This is a series of three related stories that took place in the 60s when I was 16 years of age and dumb enough to try almost anything. I met my then soon-to-be diving partner at a boat ramp on a freshwater lake where he was water-skiing with his girlfriend at the time. She didn’t know how to drive a boat very well and he asked me if I did…and I did. I said that I have my own skis at home a couple of blocks away. Thor was his name, tossed me his car keys, and said go get them. Now we just met and the trust was already quite evident, something that would be unheard of today. Thor didn’t even ask my age or if I had a driver's license. So I went and got my skis and returned and began towing Thor around the fairly large lake…then he towed me around and so started a friendship. He was about twice my age and single and was a chiropractor (bone bender).
Thor was a very good free-diving spearfisherman. He had represented the USA in several competitions on the island nation of Malta. So I had my work cut out for me if I was going to dive with this guy. Thor free-dove easily to 80 feet spearing large groupers. My first hand encounter with this kind of diving was on a trip with Thor and 4 other divers, three of which had represented the USA in free-diving spearfishing events, one of them was the captain of the team.
The waters off the east coast of Florida back then were nearly gin clear. When I followed the divers into the water and saw one dive down 60 feet I knew I was in deep trouble. I had no idea that it was that deep. All I could do was watch from the surface and learn in the hopes that one day I could make it down that deep. I think that I had only made it down to about 20 feet that first day.
So we can fast forward to the title of this story…Goliath Grouper…these are very large fish. The first trip to the reefs off West Palm Beach, Florida was an ill-fated attempt at spearing these huge fish, some of which went well over 400 pounds. We lost all of our spears right out of the gate and had not one single fish to show for our efforts. So we went back home empty-handed on that first trip and stayed up nearly all night re-rigging much heavier spears. The spear tip was about 6 inches long with 10 feet of 1/8 inch stainless steel cable, tied to 30 feet of 3/4"hemp rope. The spear is only used to send the spear point into the fish. I was the rope man on this 2-man team. Thor would dive down and I would follow off to one side. When he fired his CO2 spear gun, I would immediately drop all of the rope except what was around my wrist. I would swim up to the top of the reef and find a large rock to tie the rope off quickly in an attempt to slow down these groupers on their first run to escape us when speared. Once the fish was restrained and had nowhere to go, Thor would spear the fish again to kill it, and then we would drag it over to the boat. This team operation worked to perfection, well most of the time. There was at least one time when I couldn't find a large rock to tie off to and went for an underwater ride.
So now let me set the stage for what began a bit earlier that morning. We started off in much shallower water to spear smaller Goliath Groupers of up to 100 pounds. The larger fish were out in a little deeper water. There were 5 divers and Spooky, Thor’s dog on this rather smallish all open16-foot boat. We had boated about 8 or 10 smaller fish and then went on the hunt for the “BIG BOYS”. We found the same exact ledge as the previous day. This reef formation was so large that you could drive a truck thru it and out the other side. It was like 2 reefs with a large cap over the top of both sides. There were deep caves that went back into each reef section. From the water's surface, it was about 10 feet down to the top of the reef and another 15 feet down to the sand bottom. When you dove down to the bottom you could see all the way out the other side, and the huge Goliath Grouper were stacked under that ledge like a stack of cordwood ready for the fire. You could easily count 8-10 fish at any one time, and they were not much afraid of divers.
So Thor and I accounted for 2 fish in the 350-pound range. The other 2 divers each had one fish in the 250-pound range. Now the bottom of the boat was already covered from side to side with smaller fish and you had to walk between them to try and boat your fish. Those Big Boys took 4 divers working together to boat these fish. We were now nearly swamped, as we probably had close to about 1200 pounds of fish in the boat, and one diver was still missing. We no sooner got that last fish in the boat when I heard a holler for help. About 25 yards away was the lost diver pulling what looked like the Titanic on the water's surface. It was with no doubt the largest Goliath Grouper I have ever seen. He shot it literally with a 12 Ga powerhead 3 times before subduing it. This fish was close to 10 feet long and nearly half that wide in the middle, and most probably weighed well over 900 pounds. NOW WE WERE IN BIG TROUBLE !!! All five of us slipping and sliding on Jewfish slim trying to get a foothold to grab ahold of this massive fish in an attempt to bring it abroad on a boat already on the verge of sinking. We tried for over 30 minutes to get the fish’s head over the side of the boat and then let the waves slide it into the boat, which worked well for the other large fish but it was not happening on this day. We had to continuously run the bilge pump just to keep ahead of the water that was coming into the boat from the waves every time we tried to boat the "Titanic". Then one of the divers grabbed a knife and jumped over the side and gutted the fish right then and there, while in the midst of sharks swimming around the boat…and boy! did we draw those sharks in with the guts of that fish.
