A Terrible Way To End The Perfect Day...

foreign how is it going boys and girls welcome back to us Waterman my name is Aaron Young you know my lovely fiance Madeline she had the day off of work today no selling houses today we're shooting fish it's one of those weather days you pray for it's an absolute slicker that's what we call them water is Crystal Clear we've got the spear guns I've got big cameras little cameras I got the Drone hopefully we can find some fish the agenda for today is enjoy the day shoot a couple fish I'm actually going home to Titusville in Central Florida in probably two days from now we're starting the ginu build the little boat so very excited about that and I figured since I'm going home we'll hopefully bring some fish home to the family so that's one of the goals for the day shoot some fish enjoy the day and have some fun see you in the water [Music] you're gonna die you're gonna die it is full-blown Bahamas water like unreal Flair [Music] welcome back underwater everybody I actually had a couple comments lately people saying I always say it's never this calm or never this nice and quite honestly it's not very often we've been having some good days lately but I think that's the Instagram syndrome where you don't realize there's six other days this week I didn't film I only post one video a week but I normally only try and film on the best day this is very first drop I left that clip or all you can see I jumped in got myself situated dropped down there's just big big mangroves everywhere being super mellow they're pretty mellow first drop so they don't really know what I'm up to yet just trying to wait until I had that broadside shot mangroves tend to go a little bit crazy so a lot of times I'll try and get my hand behind them on the other side of the spear because even though there is a Flopper sometimes they can still go crazy enough to make that Flopper fold back down foreign and bleed what there's big mangroves all over so this is something I haven't mentioned in a while I'll get myself situated get my gun loaded back together before I take the fish back to the boat loading your gun does um use a lot of energy so if you get that gun loaded then swim back to the boat you're kind of starting your breathe up ahead of time it just saves a little time for me so I've got my gun loaded started to catch my breath as I slowly swam back to the boat and went and dropped that fish off and this bottom I think I sh I can't remember if I showed it it's like 42 to the bottom just sand around it and kind of a little hump with some Coral heads and rock and hard bottom but fish just I don't dive this spot very often maybe once or twice a year but it just seems to always be loaded some days there'll be a bunch of black groupers here I saw some small ones but lots and lots of mangroves we saw a couple muttons that we left alone to but I love my mangroves and this fish is just not you can see I definitely could have taken a shot by now he's just being a little squirmy um I just wanted to wait until I knew I had the right away and another thing I see a lot of people do is they want to grab their gun the fish and the shaft all at the same time as long as you have the shaft or the fish the gun's coming with you there's no reason to make yourself Tangled Up or have the opportunity to get tangled up by having everything in a bundle Madeline was chasing around a big yellow Jack and it just wasn't having it wouldn't come around so I actually dropped my gun to try and get it to do a U-turn and come look at the gun A lot of times that'll work if you drop something in the water column they'll come check it out so I swam back down to retrieve my gun um you just see the amount of life so many Snappers and Grunts and all kinds of other stuff anyways went back down and dropped my gun in a couple of really nice Snapper came in I figured you know when I'm down here it's waiting comes around that corner and gives me the broad side huh I can't believe how big these main girls are what a way to start the morning look at the size of those things those are full-size mangroves to give you a realistic number 25 inches wow a shot do you like the ones you see deep in the Gulf all right you ready baby um so this is our second spot very similar spot just a hump these spots are really isolated I think that's why a lot of fish stack up on them um but I had I grabbed an older gun I gave her the banana gun the gun she was shooting was more of a kind of a shallow water gun and it didn't have the range you needed with this clear water but we got up on the corner of this kind of where the current was passing in or a lot of fish stacked up and you can see she pauses on her way down she has trouble clearing her ears she doesn't realize this but she's about a 70 80 foot diver she just has what I call a sticky ear on her drops she has to slow down to be able to clear it she's normally doing minute 30 minute 40 Dives at like 40 feet but we've been working on that but she had a couple of missed shots on the first spot with that shorter gun but we got her this bigger gun let her get a little warmed up and he lines up and plugs are a nice mangrove and see if she gets it up off the bottom and tries to get it to herself and grabs the other side of that shaft like I said a lot of times those mangroves are a little squirmy and they'll work them work themselves off there and I wanted to linger just to see if that action brought anything else in as I always say action brings action you can see everything's a little stirred up but it didn't bring any bigger fish in this particular time that's my girl you got him got your knife you know the drill so before you gut him put your gun back