Wahoo Shot

An oil-like flat sea, a clear blue sky and the boat running smooth, dream ocean conditions for every fisherman. We started off in Sisters, freediving in green water with about 25 ft visibility and after I speared a couple of horse-eye jacks we decided to go to St. Giles hoping to find cleaner waters.

When we arrived to St. Giles the visibility was a little better but still green, and the spearing was slow. We checked out the best areas and caught a couple more fish, but nothing interesting. We then decided to take a drift on the outside of the Giles, where normally the current is ripping. As we approached the area I told Lehron: “is that some blue water behind the rocks?” and he looked across and smiled :”it looking so”.

At full speed we went around and couldn’t believe the clarity and color of the water, that purple/blue water you rarely find these days, especially at this time of year. So I pulled out my Gopro, strapped it on my head and we jumped in. Right away we so a few of good size dog snappers, in the 12-15 pound range. These fish were hanging out around a hole at 75 ft near a drop off that continued down to about 150 ft and deeper.

Several times Lehron and I dove down near their hiding hole but far enough to give them comfort, but the fish kept playing us, hiding from us on every dive. We both had a chance on them but didn’t shoot, which is the correct thing to do when you don’t have a perfect shot or enough Oxygen in your body to fight them off the ground and away from the hole.

The area was looking very lively with lots of bait and other small fish, so we decided to drift a little bit away from the snappers to give them some time and see if I could spot something else. It was awesome to freedive in this perfect blue water and I was just enjoying myself when I spotted an interesting stone on the bottom and went deeper to take a closer look hoping for a nice grouper or a snapper that I could take home with me.

There was nothing around, so I switched off the camera and started to ascend. As I turned around and looked up, there was Lehron aiming at this big wahoo at the perfect distance, so I quickly pressed the record button on my head-mounted Gopro, but the two seconds the camera takes to start filming were critical and I missed the shot on video, next thing was, this big wahoo just trembling in circles with a perfect spine shot.

The rest was just celebrations and pictures on this Lehron’s first amazing wahoo that put the scale on 48 pounds. Just before heading back I managed to get a nice snapper for dinner. Great day out there with the rest of the crew Andre Em, Carlon Daniel and Barnsley Smith.