Goliath Grouper Beat Down

It all starts out pretty relaxed. You barely notice the big blobs sitting on the bottom amongst the beams of the weathered old wreck.  A good fish comes into view and you calmly close the distance and pull the trigger.

As you head for the surface with only oxygen on your mind you glance once more below at your prize and notice the bottom has changed and doesn’t seem to be getting any further away.  It isn’t until the orange mouth opens that you realize its too late and the camouflaged Goliath Grouper has your fish deep in his throat and your spear is being tweaked testing the strength of your flopper and your shooting line.

More often than not, these greedy denizens of the Gulf and and East Coasts of Florida leave you with nothing but an empty shaft or worse, a broken shooting line and no shaft.

This is Ryan yesterday indulging the “endangered” species. This is one of 20+ fish from 40-400lbs that were on every wreck we dove.