FREEDIVING
It is the shit. It is my new deal. Scuba is cool, and spearfishing while scuba diving is cool, but free diving is unreal. It's gangster, it's raw, and it is physically demanding.
Me (Indian Rocks Beach) and the crew: Travis Ward (Belleair), Hassan (Clearwater) and Mike Cantonis (Tampa) rolled out to a reef off of sand key fl for what was originally planned as a kingfishing trip. When we got the boat all geared up we also threw some spearfishing gear on board just in case, god I am lucky we did. We set out on our journey with a visit to the mile marker off of clearwater beach to get bait with the castnet. After two big hauls of whitefish bait and one shredded net after a greedy toss, we headed out to one of the many offshore reefs of pinellas county. This particular reef is about 9 miles off the beach and it sits in about 42 feet of water. When we arrived, there were about 6 boats on the reef so I did not really expect to do much freediving. To me 42 feet seemed like an impossible depth to dive on my first freediving trip, and we were loaded down with bait and fishing gear.
We looked around for a few minutes and dropped a few lines in the water with little success, and decided to wander further over on the reef to get away from the crowd. Hassan (aka) Hoss jumped in with speargun in tow and was scouting from the surface and quickly landed a massive amberjack while just snorkeling. When we pulled it into the boat the rest of us were so amped to get into the water, but the thing about AJ's is, they just don't want to die, that fish roared back to life and gave cantonis and ward-o a good smackin before going in the ice box.
We anchored up: hoss, wardo and I got into the water and cantonis line fished off the boat.
I was nervous and excited as I swam around looking into the blue sapphire sparkling abyss.
Hoss and ward were disappearing into the depths for what seemed like an eternity and returning with all sorts of gilled prey at the end of their spears (more aj's, grouper, hogfish, some type of snapper). I could not get my ears to clear at first, and honestly my heart was beating so fast I could not hold my breath that long. I was hitting around the 18ft mark looking around and heading back to the top. I knew it was going to take allot more for me to make it down. I started to think about the hypnosis tracks that I listen to before bed, and tried to visualize what I would do at the bottom and how comfortable I would feel down there. I settled down emotionally. Now it was time to do some work.
Attempt after attempt I came closer and closer to the bottom meanwhile the boys were pillaging. After some effort I finally found my way to the bottom. I can't accurately describe how far the surface seems from that depth, but for me it looked like 400ft not 40. After a few more successful touch and go's I started to cruise down there and actually hunt for fish. The trick is to not look up while you are hunting on the bottom, because for me, as soon as I looked up I saw how far it was to the top, and then I dart for the surface. So I think you have to chill out, hunt, and then head for the surface when you body tells you to get air, not your brain.
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