It was August 22, 2009, The last day of the Louisiana Council of Underwater Dive Clubs (LCUDC) Spearfishing Rodeo out of Fourchon La.
The prediction was for 2 to 3’ seas and building as the day went on. Christy and I, and our friend Eric were aboard the “Sea Wolf”, our 23’ center console boat. A light crew of three, but on a rodeo day with 3’ plus seas predicted the extra space is a good idea.
We got to the first rig at about 8 am, Christy was the most anxious to hit the water so she went first and was followed about 10 minutes later by Eric.
After about 15 minutes Christy comes to the surface, and starts making her way to the back of the boat through a pretty strong current but with a decent Cobia – 30 lbs? At that moment in time her personal best (if that tells you anything). The fish was gut shot and gave her a hell of a fight. Excited about the success of her first dive of the day she hands her speargun/riding rig and the fish to Walter. Well………. Walter thinks Christy still has the riding rig and fish in her hand and takes the gun onto the boat. Christy looks up at Walter and says “you got the fish right?”. Walter replies “NO – You DO!”. Christy comes back with a “#$%^@ # I GAVE IT TO YOU!!!! #%$#@&er!!!!” and takes off toward the rig looking for her lost fish.
When Eric last saw Christy she was leaving from under the rig with a nice sized cobia well in hand and heading to the boat. Little did he know about what just took place at the back of the boat – Walter being dammed to hell for all eternity and Christy coming to grips with the fact that she just lost her nicest Cobia ever, when he sees one of the strangest thing he’s ever seen, a big fat Cobia swimming along – trailing a spear and riding rig. Did somebody on another boat lose this fish? Did it swim here from another close by rig? Certainly it couldn’t be Christy’s fish because last time he saw her she had that fish under control. So what do you do when you see something like that – Grab the riding rig!, get a nice fish and a free spear to boot! What a great Dive!
Eric grabs the riding rig, hits the surface and exclaims “Yall aren’t gonna believe what I FOUND!” Christy screams out “MY FISH – MY FISH! YOU GOT MY FISH – I love you ERIC you got my fish!!!” And all was right aboard the Sea Wolf once again – Christy had her personal best Cobia back, Walter was released from his banishment, Eric is a hero and has a great story. And that’s how the day started!
A little disappointed, but happy for Christy, Eric sets out once again for the rig. A few minutes later I, roll in and promptly loose my mask – a brand new $80 Cressi – I see it sinking below me, and take off after it, and catch it at about 50 feet. That was a close one, I’ve got a spare but that Cressi is the best mask I’ve used and I like it.
Now Eric passes on some good but not rodeo winning fish, so he heads to his safety stop and shoots a mangrove for the table. About that time Christy notices the tip of a speargun bobbing in the water between the two rigs and figures either Walter or Eric is just below fighting another nice Cobia. But the gun keeps bobbing and in that current it doesn’t take it long to make it past the boat and is now heading out into the open Gulf of Mexico. Realizing that somebody has lost their gun, Christy throws on a set of fins goes for it. But in the three foot seas she quickly loses sight of it – now what? Don’t you know every guy on that rig was watching her and they start calling out to her, giving directions “to your left – just a little further out!” With their help she retrieves the wayward speargun and makes it back to the boat pulling herself along with the tag line (it’s a 100’ long line that hangs off the back of the boat with a float on the end and she just did catch the end of it!). What a girl!
Once Eric got the mangrove on the stringer and untangled his cable he hits the surface and says “Did anybody see my speargun? I lost it trying to string a mangrove?”. Christy says “I got it for you and we’re even for the Cobia!”
Christy is still pumped up and knows there are bigger Cobia on the rig – Mostly because Eric says he saw a real nice one and she rolls back in to go get it.
Eric gets on board and is preparing for his next dive when he sees a speargun bobbing next to the rig. He grabs a hook and snags it. Christy hits the surface and don’t you know it – She comes out with “I Lost my @%$#!!! SPEARGUN!!!!”. Eric proudly exclaims – You Owe Me Another One ‘cause I FOUND IT!”
At this point Christy has lost a Cobia, Eric found it. I lost my mask and found it. Eric lost his gun, but Christy found it. Christy lost her gun but Eric found it. Now this is getting ridiculous - but the best is yet to come.
Done with this rig we take off for the circle rigs and start looking for the Big Cobia. After we hit a few spots Eric comes up with a good one, 50 plus pounds! – it won’t beat his best ever of 69 pounds but should be a Rodeo contender.
As we approach another rig its Christy’s turn. We drift by the rig, she rolls in, and we back off and watch for her to surface. After a while she does and has another nice cobia! This one is in the 40 plus lb range – And she’s just topped her best again and we’ve got more diving to do.
Happy with a limit of cobia, but tired after several dives Christy relaxes and lets me and Eric make a few dives. By now it’s getting on in the day, the water is getting rougher and we’re all wearing down by now. So we decide to start heading in. The plan is to stop at some rigs about half way in and see what’s there.
Well just before we start to leave Eric says “Hey, before we head in let’s take a couple of pictures out here where the water is still nice and blue.”
Eric takes out his camera, asks me to take a few pics and tells Christy she should do the same. I use Eric’s camera and get a few nice shots of his fish and then Christy proudly sits up on the edge of the open fish box holding the two Cobia she got. I get a couple of shots with Eric’s camera and then switch to my own. The boat rocks, the fish start to slip, Christy loses her grip and her biggest Cobia drops back into the open fish box –no problem right? Not on this trip! The nearly frozen fish hits the ice and the dam fish shoots out the side of the boat like somebody stomped on a ripe banana! Christy screams “Catch the fish!”. I throw the camera and take a futile swipe at the fish as it hits the water it sinks like a 40 pound anchor. “GONE – MY FISH IS GONE! “ That’s was my biggest Cobia ever! Christy can’t believe what just happened and is upset, mad, totally pissed off and furiously trying to figure out how to get her fish back.
She starts putting her gear back on with a look in her eye like a veteran marine that’s just been slapped in the face, a look of determination like I’ve never seen before. You know the saying “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned” This is where it came from. So I say – “hey babe – what ‘cha doing?” With a fixed jaw she looks up at me and says – “I’m going to get another Cobia even if I have to dive every rig out here. Now take me to that rig, and I’m not going home without a limit!” Eric and I both look at each other and raise an eye. At that moment Eric is wondering if 20 miles is too far to swim home all I can say is “Christy it’s not good to dive while you’re so angry – take it easy chill out for a few minutes”. I can’t really repeat what she said then – it’s not nice at all. As we get closer to the rig I’m trying to let her know that I’m concerned, so I asked her “how long are you going to be?” She replies in the same sharp fixed jaw tone “As long as it takes”. With that Eric looks up at me and says – “Man we may be here a while”. Christy rolls in and we repeat what we’ve been doing all day long. But before we can hardly get any distance from the rig and turn around she hits the surface and I can see that she’s shot her gun.
As quick as we can we head back toward her, kill the engine and get ready to get her on board. Now that we’re close I can see she’s got another Cobia – And it’s an even bigger one than the one she lost! I say to Eric- “I don’t care what we have to do but we can’t lose this fish!” We both head to the back of the boat, Christy hoists the fish out of the water as high as she can, Eric puts a death grip on it and pulls the fish onto the boat the rest of the way. Christy gets in and everybody is happy again, except the Cobia.
It seems that Christy wasn’t taking any chances with this one. The spear had entered through the fishes skull on the left side and the ice pick tip was lodged in its brain, there were stab marks on the right side of its head where she was trying to add another kill shot but in that position couldn’t penetrate the fish’s skull, so she stuck the 6” titanium Riff knife through on the left side of the skull - up to the handle. When she came to the back of the boat she had a hold of the knife with her left hand and had her other hand stuffed as deep into the gills on the right side as she could get it. Personally I think the fish jumped on board to get away from this crazy woman. But we had Christy AND her limit of Cobia aboard again. Eric and I both were relieved.
We headed in – stopped at a rig about ½ way back where we picked up some table fish – Christy gets a drum for the board and we all swam with a sea turtle for a while. Now that was really cool.
At the rodeo weigh in Eric’s 50 lb 6 oz cobia took FIRST place! Christy’s 48lb 7 oz Cobia took third. And in a fitting end to this lost and found trip the next day we found the camera! At the bottom of the fish box –
I lost count on how many things got lost and found that day, including my sanity, but that’s the story of the Lost and Found Trip. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t been there to see it myself.

