Seas: 3-5 feet
Winds: 15-20 E
Temp: 85 F
Viz: 10-15 feet
Even though we arose to considerably more wind than the past few days, we decided to head out anyway and see if we could bag our limit of snappers from one of our closer spots (seeing as we knew what the seas would be like). Only the two of us were up to the challenge of driving and diving the higher seas that we knew we would be in for. So we get to our spot with only 10 to shoot due to our lack of friend or family participation in this outing. My first challenge was not falling off the bow when we were trying to anchor because of the occasional 5-6 foot wave that would roll through. Once we got anchored we jumped in the choppy waters and found that some larger snapper had moved in to this spot, but the viz was still less than we would have hoped for after 2 days of 20 mph winds from the East.

I shoot my first two snappers without too much to talk about, but my third snapper brought with it an uninvited guest that zoomed in just as I had retrieved my shaft and was about to remove the fish. A barracuda weighing about 25 lbs had apparently decided she wanted my fish more than I did (and convincingly so). She shot by within 3-4 feet of me and without another gun or having the other diver in close proximity, I decided she would win this battle today and I dropped the shaft with the fish and let her have it (which she took in two passes). This fish was apparently enough to satisfy her appetite because she did not return for any more courses in her meal as I caught the remaining 3 fish in my bag limit.

Later on in the afternoon, we decided to check out some waypoints I had been able to retrieve from a now defunct Garmin 75 gps that we had not visited in a few years. We arrived at the first of 3 spots we wanted to check out and were pleasantly surprised by how close these hand entered points put us to the actual ledges we remembered from way back (since different gps's have different positioning errors which usually leads to different gps's providing different numbers for the same spots).

We came into some nice hogs at these spots (the nicest of which I shot at the last spot) as well as a black grouper but the disappointment of the afternoon was my missed opportunity on a nice mutton snapper. I was checking the perimeter of the first spot when I peer over to my right and see the mutton sitting in the middle of the open area of in the center of this semicircular ledge. I round my gun to line up the shot and take it. Unfortunately I hit it high and after a few thrashes, it tears off. I figured it was going to hole up since there were some good hiding spots right there and the fact that I figured it was hurt bad enough to not run too far. I checked and re-checked every nook of the ledge and to my dismay, I could not find the mutton. I figured I had assumed incorrectly and it had in fact run out of the area. During the time I was looking for the mutton, I kept hearing my brother-in-law's gun go off and I assumed he was cleaning up with the hogs that I was seeing in the area but was passing up on in the hopes of finding this mutton.

I ran into a little trouble with one of my slings and after trying to repair it in the water, I decided to call for my second gun so I could take part in the hog roundup my brother-in-law was apparently hosting. After getting my second gun I look down on the ledge and who do I see darting in and out but the mutton! I head down look quickly into the hole I saw it near and was able to line up a shot and took it. Unfortunately (I am having to use that word too many times today), the shot I took was fairly vertical and it did not penetrate far enough to let the flopper toggle on the other side of the fish and when I pulled the shaft to retrieve what I though would be my mutton, the shaft slipped out of the fish and that would be the last time I saw it today. I absolutely hate leaving behind injured fish if I can help it (especially if it's a nice one) and this time was no exception I spent a lot of time looking for this fish to no avail.

Thankfully, my luck turned around a little with the nice hog and the grouper that I was able to land on the afternoon dive. I guess no matter how hard we try, we can't get them all.