Seven Steelslingers Slaying Subsea Species. March 27-28 '04

Guests
Speargun with his buddy Charlie Vachon who will soon be a SB member. Long time JR2 patrons, and Clearwater Sea Salt members Bigfish53 with John Buljalski. Rounding out the guest list was long-time dive partner Ron Aipperspach (aka-The Sprocket Man). I dove with Ron way back when on my first MG trip aboard Capt. Dennis Darragh's Great Adventure III. If you can remember that boat, then you are an old-school slinger!

Freeshaft, and I ran this trip while Jimmy Z was involved with a possible addition to the Jolly Fleet. The Admiral will settle for nothing less than total MG domination !

Sea Conditions
My advice to NOAA: Keep it under ten shots of Jagermeister, and two bong hits before making a weather prediction. Because of their forecast on Friday we plan B'ed our MG trip to a single overnighter local Steinhatchee trip. As it turned out, the seas in the MG never got over 3'-4', and this is from speaking with a comm. hook and liner on the VHF as he was coming in. Saturday, and Sunday the seas were calmer than a Buddhist monk on Xanax. Currents were light, and the water temps remain in the low 60's. The vis inshore is crystal clear, too good as you will read below.

The Art of Killing Fish
I've got one word for you, gumbo. Not the stew that Cajun dudes shovel down their gullets by the gallon, but the clumping algae that blooms in our offshore waters every spring. It's bad this year! Every rockpile inside of 80 fsw was completely covered with a 3'-4' layer of this elephant snot. In fact on one spot that Sprocket Man, and I dove it was so thick that it was growing upwards of ten feet high, making it look like we were in a kelp forest. This kept the numerous gags 50'-100' off the piles. Combine that with the top to bottom vis, and you get some very challenging grouper slinging. Perhaps SpearOne could weigh in with some tips on approach techniques for skittish clear water grouper. Better yet, go attend his upcoming seminar at Depth Perception Dive Center in Tampa. Despite all of this, we did manage a good supply of brownsnouter hogfish Saturday along with a little of everything else. Capped the day off by freediving some jacks over a rockpile even though none of us were wearing Speedos.

Sunday we headed to deeper water to visit some secret wrecks, and get out of the gumbo. We pulled the trip out by slaying a good pile of big mangos with a few more gags. All except the Sprocket Man, and I descended on the SM-1 Tower where they topped off our amberjack limit along with slaying some of the usual resident mangos. Speargun was pumped after this dive as he had "rodeo'ed" his first aj, and felt the primal rush of battling the briny brawler of the benthic abyss.

Three weekends, three trips in a row. Wow, I've got a good wife! I'm landbound for the next couple of weeks to live the life of the typical suburban schlepper, mowing the lawn, washing the car, cleaning the pool, going to Home Depot, completing the honey-do list. Damn, I'm going to feel like one of the Hermes bothers !! Soon however, the ocean's irresistible pull will lead me once again to the fabled Florida Middle Grounds for new adventures yet to be sought, and tales yet to be told. OK, that was pretty f*cking sappy .

Slaytistics
Remember now, this was a four tank single overnighter!
Gag Grouper=14
Mango Snapper=42
Hogfish=70 (Double rec bag! Booo-yah!)
Amberjack=14 (Double rec bag! Holla'!!)

AJ Suarez