Back in ‘05, the guys from Team HeadHunter did what many in the sport-fishing world thought was impossible — they caught the Warsaw Grouper, world’s largest legal grouper trophy fish.  The Warsaw lives 300+ feet down, in regions which are notoriously difficult for deep-sea fishing; to make it worse, they’re huge, unusually aggressive groupers.  There’s a reason those things hadn’t been caught before.

But when they learned about a cluster of Warsaws that had taken up in a sunken freighter, Team HeadHunter jumped at the chance to bring a few in.   They got more than they bargained for — about 300 lbs more — and they’ve got shots to prove it.  

While this story was covered in the sporting press at the time, Frank151 has just been passed an email from Team leader (and diver who caught this monster fish) Dan MacMahon, describing the entire experience of catching this bad boy for us, in full detail.  And it’s a damn good story. 

Follow the jump to read highlights — and to see some more pics of the beast.

We pick up the story just after Dan’s learned about the Warsaw cluster that’s been hanging out by the sunken ship….  

“I spent the last year plotting and planning. New and better equipment, lots of designing and testing of everything. Finally got it all done, planned the trip out and we loaded down HeadHunter with 60 tanks, 10 stage bottles, 4 O2 bottles, 400 gallons of diesel, 3000 lbs of ice and
about 5 million pounds of misc equipment.

Along on the trip were myself, Spearten, SimplyScuba, Jazzien, BucketOne and the Moose. We left port Wednesday evening and SpearTen
and I did the 425′ dive around 11:00 Friday morning.

We got to the wreck, a huge freighter that stood 50′ high in 425′…  SpearTen and I geared up, 5 tanks, 5 regs and all the other tech gear the dive required. We rolled and began the 3 minute descent.

On a deep ocean dive like this, you never know what water conditions are until you descend as they can change every few feet. [The conditions this time were] perfect!  The wreck came into view around 250’ and we touched down at 375’ on the deck….  I’ve never dove in any clearer water anywhere. You could see 150’ plus in any direction, and it was light and blue, no [artificial] lights needed.

There were a half-dozen Warsaws in the 40 - 100 lb range close to us, when I spotted the monster facing me about 100 feet away. I got my buoyancy trimmed out, and he came charging down the wreck towards me. Time began to slow down….  Many years of effort and dreams all came down to a few seconds. He went into an aggressive mode, changed colors and threw up his dorsal fin…. Just frigging awesome.

I had made a couple of barbless shafts, sharpened to a 2� needle point. I pointed my 52 inch SS Hornet and slammed a free shaft into the sweet spot. I almost rolled him. He started shaking back and forth, and I slammed shaft number two into his head. I swam over and grabbed him, thinking ‘OK, now what the fuck?’   

We crashed into the wreck at 397’ and I had my hands full. He was still moving around a little, and I decided that I didn’t want my 46-year-old ass tied to this fish, at this depth.  I put a PH on my kill spike and slammed into his head.   

I had been planning on lift-bagging him up, but I decided to pump air into his mouth and swim him up a few feet.  20’ up and 10 seconds of pumped air later, he took off and I watched him blast towards the surface.

 

I turned and watched SpearTen slam a spear into a 73 lb Warsaw’s head and stone it. We were a minute under our planned bottom time, so we decided to head up….   It took all four of the guys and a block and tackle to get the fish on the boat. We took some pics and headed toward shallower water.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 8th, 2008 at 10:09 am and is filed under Sports, Random, Nature, Animals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.