Spearfishing Deep Shipwrecks For Giant Fish.

Today we're going spearfishing. We're going to be diving some incredible wrecks that are covered with life and hunting for one of my favorite fish to eat, African Pompano. And we're also after one of the most difficult fish to spear, a Kubera Snapper. Good morning! My name is Quinton and I'm out here with Will, Mike, and Garrett. Got the first adventure of the morning right now getting out of the inlet. It's really, really shallow here. Channels are constantly changing. It's really difficult to navigate. We're going to be going out and diving shipwrecks today, which a bunch of these ships sunk for different reasons. It's really cool. Some of them, well, cool and sad. I think it's cool diving. It's sad that the ship sunk, but it's good for us, good for the fish. But yeah, some of these ships sunk. They ran aground. Some of them during storms. German U-boats sunk a bunch of ships out here during the World Wars. So there's a lot of shipwrecks here and we're going to be diving them today. And as long as Will stays in the deep water, we won't become one of them right now. Yeah, this inlet's claimed a lot of propellers and lower units. It is dead low tide right now too, so it does not make it any easier to get out here. You can see all over here to the left. It is very, very shallow on the right-hand side too. Got a boat in front of us that looks like he's making it. We always come through this way, but it always changes. I haven't been in this spot in about a month and a half. I think Will was here a few weeks ago. Yeah, but it's low light, so you can't see in the water right now. So you really just got to go slow and avoid spots that you can clearly see are shallow. And then other areas like to the right right now, it doesn't look shallow, but we know that it is. We got a little bit more and then we'll get in some deeper water and go through the inlet and then make our run out to the wrecks. Oh, there we go. We're over another shallow spot. One step closer to getting out there in the ocean. Yeah, they'll just stay in his track. Yeah. Now we're crossing the bar, which is always the most dangerous part of going out here. Got to go through some breaking waves most days. Even today, we've got two, three feet of swell and it gets really shallow with the outgoing tide and we got little breaking waves. Nothing to worry about today when it's little, but when we have some real swell, it gets really, really sketchy going through the inlet. Today is no big deal, but still got to be careful because like you guys saw back there, it's really, really shallow. So you can hit a shallow spot with those waves drawing the water off and it can get dangerous quick. Would you like to add anything, Will? You're the one getting us out here. Yeah, I mean, this definitely affects my blood pressure going out this inlet every day. But it's worth it. It's the best diving on the East Coast. We just got out here to the wreck and it looks so good. This water looks at least 60 foot of his, if not 80, maybe. You don't dive unless it's 200 foot of his, Garrett. Oh, it looks awesome. So we're going to start suiting up. Will's going to drive the boat first. Mike, Garrett, and I are going to get our gear on, got our guns, dive gear. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to shoot. I brought two guns. We'll start suiting up and then I'll show you guys what we're using, what we're going to do, and hopefully what we're going to shoot here in a minute. Go with both guns. That's my plan. That's right. It's a new thing I'm trying out. First fish going to Mike. Every time people are like, I'm going to wait, I'm going to hold off. I do not hold off. You're just going to pull the trigger as you hop off the boat as quick as possible. If I see a fish I can eat for dinner, it's going to the box. Oh yeah. We're going after some really tasty fish today. African Pompano, number one on my hit list. I know Mike really likes them too. It's hard to pick a favorite fish, but man, I have to say African Pompano is one of my favorite to eat raw, eat cooked, any which way. It's so good, and they're my favorite to shoot. Looks like I should be putting on my gear right now. Mike's already suiting up. All right, I'm suited up and ready. I'm going to throw my fins on here in a second, but before I jump in, I'll show you. I'm going to use this Rife 130. It's got a reel, not going to do a float line, and got a slip tip, which is what I like using for bigger fish. It makes it easier to land. You don't have to worry about bending your shaft. We are. Slip tip, two 16 mil bands. This will be the gun. I'm going to throw on these fins and jump in the water, and we'll cut over to my GoPro. Mike, fishing for mortgages, custom flasher. I'm going to keep this thing with me in case a wahoo comes by. African Pompano like these things too. All top to bottom