Friday, April 04, 2008
Diving with a Crock
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!
