photos courtesy of Bloody Decks Outdoors click for BD Outdoors Story

I’ve been telling you to click on the Punta Mita Expeditions banner to the right…

If you listened then likely you have been keeping your mouth shut and enjoying trips filled with 200+lb Yellowfin, Wahoo, Sailfish and Marlin not to mention the best Pargo diving in Central America all on the same day.

If you haven’t been, then you are missing out on the chance for huuuuuuge Yellowfin Tuna, like this 430 lb (potential World Record) one taken just two days ago there.

You can go with another charter, fisherman, whatever but there is no substitution for the Punta Mita program which Sebastian Melani has put together.  Fisherman have the ability to cover a lot of ground and depths and this doesn’t necessarily transfer to being able to put divers on the right spot consistently and having dove this area for many years and trained his Captains to set you up for the drifts, chum, handle the gear, and take care of you from the time you land to the last taco and cerveza.

I can’t promise you are going to see a 400lb Yellowfin Tuna, but I can assure you there is no where in the world that compares for delivering monsters and no better place to find them.

Book your trip today and get on it while it is going off!

CK

Note:

To help convince your wife, girlfriend, or pretentious diva dive partner to go down there, here is how to do it right, in style but affordable while still crushing the fish.

Punta Mita is the northern point of land closest to the fishing/diving spots. You fly in to Puerta Vallarta and stay in Punta Mita which is a quiet fishing town turned high end resort, golf, sportfishing, surfing destination.

Through PM Expeditions we stayed last time here:  St. Regis Punta Mita which was phenomenal.  They booked everything for us and the price was nearly half the advertised I could find anywhere else on the internet and the accommodations were unreal. Check it out.

Checking out the surf from our balcony. I surfed every day in an empty line up all to myself just steps from the bedroom

Not your typical spearfishing crash pad but after fighting big Yellowfins all day it was nice to come back to this

Morning wave waiting for the boat to pick me up out front...

Morning Dolphin Mahi Mahi

From Brandon Wahlers
“For the past 3 years Ive been putting a lot of effort and research into putting a trip together to this spot, and this year I was able to finally set it all up and get out to these few spots where I have heard of monster tuna being taken.
I managed to get out there twice before, and both trips were good, with fish up to 250lbs, but no chances at anything in the 300lb range.
This trip it was just Justin Allen and I on the panga diving, so I was stoked to have half the pressure on the fish as we had on the last two trips.
As soon as we made it out to the spot late that afternoon, we could see action all around: birds diving, bait popping, and nice tunas jumping. We tried dropping a marker buoy, but there was so much current that even with plenty of line we couldn’t get the marker to hold. Scrapping that Idea I quickly made the decision to start our drift about a mile up current of the spot, just in front of where the birds were working.
On my first dive to 50ft, I found the vis to be only about 15-20 ft, but I was immediately schooled by tuna from 80-200lbs that followed me up to the surface. The next dive I made was a to 60, and I saw some bigger fish in the 200lb range. Things were looking good, and I knew we had a chance for a monster.
Justin was still getting his rig ready in the boat and I told him what I saw. Him and the Pangero both hinted that I shoot one quickly so we would at least have some fish to cook on the grill that night since we were camping.
The next dive I saw mostly 80-100lb fish, and I lined up on one 5ft away, ready to get a brainshot. I ended up missing the brain by less than and inch, but fought him up to the surface quickly and clipped the buoy off to my shooting line. I went down to brain the fish, and saw my slip tip toggled perfectly. Struggling and spinning around a few times trying to dispatch the fish with my knife, the slip tip somehow pulled back out and stabbed me in the palm, opening up a fairly deep wound.