vis, incredible. This is beautiful. We've got epic conditions for diving today. Top to bottom vis, no current. I'm quickly getting my gun loaded and looking around to see if there's any fish swimming up to me on the surface. Cobia coming right up to you. This is pretty common for cobia to do. They're a very curious fish, so right when you get to the wreck, a lot of times they'll swim up to you. Too small, yep. Unfortunately, that cobia was a bit too small, so now Mike's taking the first drop of the day. Mike didn't see anything on his drop, so now it's my turn, and the first drop of the day is always the most exciting for me. Making my way down here, you can see all the barracudas on the surface. I always go nice and slow on my first drop. I want to make sure my ears are equalizing and everything feels good, and I'm also looking around for fish because the first couple drops is when fish are the most curious, so a lot of times you don't need to go down that deep and fast, and they'll come up to you. I'm going to start leveling off now and looking around. I'm not planning on going all the way down to the wreck my first drop. I'm wanting to see where the fish are, if I can spot anything on the wreck, on the bottom, if there's any African pompano or cobia swimming around. You can't really see it on camera, but right here I can see there's two African pompano over top of the wreck, so I'm going to head back to the surface, tell Mike where I saw them, and try and get right over top of this piece of wreck and make a drop on top of it. We got over the wreck, and we could see two nice African pompano from the surface, and it's Mike's turn to drop. If you look closely, there's three cobia underneath him, and I was wondering which he was going to choose. He chose the African pompano. You can see him line up and put a nice shot on this fish, and they take off. Now he's just trying to make sure that this fish stays out of the wreck, so he's grabbing his line, pulling on the fish, not giving it any line to get wrapped up in the wreck. I'm swimming over to see if he needs any help. Right here you can see how strong these fish are. It starts pulling him down. A lot of times other African pompano will swim up to the one you've shot, so right now I'm taking a drop down, seeing if there's another African pompano with it, or if the commotion's bringing in any other fish, or if there's a shark down there trying to eat it, but I don't see anything with him. When you're fighting a fish with a spear gun, you end up hand lining it, so Mike's grabbing his reel line and pulling it up towards him. One of the most important things you have to do is keep swimming forward. You don't want a bunch of line to end up around you. I ended up missing the moment when he grabbed his fish, but here it is. The first fish of the trip. A beautiful African pompano. Nice AP. Already really stoked. Mike got his AP. Good teamwork, baby. You said they were down there. I went down. I mean, it's living down there. There's a freaking monster cobia down there, and I had a choice, cobia, AP, cobia, AP. I wanted AP. I'm here for them. I'm going to switch to my bigger gun. Those fish kind of kept their distance from Mike. You got a nice shot. Landed that fish, but I'm worried if I see them again that they're going to stay further away, so I'm going to switch out to my bigger koa gun. This thing's got four bands. Same length, but it's got four bands, so I'll have way more range, way more power, and the water is super, super clear. It's like a hundred foot of vis right now. We can see the wreck from the surface, so another reason why I just want to have more range and power. I've got the big gun loaded, and I'm taking my drop on the same piece of wreck where Mike just shot that African pompano. The first 30 feet, I keep my head tucked, and I'm trying to get down a little bit deeper, and then I'll start picking my head up and looking for any fish. I peek my head up, and I can see two nice African pompano. I start heading towards them, and the biggest one starts coming towards me. I line up and take what felt like a good shot on this fish. It takes off, and I start heading towards the surface, and here comes Garrett coming over to see if I need a hand. I'm grabbing my line and fighting this fish, pulling it up towards me and swimming forward so all the line stays behind me. As we got this fish closer, we saw that my shot was a little low and looked like it could tear off, so Garrett quickly went down, put a second shot in this fish. As I get this African pompano up, I want to quickly grab its tail to take away its power, and then get my other hand up in its gill plate. That's a good fish, buddy. Oh, he's a stout one, man. AP number two. That's right. That is a nice AP. Nice. Yes, sir. Tails, baby. Tails. After untangling some knots and reeling back in my line, I'm ready to make another