GoodToGo

St Vincent Is, FL Sambar Deer Hunt Dec 2012

St Vincent Is

Geologically speaking the history of the island is short, only about 3,000 years.  Beach ridge islands such as this only form on accrecting beaches of low wave energy.  They are constructed by wave run up and grow upward and seaward as sand is deposited.  The oldest parts of the island are the north area, mostly marsh and bayou.  Generally sea level has been falling for the past 6,000 years with intermittent periods of rise.  Sedimentation on the island gives a pretty good picture of these rise and fall periods through analysis of the deposition of sand, silt, and shell beds.  The resulting ridge and valley landscape has produced a unique habitat with the valleys holding freshwater marsh and ponds.  The ridges are predominately pine, palmetto, and scattered oak.  Portions of the north shore are maritime forest with lots of live oak and palmetto palms.  The Gulf -facing south shore consists of coastal dunes with sea oats.  Not surprisingly there is evidence of prior Indian habitation of the island at several sites.  There is an extensive road system on the island.  The roads follow the ridges and in a few places cross the valleys.  Generally the roads are sand and shell and are passable with the park rangers 4wd vehicles of which there are only a few.  Often, when there has been adequate rain to pack the sand, bicycles are effective transport.  We found the bikes to be of little use on this trip in the dry loose sand.

Slash Pine

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I made the post below on spearboard.com in response to a thread about spearguns. I'm posting it here because I thought some of you may be interested.

I have been messing with Mako spearguns for about 6 months now. I hunt N. Gulf of Mex. out of Panama City all on scuba and all line shaft. Mostly on artificial reefs 80-110', with lots of steel so I shoot 1/16" SS cable. Vis here is normally 20-30', this summer however has been exceptional with 50'+. Prior to Mako I was shooting JBL's, mostly a 450XHD and my "small gun" was the gulf magnum. Here we shoot a lot of cudas, AJs and Cobia for the big fish. I don't include grouper in big fish because they don't do anything when you shoot them but the grouper dance or try to hole up. I offer this info because I think it is important to know what fish and under what conditions a gun is being evaluated.

I got a Mako Predator Pro 100 cm in February after reading the hype about rail guns and Mako on Spearboard. I thought I would use it as a little reef (limestone ledges) gun. I soon found out that the gun was much more effective at handling "big" fish than I thought it would be. I didn't expect the single flopper to hold a big cudas without ripping out but it does. I expected the tiny 7mm shaft to bend like a pretzel when a mis-hit AJ wrapped around a steel girder, it didn't. I am embarrassed to say I lost the 100cm gun to a big cuda. I usually shoot medium size cudas for the table (15-20#), but this was for a local tournament and the cuda was 30+. I shot it through the gill plates and I didn't hang on tight enough when she hit the end of the string. It actually stung my fingers when the gun popped out of my hand, but not nearly as bad as it stung my ego. It had been a good gun for me after I learned to shoot it. I replaced that gun with a Mako Iconic 130cm. I thought it to be a little better gun than the Predator Pro with just beefier components. The problem was I went too far on the length for my style of hunting. It shot well but I just couldn't track fish with that long gun. I talked to Dano, the owner of Mako Spearguns and told him I wanted him to cut it down to a 110cm. He agreed to do that so I sent him the gun. When Dano agrees to do something for you, stand back....you are going to get more than you bargained for. He sent me back, not my old gun cut down, but a new model Oceanic 110cm with what I think is a better designed handle, because it has a little more rake to it and it helps me point it flat. The trigger is good enough to be on my .308 Sako and breaks like a glass rod. The muzzle is a design that has SS ears to loop the shooting line under which holds the shaft in the open muzzle. For me the 110 is just the right length for a balance of range, power and handling. Today was my first time out with the Oceanic and I shot a decent cuda but didn't find any other "big" fish so I decided to shoot Spanish mackerel because they were plentiful and offer a challenging shot. I got 5 out of 7 with one clean miss and one that pulled off from a too high shot. I'm sticking with Mako.


Duncan, Kate and I went out Tuesday for a final dive before PCS to AZ for Duncan. It was my second outing for the Mako Oceanic 110cm and it works for me. Duncan shoots a Predator Pro 90cm now. He plans to make it a fresh water gun.