I got back in the boat completely confused and in pain, telling Justin I was done diving for the day, and he should take my big gun in and look for a monster. After his first dive he yelled that he was seeing big fish everywhere. I checked the sounder and it was lit up with tuna from 30ft all the way to 150. With my hand bleeding like crazy and nothing on the panga to fix it, I grabbed Justins 140 euro gun and got in the water. I made 3 dives in a row getting schooled by 80-200 lb tuna each time, with some fish coming within 3 ft of my face. This was as wide open as I’d ever seen tuna while diving.
The next dive, I was again schooled by fish in the 150lb range. I sank down to 67ft trying to see if there were bigger fish deeper, when looking up I saw a super long bottom sickle fin behind 5 fish in front of me. That being the sign of a monster, I had to almost push the 150 lb tunas in front of me out of the way, and I finally got a full view of this MONSTER tuna. Its sickle fins almost made it back to its tail, and it was an incredibly tall and fat fish, not swimming how the other fish were at all, rather it was waddling. As soon as it saw me, it started to move off pretty quickly, so I lined up and shot it just as it was going out of visibility from about 14ft away.
The fish took off like a freight train and towed me over 3 miles in over an hour. I was using Justin’s rig with 50ft of hard floatline and 50ft of bungee, and the clip on his buoy was not holding the bungee very well. For the life of me I couldn’t get the fish above 80ft, so all my dives trying to second shoot the fish were to at least that depth. The first 4 times I tried to get a second shot the fish would see me from 10ft away just as I was about to shoot and take off for another 5 minutes. I finally got a second shaft into the fish and it started to bleed a lot, really slowing him down. Soon enough I had the buoy clipped off at the shooting line and took my trusty Riffe 130 Euro down to shoot him in the brain.

Only once I got my hands in this fishes gills did I realize that he was WAY over 300lbs, an absolute toad!!
It took 3 of us to get him in the boat, and he ended up 77inches long, with a 61 inch girth.
Using the girth squared X length, divided by 800 formula the fish came out to 358lbs, truly the fish of a lifetime! Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find a certified scale within 100 miles to weigh him on, but Im still on cloud 9 after shooting this monster!!”

For more on Brandon Wahlers check out Team Riffe at: http://www.speargun.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=74&Itemid=37

Aaron Kirkconnell Scott and his big cousin Cameron. Same stoked smile on the first big yellowfin Tuna he has seen up close on his first bluewater trip

Yeah there were a few sharks around too....

Aaron and one of 8 Blackfin Tuna he shot in the few days we dove. He got the hand of it pretty quick and was only picking out the 25 lb'ers. Spoiled Rotten.

Aaron's first Wahoo at 50 lbs. I was on the surface beside him watching the whole thing screaming in the snorkel to swim towards them. On the drive over I had talked for 6 straight hours on how to hunt them and all the other bluewater fish, telling him things I don't even let on to my friends. He listened, and he already had a lot of raw skill and 15 years under his belt of being surrounded by the sport. He shot this first one from about 6 feet away and had his choice of the entire school. Mad skills. I'm scared he is going to be better than all of us...

Still smiling 6 months later I'm sure

Admittedly this one was a fluke. I was looking for Wahoo and a school of 10 big Yellowfins came up. I had the camera in my left hand and made the dive following them to a whopping 56 ft to take the shot. They all had long sickle fins back to their tails so I knew they were 130+lbs and was praying they were bigger. With a single Riffe 2 Atmosphere float and a 100 ft bungee I had him up within three minutes and Aaron put the second shot in him. Chad had the video camera so for fun I brought him up while he was very much alive and as he came to the surface snatched his tail out of the water. Predictably he went batshit and made a circle of whitewater about ten yards wide. His tail beat against my left bicep so fast and hard it was like getting hit with an axe. When I finally let him go my glove and my brand new dive knife got caught in the cable and I lost them both. Could have been my hand, or my leg or my neck. Just goes to show (practice what your preach) always kill your big fish before you try to get your hands on them. It happened the very next day with Lindsey grabbing a feisty one the same size and he lost all the bungee he had worked so hard to get to him and it took another 5 minutes to get the fish in.

I won't be doing that again. It didn't even make my muscles look bigger

Chad Morris with a stud Wahoo. WE never seem to have a bad trip when we go together.

Nothing better then seeing your friends happy. Chad Morris with the biggest fish of the trip and a huge smile on his face