drop. This time, I want to punch down deeper to the wreck and see if there's anything on the wreck, like a Kubera snapper or a grouper. Those fish won't come up so high in the water column, so you have to get down closer to the wreck. As I get down to the wreck, I'm going to stop a little bit short of it. I don't want to lay on the wreck because I can see better up above it a little bit, so I'm going to level off here and start looking around for any groupers or Kuberas. There's a nice school of rainbow runners that comes in right here, which I love shooting them and eating them, but the barracudas love eating them too, so I don't like shooting them when I'm down this deep. I'm not really seeing that much down here, so I'm going to start making my way back up to the surface. After my dive, Garrett went down, so we'll cut over to his footage. He's got two nice African pompano that are just out of range right now. He's trying to do the squid hands to get them to come in, but they're just keeping their distance. These fish are really smart, and after we shot a couple of them, they start doing this. They'll hang up out of range. He looks to his right, and there's four other African pompano coming in. These ones are a bit younger. You can see the long streamers coming off of them, and they also just keep their distance, and unfortunately, Garrett's not able to get a shot. From the surface, I could see two African pompano swimming along the wreck, so I quickly took a drop. I can tell that these fish are swimming away from me, so I really don't think I'm going to get a shot on them. You can't see it, but Mike also took a drop on these fish. He's off to the right-hand side a little bit. He's closer to them, but they were doing the same thing to him. They were keeping their distance, not really coming in. Right there, you can see they're fully swimming away from me. There's Mike on his way up to the surface, and I start heading up to the surface too. Then, these fish turn around and start swimming at me, so I start diving back down, line up a long shot, and hit this one. This is when I'm glad I switched to my bigger gun, because if I was using my other gun, I would not have even tried to take that long of a shot. Just like before, I'm fighting this fish, pulling it towards me, swimming forward so all that line stays behind me. This is the most important part of the fight right now, making sure I land this fish. I got to very quickly get him up and get my hand on its tail to take away its power, and then I'm going to grab up into his gill plate, and I am so stoked to land another beautiful African Pompano. I'm always bleeding and braining my fish. It makes the meat taste so much better. The sword, doing what it was built for. I was able to take a long shot, and this nice AP. No rush. Got him? Yeah. Stopped for a second? Yeah, I was like, I thought they were going to spin towards me, and then I was like, oh, they're going to go to you, and then they just... But I don't know if you saw them, they just like cut so quick. All right, we did a couple more drops, and we did not see anything else really. The guys jumped in before me, and they saw a couple cobia. You said you saw a bigger one at first, but you couldn't get close to it? Yeah, 40 pounder mixed in. AJ's really bad. Bye-bye cobia. Yeah, and then I jumped in a little bit later and saw a little cobia come up. I thought it was a better one at first, but then Garrett went down, and as it was going away, he said it was undersized. That was pretty much it, so we are in the boat. We're going to go run about 10 miles to the next wreck. As soon as we jumped in the water, there were so many red snappers coming up to us. We had some chum and flashers, and they were coming straight up, eating the chum, checking out the flashers. I'm not going to get into the whole red snapper debate, but it does seem like some of these wrecks have more red snappers on it than they should. This wreck was pretty loaded with them from right when we jumped in the water to doing this quick drop. You can see how many red snappers are all around and coming up to the surface, and I do love seeing all these red snappers while I'm diving. I enjoy this dive, seeing all these fish. I don't have to shoot fish to have fun, but it just seems like there might be more on these wrecks than there probably should be. I mean, this isn't even going all the way down to the wreck. These are the fish coming all the way up from the wreck to the surface. Enough playing around with the red snappers. Time to make a drop down to the wreck and see what's down there. You can see red snappers eaten on the way down. This wreck is a bit deeper and more broken up than the other wreck, so I'm just making my way down. Lots of red snappers, barracudas, and right here I get a glimpse of a cubera snapper, which are one of the most prized fish to land