We hadn’t noticed much about a boat circling around us all the time we were trying to boat that huge fish. It wasn’t until nearly 8 years later at a spearfishing convention in Miami that we saw ourselves on the big screen. That boat had been filming our previous actions of boating… or trying to boat that huge fish… Everyone in that auditorium gasped at what they were seeing on the big screen. There were only three of us in that room that was on that trip. We were introduced to the audience as the divers on that boat. The guy that did the filming that day didn’t even know we were in that audience. When we finally got that fish aboard, we only had about 4 inches of gunnel above water and we still needed to navigate thru a treacherous inlet to get back to the boat ramp. The tide was a strong out-going and the wind was from offshore making for a dicey situation. The 70 HP motor was wide open and we were only making a couple of feet forward movement at a time. The tide would pull us back a couple of feet and the wind and the motor would move us forward a few more feet. The wind would build a big 3-foot high wave above the motor that broke just behind the motor pushing us forward at a very slow pace. We all had our fins and masks on and I had a hold of Spooky in case we went under. It seemed like an eternity before we made it to calmer water. We pulled over to a shallow flat and gutted all the fish one by one to help lighten up the load in the boat. We still needed to get this barge up on the trailer and out of the boat ramp. To say we drew a crowd would be an understatement. The little Dodge Valiant with its 6-cylinder engine was no match for the enormous weight it was trying to pull against. It took 2 pickup trucks in a tandem pull hooked up to our car to get this over-weighted boat out of the water and on flat land. The tires were nearly flat and luckily one of the pickup trucks had a 12-volt air pump so we could get the tires back up to looking like they might make the 65-mile trip back home.
To give you an idea about those sharks I mentioned…one of the 300-pound fish had a double half-circle bite mark into the side of its body. I could insert my entire finger into the tooth hole. That bite mark measured 14 inches wide by over 12 inches high….that, my friend was a very very large shark indeed. We figured that it might have been from a large female Tiger shark that has been sighted in that area.
We were well exhausted at this point but needed to make it back to the fish house to sell our fish. We called the owner but said we wouldn’t be able to get there before 11pm. He met us and we unload all but that largest fish. The fishmonger said that he could not sell a fish that large…his cut-off weight was around 400 pounds and our two just made it. It was a good payday but now we had to ice down “Ole Brutus” for the night. I got the honor of coming back the next day to fillet that big boy out. Next door to Thor’s chiropractic office was an English couple that had a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant that had fish and chips every Friday afternoon. So I filleted that fish and cut it up into 6-inch square chunks and wrapped it in freezer paper and put it in my parent's home freezer. We sold that restaurant all of that fish, which took some time. The fillets were over 5 feet long by 3 feet wide by 18 inches thick. I had never before or have ever since filled a fish that large.
To give you a little more perspective on just how large this fish was, the above photo of our second trip, shows all of those fish were about 2 feet below the limb of the tree where the block and tackle was located. In order to get this big 900 pound fish out of the boat, we backed the boat in under the block and tackle, and with three of us pulling on the rope to try and hoist the fish up and out of the boat. We were outweighed and the fish settled back down into the boat and we were all hoisted off the ground by the sheer weight of that fish. We had to bring in another vehicle with a trailer hitch and tied the rope to the hitch and pull the fish up as high as it would go and then pull the boat out from under the fish. The entire tail of the fish was about 2 feet on the ground. I measured that limb the next day and it was 9.5 ft from the ground. This was indeed a really large fish and I am so sorry that we didn't get to photograph it. I did manage to get my parents camera to photograph our second trip. The story on that trip is below.
