream so that all I could see was it's tail headed away. I just lay there and relaxed, hiding most of my body behind me. My spear lay in front in position so that if the Ulua presented itself all I had to do was lift the tip of the spear off the sand, aim and shoot. I lay there relaxing the muscles one by one until nothing moved except an occasional twitch in my toes. The kind of movement that reminds me of watching cats, masters at stillness but all that forced relaxation seems to generate a little flit in the end of their tails.
I waited for the fish to notice me but I swear when they're getting their teeth cleaned it seems like they're drugged. You could practically swim up and grab they're tail before they'd notice. I was running out of air so I made the first move and jerked my arm back and forth. Fifteen to twenty feet away he detected the motion and broke away from his position. He drifted closer to me in a broadside position, the perfect presentation. I drew as exact an aim as possible, apologized and fired. The shaft entered point blank into the lateral line just behind the gill plate. The fish turned toward open water and took off anyway.
Here is the moment of highest exposure. Being attached to a huge fish by a steel cable and about to be dragged out of a cave into the open ocean. It's hard to make rational decisions.
I swam out after the fish as the cable flew off the reel and once away from the cave and the channel wall headed back toward it on my way to the surface. I wanted to grab onto a rock where I could get my head out of the water. There I could lasso a piece of the wall with the cable to stop his run and get to the surface for air. Fortunately I got to the wall before the cable had completely run out and the plan worked.
With a couple wraps around a rock I sucked in air. The fish was mostly dead from the shot. I pulled the cable up hand over hand. He made a few feeble runs but I had him in shallow water lying next to me within twenty minutes. He was almost as long as me. I couldn't get a grip into his eyes because my thumb and forefinger didn't span the distance between them.
On the sand I rested. As I packed my gear and straightened the cable and shaft, I was trying to figure how to get this much fish up the steep hill to my car.
I passed on walking over the rocks to the foot of the trail, swimming the half-mile length of shoreline with the fish in tow instead. Once to the trail I made one trip up with gear and came back for the fish. By a supermarket's meat scale it weighed in at 115 pounds. I tried but there was no way to carry it. I ended up putting a rope through the mouth and gill and dragged it one steep step at a time to the top. An hour and a half later, covered in mud, sweat and fish slime, I had him in my truck.
The fish was soon home and quickly converted into over 70 pounds of succulent smoked fish, spicy Cajun style!

 

[cdavis]

GREAT Story!!

Connor