Josh Summerville, 42, has been diving and spearing fish for a decade and a half. And on his time off from working as a dive grasp and boat captain at Panama Metropolis Diving middle, he did what some of us would count on: he went diving with a pair buddies.
Summerville and his friends Patrick Inexperienced and Ben Carpenter have been on the dive middle’s 36-foot Newton boat, known as the Metal Slinger, on Aug. 2. They have been 40 miles offshore Panama Metropolis Seaside, house port of the crew.
It was their first cease of the morning, and it began to rain. That delayed their first “drop” of the day into the Gulf of Mexico of the day and waited to be taught if there was lightning within the storm that may halt their dive. After 20 minutes or so the storm and lightning handed, and so they readied their gear to go deep.
“As we received set to go overboard a rainbow out of the blue confirmed, and somebody mentioned, ‘Okay, let’s get within the water and discover our treasure,” Summerville remembers, laughing.
They have been anchored on a live-bottom reef space the stretched to 156 toes, a spot locals name the “Three-to-5” area. It’s a widely known spot with all-time low and plenty of ledges that maintain marine fish, and Summerville has been diving there for years.
He descended in his scuba gear to about 100 toes and loaded his Ocean Rhino RX5 speargun that shoots a stainless-steel spear.
“The water was actually clear, and I appeared down and noticed an enormous hogfish,” he says. “I used to be shocked to see him, as a result of normally we don’t see many hogfish off Panama Metropolis. There are extra of them to the east close to Carrabelle or farther south in Florida. However there he was, and I went towards him proper off.”
The massive hogfish was about two toes out from a ledge, and as soon as Summerville received to the fish’s degree it began to swim away.
Summerville pursued it, ready for a very good alternative to shoot the fish. He virtually took a shot, however waited a bit for a greater angle, then raised his spear gun and fired.
“He was about 10 toes away, and I hit it good within the jaw, slightly below the attention,” states Summerville. “He tried to return below a ledge. However I received ahold of the spear shaft and pinned him to the underside till I may put him on a stringer.”
Summerville continued his deep dive and shot a mangrove snapper. Then he returned to the floor the place his buddies have been amazed on the dimension of his hogfish. However they’d no thought of its weight or what the present Florida report was for the species till they began house and received inside cellphone vary of shore.
“I received a buddy on the telephone and instructed him the fish was over 33 inches lengthy and he mentioned to get him weighed on licensed scales as a result of it could possibly be a report hogfish,” mentioned Summerville.
At Buddy Gandy’s Seafood in Panama Metropolis, Summerville’s hogfish weighed 24.2-pounds. It outstripped the lately set state-record hogfish of 21.7 kilos taken by one other spearfishmen final yr. That report fish was speared in 120 toes of water, roughly 100 miles off Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Summerland’s hogfish, which makes good tablefare, measured 35.55 inches lengthy, with a girth of 25.98 inches.
It has been licensed by the Florida Fish Fee as the brand new state-record hogfish. Florida marine data enable for speargun shot non-gamefish species, corresponding to hogfish, that are not often caught on a line.
The IGFA all-tackle report hogfish is 21-pounds, 15-ounces. Summerland’s hogfish probably would have bettered that world-record fish had it been caught with a rod-and-reel.
Summerville has speared bigger fish whereas diving, like a 50-pound cobia and a 49-pound gag grouper. However he’s by no means taken a state report fish, and a duplicate mount from a taxidermist is on faucet for him.