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Truly a fantastic trip report, however for a trip to be elligble the trip report has to come from month and year which it occurs. All january trip reports posted in the month of 1/2012 will be elligble.

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Chris Grauer- "To protect, promote, and grow the sport of spearfishing" www.spearfishingplanet.com

I figured as much - The only reason I wrote that was that 10 years from now I dont think I'll believe it. It was a crazy trip.

Thanks for the opportunity to tell it to somebody!

Definitely a lot going on in that story. All in all sounds like a great trip. It's probably not good for us as spearos for you to publish a story that maybe thousands could read, NOAA, FWC and other regulatory agencies may read where you clearly broke the law/regs when you hunted and killed another cobia after the boat had already reached it's limit. I don't know maybe leave that part off the forums and save it for the bars.

Let me google that for you

The the bag limit for cobia in Louisiana 2012 is 2 per person. If you want to edit your post I will edit mine.
Thanks for being a responsible and conscientious spearo, welcome to the forum.

Chris

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Chris Grauer- "To protect, promote, and grow the sport of spearfishing" www.spearfishingplanet.com

That was a cool link.

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http://www.tampabayspearfishingclub.org

http://www.divebudz.com

Hilarious!
Chris, that link is awesome.

Send that to Gamble for Spearing Magazine.... Oh snap, everyone who is someone has already seen it on Spearfishing Planet!! LOL

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