North Carolina wildfire

[Mark Laboccetta]

Wile this isn't as noble a quest as Mile's hunt for giant yellowfin tuna I thought I'd share with you a spectacular day of spearfishing we had off NC Sunday:

Several nice African Pompano up to near record 40lbs, two king mackerels, several 10lb+ hog snappers, a nice cobia and a couple false albacore.

We shot all of these of course with single rubber Omer T-20 and Master America guns and Hawaiian barb 6.5-7mm shafts.

Saw a few good sharks, a thresher and a hammerhead that gave us a hard time, a few pesky 8ft sand bar sharks but luckily no bulls. great day on the water, cheers!

http://rtp-freedive.pdice.net/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=FPSNov72004

 

[Memo]

very nice catches Mark congratulations...

 

[Murat]

I couldn't see it

 

[groats]

wow! bloody hell these are MONSTERS!!!!















Your link's not working mate.

J

 

[Mark Laboccetta]

Thanks guys, I just fixed the link since it wasn't working right.
Have a good night!
Mark

 

[rcerdena]

No luck to see the pics, the link doesnt seem to be working!

Roberto

 

[mishu1984]

Nice ones Mark

 

[anton]

beautiful fish Mark-now I know why you took an extra day to answer

 

[Murat]

very nice catch Mark.

 

[frogman]

Very nice Mark! What depth were you guys diving? I know that you can find the africans, kings and cobia off the bottom, but the hogs are all the way down. Do you see any groupers where you dive? Wish we could spear africans down here. It is pretty tough to restrain yourself when you see a nice big one come in to check you out.

Angelos

 

[Mark Laboccetta]

thanks again for the compliments fellas, I pulled the trigger a lot last Sunday to make up for Sunday's like this when I'm sitting on the couch with a lap top and the wind is blowing...

I know what you mean about the African Pompanos, the first time I ever saw African Pompanos was 9 years ago when I was SCUBA diving in Florida over an artificial reef close to Palm Beach Inlet. The viz was hazy and all of a sudden these ghostly looking fish that looked like Aliens loomed over, I was impressed by their size and gracefullness in the water. I didn't have a gun and I later found out they were illegal to shoot in FL for some unbeknownced reason.

I shot the king mackerels, the cobia, the African pompanos and the false albacore in 30ft or less and the hogs in 60ft. Yup 60. There's a nice reef about 45-55 miles out of Wilmington NC that rises to within 50ft of the surface. There were a few grouper but some SCUBA divers were hunting right underneath us and the few I saw were skittish because they'd been spooked. We usually shoot nice gags there but by the end of the year they're wise to spearguns. I shot a nice one that ripped off and with all the sharks around I didn't bother to go mining under the ledges looking for it. It was 20ft hailmary so I think he must have made it anyway. I was once charged by a bullshark there while I had my head under the ledge trying to poke out a lobster. I hate bull sharks more than any other shark, there's also lots of big sand bar sharks that people always confuse and hammerheads and also thresher sharks on occasion. I shot a bull shark there once that I was pretty sure was going to eat me if I hadn't.

The weather is the trick there since it can get nasty quickly and usually we can only dive there june-august, a handful of times during the year because of the weather, in the fall it's great diving but the weather is pretty unpredictable.

This particular day the weather man missed the weather again calling for 2ft seas offshore and it was really 3-5's, which is still very good there.

Ciao, Mark

 

[miles]

Hiya

Nice fish!!!!!!

The water in the back-gtround looks BEAUTIFUL!!!!!! Know exactly how you feel about the wind ALWAYS blowing on the week-end :vangry :vangry

Oh well, there's always next week-end!!!

Regards
miles