together leave them on the tip of the spear that way if something comes into the guts you're ready to go you know what I mean foreign [Music] so if you're not familiar that's me grunting a lot of times it'll bring fish in there was a a mutton off in the distance but just wasn't having it I see a nice mangrove start to line up and a little towards the end of my dive and just didn't give me the shot I wanted [Music] so I'm actually holding on to Madeleine's Mangrove if you're wondering we didn't I want to swim all the way back to the boat we're about 200 feet from the boat so I just figured I'd hang on to it and get down low kind of get in the middle of everything and again another nice Mangrove comes in just trying to be patient I feel like I've been off lately I normally have a decent amount of stone shots just haven't had many so I was trying to be patient on this one and I got lucky there 's a pretty good look at bleeding the fish you can see I'm looking for that clear membrane I get a lot of questions about this maybe I'll make one specific video titled brain and bleed but you can see I just go right under that membrane and all the way through and it opens right up the snap of Slayer oh you gotta show them [Laughter] Alan got her a nice one here hold him up it's a good one big mangroves for this time of year yay love them on to the next this is unbelievable it is never this clear so we actually ran in a little bit there's a wreck I wanted to check I've been by this wreck a bunch of times I've never seen the water like this I've never actually even doved the wreck I've never been in on it I fished it but I've never dove on it so I'm extremely excited um you can see it right here it gets kind of dark maybe I'll throw the Drone up or something but gonna hop in and take a look at this thing it's a good day when your boat has a shadow look at these permit oh my God I don't even think I'm gonna bring a gun I think I'm just gonna bring the big camera do that yeah so as I said this is the first time diving this spot um I actually had so much footage I'm gonna make a separate video just about the permanent spawn um so that'll be on maybe a different day so keep an eye out for that if you want to see that and um I'm gonna shut my mouth for a couple minutes and let you guys just enjoy this it was really a magical experience to see these permits stacked up like this foreign unbelievable foreign that was great wow that was magical hopefully oh a drone's yelling at me hopefully some of that I know that's why I hopped out I don't want to burn ourselves up on the current there's a bit of current moving through but that was that was magical didn't even shoot anything and that was just a a joy to see but we're gonna keep moving along check it off the list that was the first time I dove it and that was spectacular I'll probably never come back because it'll never be that good on to the next kind of stretch the lungs a little bit go a little deeper I can't remember if I said it I don't know if the camera picks them up but there's a bunch of permit on this spot too there's kind of permanent all over the place today they're actually spawning right now this time of year in the spring they all stack up on their favorite wrecks and rock piles and make more baby permits um but because of that they are closed beginning of April they shut it down I think through like end of July but that's why we've been seeing so many I just couldn't remember if I mentioned it I wanted to mention it just in case anybody was wondering I'm a big school of them I don't know if the camera sees them but I'm sure you'll see them once I get in the water so this is my first drop on this spot really cool spots just these big giant rocks out in the middle of nowhere normally quite a bit of Life on them and in the back of my head I was secretly hoping to see an African pompano I've seen him here before I don't know why they like this spot typically African popping over targeting bigger structures or wrecks and stuff like that and for some reason they like this area and permanent African pompano Jacks they all like similar structure they want something big with a lot of bait and food and whatnot around it but it was pretty cool to see these permanent on it like I said they are spawning and during the spawn they are closed to harvest you cannot take them whether it's rod reel or spear fishing you're not allowed to harvest permit during the spawn down here anyways man there's a lot of them and we had this giant School of jack crevalle come in and just reminded me of being on a wreck This is Everything you'll see on the wrecks and some of the bigger structures we hunt where you will see African pompano so it kind of gave me a little hope like hey maybe I actually may have a chance at seeing one here foreign that's so crazy I saw a permit horse hijack Yellow Jack and Jack crevelle no African pompano the only Jack we were missing was a uh amberjack so to this point I always talk about keeping YouTube land real to this point on this spot I've taken eight Dives up and down eight times hoping for an African pompano I've seen other fish that I could have shot was just being patient like man hopefully I'll get that opportunity so this is my ninth dive I'm starting to think there's there's no chance I'm gonna see one so this Yellow Jack comes in gives me a good shot perfect Stone shot really stoked with it um and as I always say action brings action I don't know if it was the noise of the gun me moving the fish being shot and I look up and there's two African pompano sitting right in front of me the timing of that is really hard to believe I think that's one of the reasons I do love filming because you can't make this