spearfishing. They're known for being really hard to land because they're a big, strong, powerful fish that when you shoot, they take off into the wreck and break you off. When he saw me, he just started to swim down towards the wreck and keep his distance, and I really don't like shooting cuberas on these deeper wrecks because it is a nightmare to try and get them out if they go into a hole, so it would have had to be a perfect shot to even try and shoot that one, and he kept his distance, so it wasn't even a temptation. I can see that there's a couple grouper down on the bottom, but not seeing much else, just red snappers, and I didn't end up seeing any afternoon pompano. Back on the surface, it seemed like Will was having too much fun throwing chum in the water because we had an alamico jack feeding frenzy. You can see just how good a throw flasher works right here. These alamicos are all into it, swimming over, checking it out. This one comes in full speed, and look at it hit the brakes. That was pretty cool to see. I didn't realize a fish could stop swimming so fast. These little alamico jacks are actually pretty good to eat, so Mike's throwing his fishing for mortgages flasher. All the jacks are coming in, and he's picking out the smallest one because those are the best ones to eat, and then he's got to dive down to get his flasher before it sinks all the way down. This wreck is pretty broken up, so we ended up swimming a little bit to a different piece of the wreck, and now I'm taking a drop down. We had nice sargassum grass on the surface around us the whole time we were diving. I was hoping we were going to see a mahi, but we never did. Plenty of barracudas on this wreck. There's usually always a bunch of them, and I'm still seeing a lot of red snappers as I make my way down, and I'm really not trying to dive all the way down to the bottom on these deeper wrecks. I want to get down to where I can see if there's grouper or cuberas on the wreck, but I also want to stay high enough in the water column because the African pompanos aren't right on the wreck. This cobia comes up off the wreck and starts swimming right at me, but I can tell he's too small, so I just keep looking down on the wreck for something else. There's some big sand tigers on this wreck, but I'm not seeing any cuberas or any grouper down on it. As I start to make my way back up, I'm taking my time looking around mid-water column seeing if anything came in, but all I'm seeing is barracudas, red snapper, and jacks. After my dive, Mike took a drop. You can see he's got his flasher on the way down, and all the fish are coming into it. Alamakos, red snapper, this wreck is full of so many fish. We normally let our flasher sink down about 30 to 40 feet to pull all the fish in like this one's doing, and hopefully you'll get the attention of a good fish and it'll come in to all those other fish. At this point, we were all pretty surprised that we had not seen any African pompano. This wreck's normally holding them, and Mike's making his way up, and then right here he glances down and sees an African pompano coming in, so he's able to turn back down. He gets a nice shot on this fish. It takes off. As soon as I see him shoot, I take a dive to see if he needs a hand, which he doesn't, so I keep swimming past him to see if there's another fish with this one, if there's a shark down there trying to eat it, or if it needs a backup shot. I can tell that the shot looks a little high, but I don't have enough breath to go down there and take a backup shot. So when I turn around to go back to the surface, Garrett takes a drop to go down and put a backup shot in this fish. Now that we got a second shot in this fish, it's secure, so they're pulling it up. The only thing that's annoying is as they pinwheel, they end up wrapping the line so much. You can see how tangled the line's getting. Here's Mike diving down to grab his fish. You can see how he goes straight for the tail, grabs it, gets control over it, and then gets his other hand up in the gill plate. We are finished with spot number two. Mike shot a nice African pompano there. Got a couple albacore jacks too, and we're gonna go run to spot number three right now. Gonna lay down in the bean bag and eat my favorite boat snack, beef jerky. We're at spot number three. Getting all of our stuff on and jumping in. Here's a little simple hack, baby shampoo in your mask. You can get Mask Defogger, but it's expensive. Baby shampoo is super cheap. Let's do a little bit of that in there. Rub it around and then put some salt water in it, and it'll keep your mask from fogging. You guys need any? Or, option number two. There is so much bait. There's gotta be a wad here. The spot was loaded with bait fish on the surface, so I was really excited to see what was down on the bottom. We were hoping to find some groupers, but right away I can