I got a Cobia on the 2nd dive. The shot on the cobia was a little forward of where I intended to hit and it went in through the gill slit on the L and exited the cheek on the R. Then the fight was on with me trying to chase him around the steel girders before he could wrap up. Not surprisingly he was faster than me and really started leaning on that shaft, I could see it bending at pretty severe angles as I tried to get a grip on his gills. When I got him on the stringer and things were under control I was really amazed that the shaft was still straight. The 7.5mm shaft can really take some punishment, I think the 3/8 shaft of my JBL would have been severely damaged under the same conditions.
I told Duncan I wished he could have gotten the Cobia, it being his last dive and all. He eased my conscience by telling me he did see it earlier in the dive and missed the shot. He will return to even the match I'm sure.

MAKO ON THE LOOSE – SPAN 14

July 17-18 was the annual Tyndall AFB spear-fishing tournament. Jim M., Mike T., Al J. and I made up team “Good to Go”. We headed out the pass early on Fri into the face of showers and square seas of 3’x3sec and it was really pitching with the seas running in on an outgoing tide. I expected it would get better as the day progressed so proceeded on at tugboat speed with Mike and Al arranging the trolling lines. Of course the seas didn’t get better but the conversation was lively and expectations were big as we headed out to my favorite 15 mi. dive sites. We passed through a couple of showers on the way out and fortunately they were absent the usual attending lightning and wind gusts. The sun was even intermittent as Al and Jim rolled in for the first dive. Mike an I caught a couple of Snapper while they were down but the divers didn’t have much luck with only 1 medium Cuda that Al brought back. We did a few more dives offshore and the box was beginning to look pretty nice with AJs, Grouper, and another big Cuda which were the 3 species for the tournament. All in all we were having a great day from my perspective, but then I wasn’t the one chumming between dives.

Mike and I had one more tank to dive and I still needed a Cuda for the leader board so we stopped at Bridge Span 14 on the way back in. We set the anchor to put the boat over the bridge. When I rolled in I wasn’t disappointed at the Cuda population. With the clear surface water I could see several curiously eyeing me from a distance. I went in to my Cuda attracting tactics that Al taught me some years ago and it worked pretty well on the small dumb ones because they came closer to investigate. I think he is holding out on me on the special signal for the big ones. Of the ones that presented themselves I shot the biggest and it gave me a ride down to the bridge where I strung it up. I scanned the surface for a larger candidate and it wasn’t too long before I spotted one bigger than the rest, hanging out on his own outside the school. I made a slow approach from underneath and was satisfied that I was closing the distance pretty well. I have noticed that in the clear water we have had lately that I tend to misjudge the distance, thinking I’m in range when actually I should be closer. The target fish solved the range problem for me and gave me that direct, face to face approach and came right to me. That presents another problem because I have no idea how to shoot a Cuda in the face. He soon realized that he was not going to push me out of his territory, turned, and offered the broadside shot. I had plenty of air so I decided to shoot right through the gill plates. They run around a lot with this shot but they never get off. There was one thought that I left out of my mind while I was sizing this entire situation up. I took the shot and saw that the placement was perfect as he took off, and then my fingers were stinging because he popped that new Mako Predator Pro 100 spear gun right out of my hand. The last thought I should have had was hang on tight. I have heard this story from others many times but I didn’t think it would ever happen to me. I gave chase immediately but it didn’t work out, the Cuda on my stringer was trying to swim one way with me chasing a Cuda too fast to catch going the other way.

I thought there was a chance I could recover the gun before the sharks grabbed the Cuda and swam off with the whole rig. Many times when the fish is wounded it will hole up on the nearest structure, so I went back to the boat and borrowed Jim’s JBL 450 and headed back down to the bridge. Right now the bridge is packed out with little bait fish that severely restrict visibility. I swam inside the structure looking out as I proceeded with my search. It was only moments into my hunt that I saw my gun being dragged along in the opposite direction out over the sand. I launched myself for it and was closing the gap when somehow I noticed I had company, with a big Cobia swimming right beside me. Now I was conflicted on whether to shoot the cobia or go for my gun. I went for the gun. I was almost close enough to grab for it when I realized it wasn’t my gun at all, but a big stingray’s tail I was chasing. Damn! And now the cobia is gone. I followed the stingray for one complete lap around the bridge hoping to both find my gun and have the cobia return. Neither happened. It was interesting that the ray was packed out underneath with a school of what in a glance I would have assumed to be remoras but actually it was a dozen or so very small cobia.

