hugged this one up from a cave at -15M, shot in the tail, thrashing, weighed 7Kg, my PB.
do I get some kinda "came furthest to the wedding prize"?
Edited for OMD's Hall Of Fame: The (longish) story
A nice days diving with a Spanish buddy, just off my house near Valparaiso on the central Chilean cost. We can see the kids on the terrace playing from the dive spot (what a treat).
The vis was average but there was quite a nice luminosity on the bottom, and being with a buddy we ventured further out to a new spot. The bottom was at about 15 or 16M, the viz about 8. Water temp. despite being midsummer, in the 13C range.
The area is very nice in that there are huge boulders forming large caves, combined with sandy areas, and nice, short kelp too: plenty of fish hiding spots.
We were just starting to hunt this area, I think I was on dive 10, and I dropped down to investigate a strange "L" shaped crevice in between two rocks, not quite big enough to get into, but big enough to see in and point my omer cayman 90 (with a very short spear, around 105cm, barely clears the guns muzzle). I saw a Vieja (similar to a black grouper
Guia de Peces.) in the back of its cave, and tried to ascertain its size. After a little too long it showed me its side and it looked just around 3kg, too small for me.
I start to remove myself from the crack in the rock, and something (who knows what) draws my eye to a shadow to my right. About 2M away is another nice dark hiding place. My eyes are already used to the dark, no torch being used, and I see a large tail disappear. I do one of those shots that you always tell yourself off for doing, a kind of "no hope" shot that normally only results in cursing and time wasting reloads. The cave exploded and my spear disappeared. Already way too long down on a tiring dive, around the 1:10 mark, I pull on the gun planning to swim up, letting the reel do its job. NOPE. Reel jammed. Check drag, it's loose, but the reel is still jammed.
OK mind in overload: thought process, not necessarily in rational or logical order:
-Fish big, impress wife and dive buddy, me want
-Going to lose gun (done exactly same before, with same fish, not 100m from this spot)
-Need to breathe
-Ok, try to extract fish
-Need to breathe
So, unwise decision of the month: extract fish slowly, pulling on reel line, then mono, then spear. It slowly appears from the exploded cave. It’s big, mad, and shot in the tail. Thrash, thrash, thrashing head, big teeth. Need to breathe. Thrash some more. Get thumb in one gill, hug fish body, swim up slow (spear flopper hanging by an inch or less of tail skin).
Sweet air. Better still buddy nearby. Hobble to float, buddy still unaware of the size of this fish (he’s keen to do his next duck dive). On arriving at the float I have a problem: how to get out my ike spike and kill the fish, with one thumb of one hand in a gill and the other clasping the body and tail? It was not working and I was not about to loose the fish. I called my bud over, a few times (I said he’s Spanish, I speak “Chilean” Spanish, that at the best of times is bad) he got it in the end and helped me brain the fish. Looking down at it in the water, its head was huge, I had a feeling it could have been a PB.
Several dives later, a seal showed up trying to steal our catch, I more or less kept guard of the float, fish and my buddy for the rest of the session. At the shore the vieja tipped 7Kg. My buddy got a very nice one too, at 4Kg, normally a very appreciable catch, but it looked quite tiddly next to this.
It was all eaten about 4 days later and much enjoyed!