On a windy day of the first week of January, I dove for cabrillas on a dropoff. I saw some groupers but since I shot a few in the last week, I was not interested in anything smaller than a world record (31 pound for leopard grouper). It was nice to see all those fish anyway. I don’t take their presence for granted anymore; not after many weeks of very slow activity.
The owner of Offshore Lifestyle, which had just saluted me from his boat while I was in the water on the grouper spot, had taken wahoos the day before, so I decided to go checkout a wahoo spot a few kilometers away.
The visibility was absolutely terrible. I could not see the bottom before almost touching it. I was diving on top of rocks at 25 meters. I’m sure I could have shot groupers there, but that was not my objective. I scanned the upper water column.
On my second dive I shot a 25 pound yellowtail right in the head. Not a wahoo, so I dragged it to the kayak and headed back. This time I shot an amerjack… not a wahoo…. So I tied that one off and tried a third time. The sun was going down.
This time, I waited a little longer on the bottom, but sure enough a shape appeared in the muck. It was another yellowtail. I took the shot. I stoned it dead. The shaft continued its trajectory and sank somewhere in the muck. I headed back to the surface, only to be stopped. The shaft barb had caught on something. No problem, I have a reel! Or so I thought…
line around the handle!
I pulled a little harder, the reel was not doing its thing. Gulp. I was 15 meters from the surface. The visibility was so bad that I knew I would not find my gun if I let go. I checked my reel… the line was entangled around the handle! I tried to undo it. I was still good on air. The knot was hopeless. I couldn’t go back down to see what was up with the shaft.
Just as I prepared to let go of my favorite gun, the shaft freed itself! I made it to the surface with the gun! I may get a belt reel… I never thought of cutting the reel line…
I designed this quickly as a solution to the belt reel problem. This would be in a small pouch on the belt. Something would have to prevent the line from coming out for no reason. Perhaps something would have to break for the line to be released. After use, the line could be put back on the spool easily since the spool can be removed… If I had a 3d printer close by I could try it.
oups, this would work better.
Or maybe a lateral solution :