stuff up and you even heard me say it on the surface how have I not seen an African pompano um really just funny timing you can't make that up I shot that yellow Jack ET so I get that yellow Jack secured and in the boat and Catch My Breath trying to compose myself I can hear Madeline hollering at me I actually put the flashers in the water to see if I can get these things to come in I hear her hollering and I'm trying to figure out what it is I thought she was looking at the permit and this African pompano is way up off the bottom kind of checking out the flashers and comes in should have taken a shot right now about a second before that and I had I hesitated just a second and I'm going to slow this down I take a shot and the fish turns the second I shoot and it doesn't go through both sides it just goes through one side and I'll pause it here you can see it's in and out the same side which means it doesn't have a lot to hold on to let you watch it fast again I just I waited half a second too long and it was a really crappy shot I knew it right away so my plan is I'm gonna baby this thing I don't really have a good chance what it's holding on to is just barely scanning a little bit of meat in the head I didn't hit anything important I didn't hit any bones um I know it's the odds aren't good that I'm gonna get this fish in so I'm just really trying to baby it and uh Madeline doesn't realize how crappy the shot is and I went to holler at her and she had already Dove and she's just trying to help she has no idea that I took a crappy shot and it she felt like this was her fault and it really wasn't she went down to try and help and get a hold of this fish and unfortunately it tore off and I'm gonna pause this so you can see this was not her fault if she had a second gun maybe she could have put a second shot in it but you can see it's holding onto nothing you can see the entire shaft and Flopper it's just barely skin there so the second she put a little bit of pressure on it it tore out and the odds are when I started to grab that fish it was going to tear out anyways and she feels terrible about it but honestly it wasn't her shot or her fault excuse me I just I took an awful shot just really bad timing so I try to get myself what I thought was together um try and recover from that heartbreak again not Madeline's fault I took a crappy shot I should have known better I should have had her have a gun in her hand and I'm on my way down very next dive and I see the other African pompano come in um kind of does the same approach comes broadside but just not close enough that I want it or where I want it and I'm thinking I'm going to take a head shot and I'm like no it's too far so I go I'm gonna shoot it through the tail that's a good meat holding shot there's a lot of tendons back there and I hit this thing dead on the spine and it doesn't penetrate um which I just I couldn't believe I A lot of times that's not the shot that I want but if you can't get a good shot that's a great shot because there's a lot of tendons in the tail and I know it'll hold I don't know so I'll slow this down and show you again I thought I was going to take a long headshot and I said that's a bad idea so I moved my gun to the back I'm going to shoot it through the tail works a lot of times I just hit it what I'm thinking is dead on the spinal cord and if you've ever flayed an African pompano they have a very big rigid spinal cords so I think it just stopped that shaft dead and unfortunately didn't penetrate and the fish swam off and I really hate leaving injured fish out there I'm extremely confident that both those fish lived neither were um anything important one was a skin shot and one it just tapped the spine the fish swam away just fine so I'm confident that both those fish are okay but um long story short I let my emotions get the best of me having one bad situation bleed into the other and um ended a pretty spectacular day in a bad way that was a pretty terrible way to end a great day obviously you've seen the footage I um well babe you're gonna show them absolutely oh no you got to keep it real so guys first the first fish I mean obviously we already you already saw the footage but my my current thoughts it felt like the second night it was kind of a kind of a going away shot the second I pulled the trigger it felt like we turned that pump off felt like the fish turned and quarter or a quartered away from me and I hit just the outside of the Gill plate um just a terrible shot bad timing and then the second fish was kind of doing the same thing and I'm like I'm not gonna throw the same shot at it so I decided to shoot it in the thick piece of the tail because the African Pompano's tails are really hard and it's real tendony and the Skin's real tough and it had been a great holding shot and looked like it went in and I I don't know I don't know maybe it just didn't penetrate maybe it hit the bone um and it just pulled right out but what can you do it would have been a a pretty big cherry on top of an awesome day still still an amazing day just hate to end on a low but what can you do uh enough talking and crying about it um I don't know if this may be the end of the video it may not if it is you know the drill if it's not you'll know shortly [Laughter] so yeah

Channel: Key West Waterman

Views: 881,736

Keywords: Spearfishing, Freediving, Key west, Fishing, Saltwater, Saltwaterfishing, Fishing Videos, living in paradise, hammerhead shark, Sharks, Florida Keys, Wreck diving, wreck spearfishing, African pompano, valbanera, ship wreck, valbanera wreck, ship wrecked, bad day

Id: keMHq0ionSU

Length: 29min 22sec (1762 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 24 2023