already see that it's covered with sharks. These are all sand tigers, so they're not aggressive. They're really chill sharks to swim with. There was one bull shark when we first got here. I didn't really get it on camera, but this is really cool to see so many sand tigers all together. I think that they're maybe spawning this time of year, but I don't know. I've seen this a few other times where certain spots have hundreds on them, and this was one of those spots that was just covered with sand tigers. I ended up staying kind of higher in the water column just looking around. I also didn't really want to go right into the middle of them right away. I wanted to see how they reacted. Sometimes they will kind of come at you, but these ones seem chill. On this dive, I wanted to follow Garrett down and get closer to the sharks and also check out and see if there was anything down on the bottom with them. Besides for a couple sheepshead, there really weren't that many fish down on this structure. I'm just looking around seeing if there's any other fish coming in, and I'm also double checking to make sure that there's not a sand tiger coming up behind me. Not many fish, but I do enjoy swimming with these sand tigers. It's so cool seeing all these sharks. Well, that was a quick dive. Not many fish, but man it was really cool seeing all those sharks. So many sand tigers. Swam around, hit the whole bit of structure, and nothing real special. Saw a couple sheepshead, but we already got those African pompano. We were really looking for some gag groupers out here, but did not see any. So we're gonna run to another spot. Spot number four. We're gearing up again. This will probably be the last spot, but I don't know. I'm not the captain. Yeah, we'll see. I've been diving a lot. I don't know if my watch... I feel like my watch had to be set right, but it doesn't seem right. It says I've dove 35 times today, which seems... That's a lot. That's a lot. Doesn't seem right. Yeah, there's no way. That's what I'm... I don't know why I didn't reset. Where are you at? I only do dives for pictures. That's what I mean. I don't have... I gotta... Let's see here. Yeah, that's the only thing I'm thinking is I did a lot of little baby dives and stuff. Yeah, that's... I'm... When I looked at that at the last spot, I was like, that can't be right. Yeah, but also my last dive was three feet, so... Yeah, we're jumping in the water. Another spot with incredible conditions. I've dove here a lot and I've never seen this wreck top to bottom viz. This was so cool being able to see the wreck from the surface. Everywhere we dove today was top to bottom viz. Garrett took the first drop and a bunch of amberjack came right up to him. Mike took the next drop and on the way down, you can already see there's a nice red snapper. Jack's coming in. All the wrecks today were loaded with so many fish, but we were really being selective on what we wanted to shoot, and that's the cool thing about spearfishing, is you can. At some point during this dive, he saw a big tail under this piece of the wreck, and when he came to the After Mike came up to me, I took plenty of time on the surface to breathe up, and that's one thing I haven't shown in the video. We're not diving over and over and over again. We're spending a lot of time on the surface in between our dives and breathing up, so this dive, I really spent a lot of time to get a good breath because I knew I was going to dive deep all the way down to the wreck. This wreck is a little bit shallower than the other ones, but it's still a pretty deep drop. I can see there's so much bait covering the wreck. It's actually kind of hard to look around right now and see where this fish is. I'm doing my best to look where Mike described it, but I'm not seeing anything, and then I look up to the right, and I can see this Kubera snapper hiding up under this piece of the wreck. He doesn't see me, so I'm trying to creep up and get a nice stone shot so he doesn't take off into the wreck, but I miss, and he shoots under this piece of the wreck, and then he comes out where I can see him, which would kind of be perfect to be able to go back down there and recover him. At this point, he's stuck. There's no pulling him out, so I'm free spool swimming up to the surface, and then Mike sees me, so he comes down, and I pass him my gun just in case the fish comes out of the wreck. He can start pulling it out because I'm pretty tired at this point. Right when Mike surfaces, he said that he felt the fish come out of the wreck, so I swim over there to try and start pulling it up, but I can feel he already went back into the wreck. At this point, I'm really worried this fish is going to break me off. I'm using 400 pound mono, but I should really be using steel cable. While all this is going on, Garrett's breathing up and quickly takes a drop down to try and pull