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2010 St. Pete Open -August 20-22, 2010 Check this forum for details about the 2010 SPO.

 
 
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Old 08-24-2010, 09:34 AM   #1
Big Pig
Ken Jones
 
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Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: St Petersburg, FL
Posts: 1,450
Another good warsaw read

Since it has been determined by Tony and others that I am a liar and a cheat, you will probably not believe what you are going to read. I thought about posting this earlier but was waiting for Tony's sources to inform him about why deep water grouper (warsaw) was removed from the SPO. Surprisingly, nobody bothered to look through the archives.

When this discussion was hot and heavy the SPUC was split about leaving it in or removing it. Then the following thread was posted after the 2007 SPO. This thread and the fact that others were talking about getting trimix cert to chase grouper at 300 ft plus put the final in the coffin

http://www.spearboard.com/showthread...ghlight=warsaw



"Am I going to die?" Roaming gnome goes deep.
Welcome to the SPO 2007!!!!

The only tourney I know of that a 47 pound (ungutted) grouper will get you 70th pick. But what the hell it is all in good fun.
We got a run out to a "wreck" that I had from some numbers out of a book of loran numbers that I have but did not confirm. A buddy of mine gave me a "confirmed" number to the same wreck and it was 393 feet from my loran so I believed it was there. The only problem is that this wreck is a little bit deeper than most you would want to dive (around 256 feet). I was told that this wreck was a tiny barge split in half and there was a resident Warsaw that went 200 to 250 on it. I really felt that if I got this fish I might get at least 3rd or 4th pick at the table(sarcasm). The only problem was that we could not find the wreck just a huge fish show. It was probably the only time a huge fish show was a problem but I wanted the lead to hit the correct spot because current was moving hard.
John and I got geared up with jacked lp 120's and several different pony bottles attached and with the might of giants we slung them up over our heads and strapped them on. uh...no....in reality I whined like a little bitch for some help and barely managed to pick my crap up and get it on the gunnels. Lucky us the current was going so hard we had the buoy dragging so we decided to "chase the lead to 250".

Jug goes over and "splash go the morons".

The first 40 to 50 feet the water was blue and warm, just like diving dreams then the MURKY water came. Oh F'ing great I am going to dive 250 in 5 foot vis! After another 20 feet it became clear to 80 to 100 feet of vis and REALLY COLD. As in my nuts must have receded so far into my body they were what were making my ears ache. Oh well the murk layer made it dark as hell and we are freezing our asses off in these skins and we are going to f'ing WIN! Or at least that was what I kept screaming to myself as I went on down. So we go down another 70 to 90 feet or so and we see the wreck from about 100. The little barge that could be turned into the 100 to 110 foot ocean going tug that was. Why the hell could my bottom machine not see this thing? Here is a tip: If you can see the gag from 100 feet above him and he looks big.....he is. Just a tip. The water being that dark had the gags looking very white with rusty bellies everywhere. I keep falling and lock onto a nice 5 foot model and whack him behind the eyes. He promptly hauled ass through a door ripping my shaft out of his head and good bye. Then I settled on the sand beside the tug. I look at my comp and I got me a whopping 1 minute till deco time. I should be able to get at least 5 fish! Umm.....yeah. I had just set a knee on the sand when out from under the wreck slides Mr. carbo. He is maybe not quite as big as the one I shot down in the keys but a hell of a lot bigger than the one I GOT down in the keys. There is a big difference between shot and got. I figure he might have gone 80+ pounds and he swims up to me 3 feet away and just sits there. Look away....stay cool....don’t look him in the eye....load slow.....you are just a big dumb fish.....WAIT!! did I just say big AND dumb.....aint no such thing. When I engaged my shaft and when he heard that little click someone came and put rocket boosters on that fish. I mean flew and never even turned once. Oh well maybe he went to the other side so I swim around the wreck looking for him or someone just like him smiling and waving at 30 pound gags. I am passing up 20 and 30 pound gags? Only the SPO. Well looky there after 5 minutes I have my first deco stop at 50 feet for 3 minutes. Check air, 1800 pounds....no sweat. Start to go up and hit 180 check air, 1100 pounds ....huh?....ok a little sweat. Make it up to first little hang at 100 feet, check air, 700 pounds....ok this is getting silly. Of course while we were coming up we had many 60+ jacks we could have shot but those wont get you crap in the SPO. I mean a 60 pound jack is not even worth a slipper lobster (more sarcasm). We did our hangs and got out of the water and I did not even have to go the bail bottle but we did do the scrubbing.

I handed up an empty stringer.

Lesson learned: Use a line shaft, and you can run out of air REAL damn quick at this depth. Be prepared and don’t do this shit if you are the LEAST bit uncomfortable.

The rest of the trip was pretty damn fun and we only dove numbers that we found while driving around in the elbow. I found a nice bait show that was about 2/10ths of a mile in radius and we stayed on it or near it and produced hogs to 18 pounds (YAY Chuck Schnur first place hog, and Jon Herrera second place hog). I found myself a nice mutton at 10 pounds and swam by several 20 pound gags and 10 to 12 pound hogs to get. Once again only in the SPO! And last but not least Keith, who is ok diving 158 feet but, 160, no way in hell, got his best gag. He swam up to the boat trying to be a coquet but when I looked over the side and could see the tail down by his fins I knew it was a damn fine gag (47 POUNDS). I think he wanted to take an anchor chain and wear the thing to work like a necklace he was so proud.

Damn fun Tourney, we killed a lot of fish, and no one got hurt.


Some one took some picture so put them up.
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