Re: Biggest Ling cod????
The current World Record is a pup compared to "Big Al." :king
In about 1977-8 in a place called Pt Lobos
Reserve, good friend Fred Reicher and I were out on a pretty deep jump in Whalers Cove, with a new guy, Bill Guisti. Now Bill was new, brand new :girlie and it was the policy that to join the dive club, you had to do a couple dives with us and show your game. :martial
So I'm down at like 70' (yes, on SCUBA :hmm ) taking some color stills of the giant Metridium anemones there and getting all artsy with the lighting, when all of a sudden Fred comes roaring over the rise with that look of "Come quick!!" showing through the mask. He's hooting and hollering in his mouth piece and I'm thinking, "Aww ***** the new guy freaked and he's on the surface looking like a bleeding blimp..." :rcard I go hauling over the rise with Fred and see Bill on the bottom, stretched out flat. With bubbles flowing from his regulator.
"Cool", I think, but Fred's still hooting, "Rook, rook!!" Now I don't play chess, so I give him the international reply, "huh??". Then I see it.
Bill is about 5'7" and had a pair of Scubapro Jets on so he was 6'-6" and with a couple feet of arms, was pushing 7'.
HE'S LAYING NEXT TO A LING COD THAT HAD TWO FEET OVER ON HIM!![/I
I mean this fish looked to all the world like a waterlogged phone pole with a gut the size of a fifty-five gallon drum under it! And Bill's just lying next to it PETTING THE DAMN THING!! I had heard old dagos go on about a mythical lingcod named Big Al, but you know how that goes... Here it was!! I don't know if I'd have even tried a shot at it, as it had to go 500 plus pounds. :crutch
So I popped a few photos that to this day I can't find from the divorce, and the moves, :waterwork but that damn thing followed us around for the end of the dive even going so puppy-like as to lay on my fins when I knealt to take some photos of the strawberry anemone clusters! :head
I'm running out of exclamation points here folks!! It's still one of the damnedest and funniest things I've seen in the 35 years of getting wet.
Oh yeah, Bill passed. But I never saw Big Al again. :mute