Diving Locally Lately

Well its mid July and Will is doing well he should be back at work soon. His leg is healing well and he nearly has full movement again, lots of physiotherapy and pool work are helping. He still cant walk for long periods but is getting there. It looks like he will be back at work late August at this point. The weather has been realy crappy for a few weeks now and is overcast today.
There have been some realy big storms and howling winds all along the coast.

Well, Will got home and was doing alright apart from not being able to use his leg his gilfriend was home from work and looking after him.
Meanwhile I had to go back to work but I called every other day to see how he was going and he had a bit of movement back but still had plenty of pain. Danni had to come back to work so his mum moved in to look after him. I called him on Saturday the 12th and he was doing ok and getting arround a bit on his crutches and sounded ok which was good.
I called again on the Monday and he told me he was back in the hospital and had got a Deep Vein Thrombosis in his leg. He told me he would give me a call when he knew what was going on. The way things are going it's going to take months before he is back on his feet.

It's Wednesday now and Will is getting better he's on some sort of anticoagulant and the swelling has gone down in his leg. He is getting around a bit better and has more movement in his leg now.

Will and I decided to head out again on Friday the 27th of April for a last look at things before the winter weather reared its ugly head. The days had been really nice with no wind at all and flat seas. We left the boat harbour early and were soon out of sight of land, we had a friend of Will's named Andy with us for the day to drive the boat once we were in the water. We arrived at the first Fad and got Andy set up to get some fish as once he had some he was boat driving for th rest of the day. Andy and Will dropped over the side and reported the water was warm with next to no current. They were soon surrounded by fish and in no time Andy had a nice sized Dolphin Fish in the boat. Will followed suit shortly after with a fish that would later be confirmed as a new State Record.

Insert Will fish pic.

Andy then took over from me in the boat and I was soon in the water looking to get a fish. After about 5 minutes I got my chance and got a nice sized fish for myself. We got in the boat and had a quick discussion on what to do next and being as we all had a fish we decided to head to another Fad. After travelling a little over half way we could see birds working in the direction of the Fad. As we got closer we could see them feeding on surface bait fish this was a good sign. We also noticed another boat in the area but that was not unusual at all.
Will and I got our gear together and I put up our diver's flag and we slipped into the water in a possition to drift past the Fad. There were fish everywhere and I could see that there were bait fish and small Tuna deeper in the water. This meant that the bigger Tuna were deeper down but with some chum we could get them to come up and hopefully get one. I first got another Dolphin fish and put it in the boat then returned to Will who also had one. Will's fish was giving him some trouble and had tangled his line so once he had it under contro I held the fish for him as he set about untangling his line.
I signaled to Andy to bring the boat over and retrieve the fish so we could get a chum trail going and hopefully raise the Tuna.
Thats pretty much when we got hit by the other boat that we had seen earlier. We had no warning it was suddenly just there ontop of us. I managed to get clear of the propeller but Will wasnt so lucky and got hit on the left leg. Andy was close by with the boat and we soon had Will on board only then did we discover the extent of his injuries. The propeller had cut through his leg just above his knee and severed his Femur which was poking out of the wound.
We quickly got it bandaged up and had him laying in the back of the boat while the boat that ran over us called for assistance on the radio.
We left them with instructions for where the ambulance was to meet us and to get a chopper out to us if they could and headed towards land. After a verry long 80 minutes we could see land and a chopper approaching us, they called us on the radio to confirm we needed assistance. They then gave us instructions and lowered a paramedic to us with a stretcher to put Will in. We got him in the stretcher and after a short time he was in the chopper then they took the paramedic off. they then headed off to hospital with a couple of TV news choppers following them. Andy and I continued our way to the harbour and cleaned up the boat when we arrived.

We then had to phone arround to find out which hospital will was in which took a while. We got hold of his mum and she told us she was with him and he had just come out of surgery. He ended up having a couple of screws put in to hold the bone together and all the muscle was trimmed and reatatched. The wound was then closed with something like 50 odd staples. He stayed in over the weekend and got out late on the following Monday night after the TV news did an interview.

Well things had been pretty quiet on the local fish front this year so Will and I decided to start diving in the deeper waters ( 200+mt) that are located about 55km off the coast of Perth. There are 6 FAD's ( Fish agregation device ) along the edge of the Rottenest Trench on the edge of the continental shelf. These attract game fish each Autumn when the warm currents arrive so we decided to dive them this year.
We started out diving them in early January 2007 and there were plenty of Dolphin fish around but they were pretty small. There were however large schools of Slimy Mackerel which are a favourite food of larger fish like Tuna and Marlin so things were looking good.
We set up chum trails each time we came across the Slimies and had some success attracting some small Tuna and a few Sharks but nothing worth Spearing.

Large Whaler Shark.

This pattern continued for the next couple of trips out so we decided to take a detour and dive off Rottenest Island one day whilst waiting for the wind to drop. Well the wind never dropped but we had a great day and encountered schools of large Spanish Mackerel. We had a new guy diving with us called Simon and he was amazed at the size of the fish.
Will managed to get 2 Spanish mackerel and I got 1, all were over 25kg.
Simon was unlucky and never got a fish so we gave him one to take home anyway, It's a rule we have on the boat that nobody goes home without some fish unless no one got any.

Wills Mackerel.

32KG Mackerel.

A couple of days later the wind did drop but Will had to fly back to work so Simon and I went out to check things out. We decided to dive the Fad's in the morning and then to head NNE 35km after lunch and try a lump I had spotted on a chart but had never dived. It was a magic day from the start and we saw Tuna jumping and lots of dolphins on the way out. When we arrived at the Fad's there were a few Dolphin fish so we got in and simon soon had his first real fish. I wasnt interested in getting any at this stage and wanted something bigger so we headed off to another Fad 5km away. When we arrived the fish were bigger so I got one then let Simon get another then took a second myself. We both had our bag limit so we decided to head to the lump.

Simon with his first good Fish.

Simon's best so far.

The lump rises up from over 500ft to just on 85ft and is a bit of a fish magnet we saw lots of large Tuna jumping and birds working but were unable to get onto any good fish. We will deffinately be going back to this lump in future.

When we were next in Perth we decided to go back out to the Fad's to see how big the fish were and they were alot bigger. We ended up with 2 each and set up a chum trail on a Fad that had slimies on it but after an hour nothing had arrived other than a Shark then it went away as well. It was getting on in the day so we decided to go home and try again a few days later. There was no wind and the Ocean was as flat as it ever gets so we had a nice relaxing cruise back home from 65km out at sea.

Dolphin Fish.

Will's Dolphin Fish.

I filleted the fish when we got home and made a load of Sushi then we sat down to a dinner of Dolphin Fish Sushi and a nice bottle of White Wine.