The third part of this related story on these giant fish stems from my conversation with my Uncle Martin, an Ole Georgia Cracker farm boy that moved to Miami back in the 50s. My conversation went something like this: I told him the story about our second trip and the amount of fish we brought back home. I then said that I bet you (uncle) that I can put more fish in your boat than you ever imagined, and you will have to say “STOP”…or I will pay for the entire trip. Now being an Ole Georgia Cracker farm boy, Uncle Martin didn’t think this was possible as he didn’t get to see the fish of the second trip since we sold all but one of them, and he never saw the big one I had to fillet. So Uncle Martin had no idea what he was in for when he took on my bet.
So the follow-up third trip included Uncle Martin, Uncle Chester (Junior), my Dad with Thor, and I doing the diving. So once again we have 5 grown men…no dogs this time, in about the same size boat with maybe a bit higher sides but only half the HP (35 HP) in the motor. We started off much the same as the previous trip in shallower water for smaller fish and worked our way south for the larger fish. We found the same ledge/reef formation and anchored up on top of the reef. On this trip, I made 12 Ga shotgun power heads for our spearguns. This takes all the extra work out of having to subdue these huge fish with ropes…the 12 GA does all the work. We dove in tandem…Thor dives down and I stay up on top to watch his back. When he starts back up, I then begin my dive down…kinda like having eyes in the back of your head for those sharks that I had mentioned on the previous trip.
So Thor dives down and bangs the first fish and I helped him get it up to the surface and we swim it over to the boat. We had the Bowery Boys hand us a piece of anchor rope to put through the fish’s mouth and out the gill plate and then handed the rope back up to the “workers”. They had the job of figuring out how to get those fish up and into the boat…we offered little help as there was really no room for 5 of us. So we hoped that they would figure it out before the next fish was ready to be brought in. I wanted my uncle to fully appreciate the moment before he would eventually holler "STOP". Thor and I swam back to the ledge and I started my dive down to where there was a small canyon cut into the reef bottom. I saw a very large fish moving at a high rate speed down in the canyon heading towards the ledge. I swung my gun right over the top of the head of the fish and fired. When the bubbles cleared from the shotgun shell blast, the fish was upside down on the sandy bottom…” Dead-Fish”. I swam over and grabbed it and hauled it up to the surface, all on one breath of air. Thor showed up to help at the right moment. Good thing for the buddy diving system, as I was rapidly running out of air in my lungs. I hadn't realized that this fish was as large as it was because I didn’t see all of it. I only mainly saw it from the top. Well, this one was over 400 pounds. Oh No!!! I hope that I don’t have to fillet another big one again.
When we got that fish back to the boat, we again ask for the rope. Uncle Martin is now beginning to sweat a bit and my other uncle and my Dad are dumbfounded at what they are seeing, as we already have nearly 700 pounds of fish in the boat. So back we go for one more fish. I thought that this one might do it for Ole Uncle Martin. Thor dives down on another fish and bangs him back up under the ledge. As he was coming up he signaled me of a fish on the bottom. I dive down and swim under the ledge and grab the fish by the gill plate and start back up when Thor comes back down to help me. We swim that fish over to the boat and we didn’t have to say a word. The boys just handed us a rope in total amassment. We began to swim off and reloaded the powerheads and we were just about to swim back over to the ledge, thinking that my uncle would be giving me the high sign any minute now. Just then we heard hollering and looked back to see this last 300 pound fish somehow had come back to life after a shotgun blast to the head and was trying to swim back down to the bottom with these 3 men hanging onto the rope. The side of the boat is tipping over nearly to the point of taking on water over the side. We quickly swim back over and I hit the fish with a second 12 GA power head right in the top of the fish’s head. Now when one of these 12 Ga. power heads goes off underwater, there is a large amount of gas released that blows back out of the fish as air bubbles…a lot of bubbles. So you don’t see very much right away until all of the bubbles clear. OK! He looks dead to me, and we needed a rest from this non-stop action. So Thor and I get in the boat and help pull that fish into the boat. About 5 minutes later this fish comes back to life again, slapping his huge tail right against the motor control cables, knocking them completely off the motor. We can’t shoot the fish in the boat with a power-head as we would blow a hole in the bottom taking us down to visit with “Ole Davey”. So a sharp knife into the brain did him in for the last time, hopefully.
