Yeah, I'm inland about 3 hours from Monterey, in Madera, just north of Fresno. Took us from 4pm on Friday until almost 3am Saturday morning to get to Dana Pt, thanks to a smoking wheel bearing on the boat trailer. We had to make a mad scramble for parts and tools to keep from having to scrap the trip. Two hours later, we were up and moving gear from our hotel room to the truck. We barely caught Paul at the sign in, pre meet. Shot out and picked a pretty random spot based on some intel from the meet organizers and within 5 minutes of entering the water, I had this fish on my spear. Some call it luck and I'm inclined to agree, but I've made 4 runs south in the last 5 weeks and I've taken 4 wsb. This one is my largest so far and I can't wait to get hold of a bigger one. I swam straight from the boat to the outside kelp line and started having problems with my mask. It's really old and starting to rot around the edges. Couple that with the fact that I skipped on shaving that morning and you can imagine the problems I was having. At the edge of the kelp, I made my adjustments and began to move along the outside edge. For a second, I thought I saw something through the kelp. Was it a wsb? Was it just an off color piece of kelp? Who knows for sure. Maybe it was just a coincidence, because a few seconds later this fish pops out right below me like toast popping out of a toaster. It just popped out of the kelp and parked directly below me, facing away. I hesitated only to reflect on the fish's size. I couldn't tell for sure. I had to decided whether I wanted to take this one or pass and look for a bigger one. It looked like it was probably big enough, so I decided to take it. I couldn't pike, I was way too close to the fish. Almost any movement would have caused her to bolt. I barely moved my gun until the tip was just a few feet from the back of her had and slowly squeezed the trigger. Float line came whipping past me going from black to yellow as my 25ft Riffe bungee sank into the blue. I grabbed ahold of it as quickly as I could and suddenly realized that I was about 15 feet under water. Not sure how I got there, but I guess that fish just dragged me down. Adrenaline pumping, I got a sort of tunnel vision. Perfect focus. I know I'm getting better at this fish spearing game because I no longer have to think, "Oh my god, what should I do?", I already know what to do. It's weird, but even when I was fighting this fish, huffing and puffing my way back and forth to the surface as it pulled me, repeatedly, under water, I never let it affect me mentally. I was mentally cool and loving every second. I'm so glad I didn't stone this one, because, to me, there's nothing like the excitement of fighting a big fish. Especially if there's a chance I might get my butt kicked. The fish eventually wound itself up around a thick bunch of kelp at around 30 feet and ran out of slack. I fought hard with the bungee to keep the fish from tying up too deep. I didn't want to have to make 60 foot drops into the murk after having so much adrenaline pumped through my veins. I calmed myself down, breathed up and after two drops, I was able to bring the fish to the surface and tap its' brain. I didn't see another WSB for the rest of the day.
The weigh-in was a blast and I finally got to meet alot of people I had only talked to online, including Billy Mac, who I have wanted to meet for a very long time. I still can't believe I pulled off the win against so many awesome competitors. Many Long Beach Neptunes, Fathomieres, San Diego Freedivers, Santa Barbara Freedivers, as well as the Jet Ski Mafia showed up to compete and the Monterey Bay Tritons came down from the land of tiny rockfish to take both 1st and 3rd place and showed everyone what we're all about. Never giving up!