Event: 1'st Annual Tristate Skindivers Polespear Meet
Conditions: flat seas, 79 degrees
Visibility: 3 -5 feet
Notable Gear: Crist Spears Phoenix Polespear, Mares Razor Carbon Fins, Mares Smart Apnea Freediving Wrist Computer
Diving Location: East Passage of Narragansett Bay
Water temp: 70 degrees surface
Morning started out with a good game plan and weather looking like conditions would cooperate, Hoping the fish were still where left them when scouting last week. The last two weeks has seen the fall influx of bait everywhere in the lower and upper bay so we planned on diving inside and trying to use the calmer conditions and bait to our advantage. An early start from Bristol boat ramp had us fogged in thick with less than 60 foot visibility and glass sea. Putting out at head speed to the east passage took an hour plus longer than the 30 minute usual trip with all the boats traffic in the fog.
First stop was large pier structure with 17-25 ft depth below pier dropping off to 30 + along the sides. Right off the back grabbed a tourny size tautog missed a beautiful fluke about 22 inches and lost a larger maybe 24 inches in the murk as it tried to keep up with it in the short visibility. Had to leave to pick up another diver at rendezvous point across the bay. Upon returning to same spot 3 of us were getting in all using Crist Phoenix Polespears. The Crist Phoenix polespear has a 6 1/2 ft long shaft with an 18 inch flopper head making it the ideal size for our dirty New England waters and plenty of backbone to punch a decent bass. I was the first over the side and kicked up to the edge of the structure and dropped to find a 29 inch bass sitting behind the first pole waiting to burst on the pods of peanut bunker and took him with shot through the gill plate. I swam over and handed the bass over the side and our poor captain grabbed it and had a couple of dorsal fin spines pierce his hand during the deck melee. My bad for not pithing the fish first, I felt terrible.
The next hour produced a couple of tautog and my bud picked a nice black sea bass under the pylons. Maneuvering polespears through the dock structure proved tricky so I began to approach the fish from the outside working in to fire into the holes int he structure where the fish would run to hide when you dropped on them. My captain approached me to tell me had just had a big black sea bass spine him through his dive glove and under his thumb nail while trying to get a handle on it after spearing it. He was heading back to the boat to check it out.
12:30 we picked up and headed to spot two. Spot two is another long cement dock structure with 50 foot depths underneath. Decent bass were ambushing bait as we threw the hook and set the boat. First diver in yelled over to "get our asses in the water, bass everywhere". Visibility in this spot was about the same 3-5 when down at least 20 feet. Almost every drop you would find yourself amid schools of borderline legal size bass. When i was separate from my dive buddies by 30 yards or so I dropped into a school of all 40 inch plus size fish, but having already secured my bass for the day surfaced and called them over to have at them . Other than recording your depth logs and monitoring surface intervals, a good freediving wrist computer (mine is the Mares Smart Apnea) also proves most useful in circumstances like these, to be able to tell others what depth your spotting good fish at. In this case yesterday, at 25 - 30 feet you could stop and hang out alongside the pillars and then the bass that scattered on your approach would come back in to shooting distance. Water temp as this depth was 65 degrees. Drops deeper produced no sign, they had there happy spot in the water column feeding. My captain was heading back to the boat with his hand in pain so we followed. Upon getting aboard he determined that the black sea bass spine had broken off deep under his thumb nail. Time to get off the water and get our captain some med attention. He was clearly in major discomfort and had ll he could do to handle bringing the boat back to dock and getting it on the trailer. Great friends needing med help trump weigh-ins, so there is always next year. Looked like the Tristate Skindivers had a great turnout and some excellent polespear fish weighed in. Thanks for a great day on the water with two great guys. Fall diving in the bay should only be getting better the next few weeks, get at it !