this fish out before it breaks off. Garrett does it and gets this fish out of the wreck. You did. Oh my gosh. Oh man, so stoked. Like willing you to go to the right. I was like, please go to the right. Yeah. I think he went to the right and then aimed up. I was like, he sees it. Look at this Kubera snapper. So stoked. Drop down on this wreck. Mike saw this on his drop before me and was like, here's a big Kubera under this piece of the wreck. So I took a drop, didn't see him. And then right as I got to exactly where he said it was, saw this guy poke his head out and put a great shot in him, but he went into the wreck and just destroyed my shot. Got hung in the wreck. Then Garrett went down and was able to pull him out on his drop. Oh, so stoked. What an epic day. That was gnarly. I was really worried about him breaking my mono because I have mono instead of steel cable and he was all up in the wreck. It's 400 pound mono and you can see it got shredded pretty good. I do have steel cable on the tip so I wasn't worried about that part, but I thought this was a pretty good possibility that I was going to break because I could see it all wrap up when I shot. Oh man, so stoked. That's really, really cool to get out of. Great teamwork with everybody. It's awesome diving. Garrett and Mike are great divers. It makes diving so much better when you're diving with good people. You got to be with guys you trust that are watching your back. Like on the way up, I passed a guy in the hose tank so he could try and keep the tension on it. Little things like that make a big difference. So yeah, thanks team effort. Thanks Will for making it happen and putting us on the fish today. All right, we just got this fish on the boat. Got the shaft out and look at this Kubera snapper. So stoked. It has been years since I've shot one of these. Look at those things. What an awesome fish. These things are such tanks. Ripped into the wreck so hard and then Garrett went down and recovered it for me. So it was awesome. Teamwork all around. Stefan was supposed to come today but didn't. Yeah, Stefan. Sorry Stefan. You're missed today. Well that is the end of the day. We just got back to the dock. These guys unloaded their stuff, loaded the cooler all the way up. Look at those AP tail. Good day when you can't get the cooler to close. Will and I are going to take the boat and pull it out of the water and these guys are going to go on their way. So great diving with Garrett and Mike. Great to meet you. Great meeting you guys too. I've known these guys on social media for years and today was the first day we actually got to dive together. So yeah, really enjoyed it. Awesome diving. Fantastic teamwork. Great teamwork. It was great. Thank you guys. I'm going to get their footage so it'll be in the video and I'll link all their stuff in the video as well. So great day guys. Thank you. Back at Will's. Pulling these fish out. Going to load these up in the cooler and then I'm going to let them sit on ice overnight and tomorrow I'm going to clean them. The meat will be really good after it sits on ice all night. We'll chop it up in the morning. Let's wrap on the day. All right, these fish have sat on ice overnight and I'm going to clean them today. We are running out of light like always when I'm trying to clean fish or do anything. So I'm going to do this as quick as I can. I got the Kubera Snapper and I have never cleaned a Kubera myself. I shot one a few years ago and Stefan always cleans all of our fish and he wanted to clean it because he had never cleaned one. So now this is going to be my first time. I'm not going to act like I'm an expert at cleaning them because I have not cleaned them but they're pretty similar to every other fish except they have really hard scales to get through. I have an assortment of sword knives here so I'm going to start with this five inch serrated one to get through these scales because they are really serious. They're like the size of a half dollar coin. So to start I like to have the fish facing this way always. So the head that way and I'm going to cut through, go down to the spine and then follow down along the spine to the tail. So I'll take this five inch serrated blade and it's really easy just to get straight through these scales to start. I go down till I hit the spine. I rotate the blade and then I'm going to feel that spine against the blade of my knife and go straight down it. I get to the tail. I'm going to start grabbing the meat and lifting it up. I'm through all the hard scales so I'm going to take the serrated blade away and switch to a normal eight inch blade. As I get to the spine I'm going to have to come up a little bit and then once I go beyond the spine I'm going to angle my blade back down to make sure I get as much meat as possible. And then here at the tail I'm just going to pop through there and with kind of any fish