8.11
Loaded up the boat sat am in preparation for a few drops out of SLI. Hopefully some gags were still around and we coudl rustle up some bugs. As part of "loading the boat" I chose a non-optimal place to put my speargun.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v152/LazyBones/DSC00139.jpg

Things went fine until crossing the first boat wake and then there is a crash, a spalsh, and a mother*&^%$r! Deathstick down. Nice way to start the day. Oh well, I marked it on the gps and pressed on.

I dropped in 120 and between the ripping current and lack of vis (5ft), it was essentially undivable. Dropped my brother in 75ft and the vis was minimally improved. We headed south to the Loran tower and vis was workable, but not great. Ended up w/ no bugs and due to time constraints, headed home. Tried to find gun on way home and discovered that the black out conditions in the North Fork would present a challenge to gun recovery.

Insult was added to injury when reading everyone else's trip reports touting great vis and fish in Ft Pierce and Jupiter. Guess the bad vis followed me like Pigpen's dirt cloud.

8.12
Started w/ a trip to Lowes to load up w/ salvage gear. 4 10ft PVC poles and 200ft of cord. Followed my rout on gps and set up a search grid in what I hoped was the best area. Set up a 100 x 50ft rectangle and along w/ my brother was able to cover 10ft swathes at a time. I always though that it would be a little spooky being a police recovery diver and this pretty much cememnted that. The only benefit was that I (hopefully) would not be running into any dead bodies. It also re-enforced that I had no interest in wreck or cave penetrations. Anyway, luck was on our side and while setting up the poles for a second grid, I ran into the gun.

Moral of teh story. Don't be a dumbazz and if you are headed out SLI, I woudl suggesting hitting Ft Pierce or Jupiter. While my diving was markedly less fruitfull than LOB's haul, it was nice to close out the weekend avoiding the need to buy a new gun.

Glad you got your gun back. I'm certain I couldn't have continued the trip without burning at least one tank looking for it first.

Could you explain your search technique a little more? How deep was it? How did you use the PVC and the cord?

Thanks,
Gary H

SO glad you found your gun :smthumbup: - searching like that is no fun......

We had tried loran towers on Sat too, but current was wacky there - I had a ripping current and lots of floating debris and the other diver had a walk in the park.....so we ended up going south to pick up two bugs each :(

I too have struggled with Stuart conditions for a number of years. This has been the best year, vis-wise in a long time, until now! So the big decision every time out the inlet is turn 15 miles North or 15 South. South gets the nod for gauranteed conditions. North is so nice when the conditions cooperate, which is rare. Nothing sucks worse than turning North and freezing and striking out, then reading internet reports of how great it was in Jupiter.
After all the bad bug reports out of Jupter lately, we limited out easily yesterday. My buddy got 5 on his first dive and I got 6 on my first dive, then we struggled to get one more, but I found one 1/2 way through my second dive. We only saw 2 eggers between the two of us all day. And to think I was going to try Stuart :nono:

Gary,

I dont want to steal my brother's thunder about the grid system he devised but . . . . we put the four 10 feet pvc pipes firmly in the muddy bottom which started at seven fsw. As they sunk in well over three feet, the pvc pipes only made it to about three feet below the surface of the water. The pvc pipes were used as the 4 corners of a rectangle. The short side of the rectangle was 50 feet, the long side was 100 feet. We tied a line between the two 50 foot sides at both the front and the back of the rectangle. These two lines had a loop every 10 feet. We then hooked the 100 foot line into the corresponding loop at the front and back of the rectangle. We started from opposite sides of the rectangle hanging onto the line with our right hand and extending out to our left. That way we were covering 6 fett to either side of the line.We would meet somewhere in the middle. As it was a total blackout, it caused more than a mild pucker each time you would run into the other person. When we got the end of the line, we would unhook the line and move it over to the next loop 10 feet away and repeat.

At the end of the day, I was pretty impressed with the system my brother came up with to find his gun. We also got lucky.

The reason he couldnt stop and look for it ASAP was that he was late for picking me up at sansprit park.

Not that it changes the trip report appreciably, but we did release an egger. I had to listen to a ration of s__t from my buddies who dove Jupiter Sat about how they limited out with 3 guys plus scored a couple hogs. Nice.

If it make ya feel betterI herd Ft. Pierce got warm and dirty. I just herd though.
Rick

Gary,

My brother described it pretty well. It was a bear to get set up initially but once set up, it allowed us to cover ground pretty quickly. Once we covered the first grid, I pivotted the far pole off the near pole using the 100ft rope. By providence I kicked teh gun while setting the poles for the backline and we never needed to cover the second grid.

It was definitely beneficial to have the shallow water so that I could set it up w/ only a snorkle and could navigate the surface. 20ft would have been a pain. The lines definitely need to be as taught as you can get them so that there is little play in the guideline.


Grin,

I have definitely been spoiled by Stuart this summer. Prior to this summer, I nearly exclusively dove Jupiter/Juno. I have put in a bunch time in the last 3 months and until this weekend, have been pleasantly surprised by the conditions. I guess that my next step will be explore the Ft Pierce area and see what we can do.