GEEZE
Man, go outta town for a week and all kinds of stuff breaks loose. Well since I'm the other member of the offending party I guess I'll give my version of the event.
First, many thanks to the guys that came to our defense, much appreciated guys. Thats what it's all about, watching each others back-above and below the surface.
A brief run down of the tally of the three days Aquiles and I fished together. Day one- there were three of us and we only shot about a 2/3's the number of fish as the second day. Day two-you saw the results. Day three- we took 4, that's right 4 fish and swam twice as far. There were't any fish on the reefs we stopped on, not even bait fish(and no we didn't shoot them all). So if you look at the average for the three days it wasn't that great.
OK- here's the story from "The Day the Muttons Died".
The day dawned so still there wasn't enough wind to blow a candle out. The ocean was like glass. After a leisure breakfast we loaded the boat and headed out. On our first few stops we threw out the drift anchor and it just hung straight down, the boat literally just sat where we left it. If we wanted to move we just grabbed the bow line and pulled the boat behind us. We we getting a few fish as we worked the edges of the reef. On average the top was about 50' and I got 80' for my deepest depth. We could see fish on the bottom on 80'+. The temp was about 85F. We found a couple of snapper that had some kind of snapper force field. They would lure us to the bottom and the wait patiently as we both missed from point blank range. Go figure. I have to admit that I was using a Riffe C3 since I hadn't planned on this trip I didn't have any speargear w/ me. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. BTW: Aquiles was using a Rabitech, so there was a Euro in the water.
Towards mid to late afternoon we ran down to a reef that Aquiles thought might have some fish, there were alot of line fishermen anchored so we went up ahead of them and set our anchor. Almost as soon as Aquiles hit the water he had a nice snapper right under the boat. I saw another w/ it but it took off. About 5min later I was on the bottom, turned and there it was again. Well, whats a guy to do. So we had two nice ones in the boat and the line fishermen started leaving for home so we could spread our search pattern a little. There were alot of nurse sharks out and one followed a snapper I was pulling up all the way to the surface, then I had to hit it twice to make it leave. This was one of the big 8-9' ones. When we got to the edge of the reef we started seeing more fish. It seems everytime I saw Aquiles swimming back to the boat w/ a fish I'd find one w/in a few minutes. While we were fishing the edge I was pulling up a snapper that was body shot. Aquiles thought I might pull off so he went down and grabbed it. Just as he hit the surface I looked down just in time to see a gray reef shark making a turn at his fintips and screaming off into the deep. We never saw it comming. We shot a couple of more I believe then decided we had enough(there was still plenty of daylight left and fish). We got in the boat took some pics and cranked the tunes for the ride home. It was a great ride back to the dock w/ a good friend, some nice fish and a beautiful evening,(Sorry Sven, no beautiful babes to wash our gear though).
So the tally for the day was 1-grouper, 1-yellow jack, 3- triggers, 11- muttons. This may sound excessive to some, so be it. I'm truely sorry you don't have the same opportunities and I understand your concern, but these aren't severly overfished species and if you look at the over all take from all the sport and commercial boats for that day our catch will pale in comparison. As Aquiles said, all the fish exept the one we ate the next day was divided amongst the people at the trailer park. Many are older induviduals that can't get out to get fresh fish like they once could. This is an extended family to Aquiles and to some extent myself now. This is something you have to understand about the culture over here and how it works before critisisms and opinions are touted. I respect everyones opinion of this, good or bad and will defend your right to it. Because after all, it is only your opinion. If I've recieved any neg karma, cie la vie. Thanks again Aquiles for a great few days spearing.
Jay
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