Watch out if you dive Span 14, there is a Mako on the loose.

PK and I made a couple of more trips since my last report. One day we went to the Fontainebleau area to look for sharks on T-6, there weren’t any. We dove the boxcar and PK got a nice grouper and I found a large flounder. T-5 had permanent fishing boats on it so we skipped that one and came back to the Jeff Boat to round out the dives. The vis wasn’t quite as nice as it had been just a few days earlier, maybe down to 20’ but still pretty good. A giant southern stingray made a flyby flight down the centerline of the Jeff just to show off for us I guess. We have talked about shooting one of those monsters but haven’t yet for a couple of reasons; one would be “Why?” and the other is “Where?” I think it would be quite a ride.

Yesterday (Tues 5 Jan) we made our way through dense fog out to Stage I. We only saw a couple of buoys visually and they were damn close. We slowed a twice for erratic radar returns but they turned out to be birds instead of boats.

The dive at the stage was pretty disappointing. There was excellent vis of 50+ down to the top of the pipes but below that it was 5-8’. PK returned to the boat to save gas, I hung out in the clear water for awhile trying to stalk a couple of cudas but for some reason they were very wary and I didn’t get a shot. The fog cleared about the time we were heading back for some inshore diving and we closed out our float-plan with Seatow. We hit the Strength and found the great vis we had enjoyed in previous days inshore was gone and it was down to 15’ at best. PK did come up with one grouper and some story about a shot in the dark. From there we did one of the inshore spans and somehow two of those baby AJ’s we have been seeing for months had finally put on some length. We each took one that made the requisite 30”s. I did another dive on the offshore twin barge but it was pretty desolate with only bunches of snapper and no other desirable sport-fish.

PK goes back to the praries of Canada and their -20 degree highs in a couple of days. I might go visit but not til it warms to 80.

 Finally I was able to participate in a club dive. As much as I dive it seems I just can't make club dive day available. Today, even after dropouts for a foul weather forecast we wound up with 10 divers on 3 boats. The wind was whipping pretty good out of the NW but it had just enough offshore component to keep the seas reasonable on the near shore sites. After some shuffling of the crew lineup we got away from the dock about 9:30. The initial plan going thru the pass on a swift outgoing tide was to start at the LOSS Pontoon. Running down-surf was an short easy trip to the LP but the water still looked turbid from the outflow so we pressed on down the beach to E Barge. Probably that was a good idea, the water looked better here and I marked a good show of fish on the approach. This turned out to be a nice dive with negligible current, 74deg water temp and moderately good vis at 15' or so. I guess the flounder are waiting for the Nov 1 tournament to begin collecting up on the near shore sites. Trigger fish of better than legal size were in abundance, but initially I wasn't seeing the fish that were showing on the bottom machine on arrival. I'm not sure how long it takes for a grouper to get from 15" to 22" but when that time has elapsed there are going to be a lot more nice grouper around. There was a school of 50 or more that I could see that were hanging around on the sand up-current of the wreck. There were quite a few ARS mixed in above the grouper and schools of nice size Spanish Mackerel on top of the stack. After arriving back on deck the buzz seemed to be that all had a nice dive. Since the wx was cooperating by holding at 2'-3' seas we decided to head out a little further to one of the spans. There were more people braving the winds than I had expected and most sites were taken but we were able to slip in between visitors on span 12. I love diving these big bridges because there is always the potential to see something exciting and even the mundane of the gobies and spade fish are still interesting to me. I was doing a little exploring on the up current side, checking out the big school of AJ to see if any would qualify for the team but none made the cut. Most all had a little more heft than Duncan's, but none were nearly as tall. I went a little beyond visual range from the bridge to check out a shadow on the bottom. It was my little Goliath buddie. I have played hide and seek with this grouper on the bridge several times in the past month or so, but hadn't seen him for a few times. I guess he has decided to give up the bridge to the divers while they are down and probably returns when we leave. I took a couple of tour groups out to have a look, maybe someone took his picture. After the dive, the trip back in was tugboat speed into the chop and gave us time for visiting and planning for the next trip. I spent a little while searching for my PBJ to no avail, it was still in the kitchen on the chopping block. When the tanks were filled, boats and gear washed, fish cleaned, then I was hungry. The few of us that stopped in at #1 Chinese were able to solve the hunger issue in pretty short order. All in all another successful dive trip. Let's do it again. bob