Did I hear my uncle say “ STOP"? Yep! Ole Uncle Martin had just about seen enough…you win. The entire back of his boat up to and in between the seats was wall-to-wall fish slim and huge basking bodies of Goliath Grouper...back then we called the Jewfish. We got the cables back onto the motor and made a slow... very slow return trip back to the boat ramp. It was all that motor could do was keep us moving forward at a snail's pace. Thankfully we didn't have the same problems with the tide and wind as we did on the second trip and in getting the boat out of the water, but my uncle's truck had all it could handle with getting this load out and back home.
We did manage to make it back home but it was late, so we had to ice down the fish for the night as we could not get in touch with our fishmonger until the next day. We did gut the fish before we left for home and put ice blocks in the cavities to keep them from spoiling. We decided to do a photoshoot with some of these fish as we didn't have the chance to do so on the second trip. The next morning I borrowed my uncle's truck and we loaded the fish in two truckloads to our favorite fishmonger, but we had to do some sweet talking to get him to buy my oversized fish the next day. Three of the fish were just barely under his size limit and my last one was OK. It was a good thing that he made a call to New York to confirm that they would take all of our fish. I did not want to fillet over 1200 pounds of fish. I found out that the fishmonger makes 8-foot-long insulated plywood boxes to transport the fish to the train railway depot for the train transport to New York. So the magic number is not the weight of the fish so much as it is the length of the fish. New York wants the heads left on the fish as there is very desirable meat in the head, cheeks, and throat for making fish stews.
Back in those days, I was not a photographer, but I did manage to get a few images of what these huge fish looked like. The photo above with my cousin and my baby brother was of this last “Stop Enough, Uncle” trip. The other photos were of some other trips that year in Key West, Florida. I could barely lift that 200 pounder below. I had shot that fish with my co2 speargun earlier that morning and that fish broke the cable mount on the front of my speargun taking the stainless spear and cables. Later that afternoon I saw this fish trying to hide under a ledge and speared it with my rubber band speargun. It was a good thing I had a breakaway security rope coiled up under the gun and tied to my wrist as this fish made a back door exit taking the speargun with him. He made it about 10 feet before I stopped him. And yes he still had my other spear and line stuck in him.
The diving in general back in the early 60s was such that just Thor and myself on a one day local trip to the reefs could spear about 200 to 250 lbs of assorted fish. We sold all of those fish every weekend we dove to the local colored folks on our way back home. The fine folks just loved it when I got up in the boat as Thor drove down the neighborhood streets and I would yell "Fresh Fish".
Thor and I also hunted ducks in the winter, and that winter was when my horrific auto accident happened. On December 24,1961 about 12 noon, was when a car came up from behind and ran into the back of a car that I was getting out of on Tamiami Trail, 50 miles west of Miami. The person at fault didn’t even know that we were stopped just off the edge of the road. She plowed into us going over an estimated 70 MPH, completely destroying both vehicles and leaving a hole in the asphalt that was 13 feet long and 10 inches deep. The battery in her car was found 300 feet down the road from the impact point. It went thru the hood of her car like it was shot out of a canon. The car I was getting out of struck me, sending my limp body ahead of it and down the canal embankment, and then proceeded to run over me on its way into the canal. That driver was unhurt. The two women in the other car were hurt somewhat but not nearly as bad as I was. I had broken my back in 20 places, broken ribs, small bones at the base of my lower back, as well as twisting and shifting the spinal column. My right femur was completely broken in 3 places. The doctors didn’t think that I had much of a chance to live through that kind of trauma, as internal organs were also heavily traumatized. They said that even a medium build person would not have made it through that kind of impact and trauma. I guess playing football and all of that diving is what might have initially saved me, but I believe that it was through the grace of My Heavenly Father, God Almighty, and my Guarding Angel. I was told by the doctors that it would be over 12 months before I could walk again and even that was somewhat doubtful. I said no way was I going to be down and out for that long. I was back up on my feet walking with braces and crutches in just 4 months, however, back surgery for spinal fusion was required 6 months later.
I never saw much of Thor after that accident. I don’t know if he felt guilty in some way for the accident. Thor wasn’t even there on that duck hunting trip and he never came by to see me when I was home recuperating between trips to the hospital. Sometimes people’s lives and attitudes change for reasons that we will never fully understand. I lived in that same house for another 9 years and yet, Thor never seemed interested in even giving me a phone call just to say Hi. But I forgive him, may he RIP.
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