This is a true story. Its embellishments are only what I choose to include. A little background information will be necessary for you to appreciate the full impact of the event, so bear with me.

Will and I had been planning on a Thursday dive. The weather and our commitments suited that best. Will’s sore throat took him out of the picture on Wed night so I was on my own. I had a feeling the ling would be cruising the shore, riding the West current to wherever they go in the springtime, some say Texas. I still haven’t tried DJ’s ling ring on the top of Good to Go so I thought this might be the day. And since my dive gear was already packed I might as well put it in the boat. Not that I would risk Judy’s wrath by diving alone, but at least it would be in place for a weekend dive. After stowing gear, icing coolers, topping tanks, etc. I hooked up to drag the beast to the water. And that’s how it started; dragging…… brakes on both sides of the trailer were locked. In 4-x-low I was able to slide the sled to about the middle of the shell and gravel parking area before I lost traction and started burying the Tacoma, and there I was stuck. I will spare you all the details, but the next 5hrs involved: 1) getting a jack from Natural Resources, 2) removing 4 trailer wheels that some gorilla had fastened on with a runaway impact wrench, 3) removing brake calipers that were locked in place with rusted and crumbling pads………….purchase of parts………….reassembly….……….return equipment………..I am pretty well worn out. After all of this it is early afternoon and I decided to launch the boat just to make sure everything is in working order.

The ratchet starts clicking. So as long as I have the boat in the water I might as well see how things look at the pass click, and it looks good except for some low cloud cover, or high sea fog. Not much chance to see a ling from the top click. I might as well go out to the inshore barge and see if it is holding any fish click. 3 miles later I’m circling the site looking at a great show of fish, but I have no bait click. It didn’t take long to set the anchor and find that the surface current was running pretty good so I attached the sissy line to the front and got suited up. After working my way to the front and down the anchor line 15’ I was pleased to find good vis and almost no current. As I approached the rubble of the wreck I saw the fish that had lit up my sonar. It was a sheepshead orgy of prodigious proportions. There must have been 100 of them schooling and chasing each other around, under and through the skeleton of the old barge and the attendant slabs of concrete were dumped here years ago. I was more interested in finding a nice grouper or two and I wasn’t disappointed. Two of them were heading in from the sand to security under the wreck. The first one made it. The second one did also, but he had shaft and spear point buried behind his gills. It didn’t take long to drag him out, button him on my stringer and reload. I wanted to take a look under the structure but it was going to take awhile for the sediment to settle so I amused myself looking around the site and trying to figure out what the pattern of activity of the sheepsheads was. Apparently random rapid motion involving chasing and being chased is what turns them on. If I could identify male from female it might have been discernable what was going on. The cloud had dissipated enough that I decided to put my face in the crack and see what was happening and I was immediately nose to nose with a sizeable grouper. I quickly retreated and began arranging my beast of a gun into position so I might get a shot. With the gun in place I again took a look and was happy to see the fish so I took the shot. After the initial flurry of sand and silt boiling out from the hole I began pulling to retrieve my catch, and he began driving deeper to save his mortal soul. I soon realized it may be possible to get to him from the other side. That worked out, I was able to pull him through remove the point and string him up. Now my shaft was wedged and didn’t want to make the trip through so I went back to my gun to pull it out the way it went in. I was more than a little surprised to find another nice grouper on the shaft that I had run through the middle. When you are really good sometimes you just shoot fish two at a time! It is close to return time so I checked the anchor in the sand again, shot 2 sheepsheads and returned to the boat. All in all a very productive and fun dive.

What about the crock? When I was suiting up I found my bag to be short one bootie, so I improvised:

And I Dove With a Crock!