even with gnarly scales like a triggerfish if you fillet from underneath up through the scales it's a lot easier. So like now that I'm through all the outside of the scales I'm just going to make it a point to come from underneath up so it's easier to cut through. I'm starting to hit some rib bones here so at this point I'm going to switch back to the serrated knife. If you want to try really hard you can try and get all that meat but I just start kind of rising up and cut through all of that saving any of that meat. Then I'm just going to come right off like that. There's the first half. All right so we're going to flip this guy over. Same thing kind of personal preference what you like doing on the second side. I like on the second side working like this backwards. It's not the right way. I don't think there's a wrong way but it's just the way that I do it that feels right. So I'm going to start on the tail. I'm going to go all the way up here towards the head. While I got the serrated knife I'm just going to go ahead and cut my angle cut like this. Come up here to the head. This whole piece comes up so that's pretty much everything that I need to do with a serrated knife. I'm going to go back to the normal eight inch and just keep working my way down here. There it is fillet number two. I'm going to put this off to the side and we're going to take off this thing's head. We're finished with the Kibera. I just took its head off. We're going to eventually do a full skull mount at least a jaw mount but I want to try and do a full skull mount. There's the carcass. We're going to move on to the AP now. I always like keeping my fish cleaning table or whatever I'm filleting my fish on nice and clean. I'm going to wash my fish off too before I get it up on the table. Same thing with the African Pompano. I like starting with the head to the left of me for my first side. These guys have pretty much no scales. Running my hand along them it is the exact opposite of the Kibera. Just like the Kibera and pretty much every other fish you're going to start at the head. These fish have a lot of head meat that comes up here towards the forehead. I want my first cut to be up here. I'm just going to go up here like all the way almost to the nose. Run my knife back and these African Pompano are my favorite to eat cooked, raw, any sort of way. They do have like a little bit of uh whatever their back the the bones kind of aren't smooth so it's a little tricky. You got to kind of go in and out a bit. I'm just going to start pulling this meat up. It's all just coming right off. Now these fish do have a really big spinal cord that sticks up a lot higher than other fish so you got to make sure you come up above it and then make sure that your knife angles down it once you get on the other side to get all of the meat. I'm just getting on the other side of this spine and you can see how big the spinal cord is. It sticks up like say almost a quarter inch and I'm just following it up making sure my blade's facing down to get all that meat on the back side of it. I'm going to keep it flexed so it stays against the bones and gets all the meat off but looking at it right here you can see the pronounced spine makes it kind of tricky to do that because it messes up the angle so certain fish are a little bit more difficult to get all the meat. Then I'm just going to cut right here along there follow up where I did my cut earlier and this whole piece is going to come right off just like that. There it is. I'm going to do this other half real quick just like I did on the Kubera. Same thing, slightly different. Go down, cut it all off. I'm not going to film it. We're going to cut back to these fillets. I'm going to scale them and take all the bloodline and the bones out. So I got this Kubera snapper fillet. I'm just going to finish it off right now. I'm going to, man with these bigger fillets like this sometimes I'll cut it in half. Now that I got this cut in half and it's a more workable size I'll go back to regular fillet knife. I'm just trying to get a little pinch of the skin and I'm really keeping the fillet on the edge of the table so the blade is on the fillet and the handle's coming off and you want to you want to keep the knife as flat as possible and kind of like I was saying earlier you want to push down a bit so it contours to take the meat off. Grabbing the skin with my hand and pulling back and then I'm just wiggling the knife forward. All that's just going to come right off. I'm starting to run out of light so I'm not going to deal with taking the bloodline out and the bones right now. I just want to get all these fish clean. Moving on to the African Pompano fillet. Just like the Kubera I want to get this into a more workable size so I'm going to go right here along the spine cut this thing in half long ways and then it'll be a lot easier to take the skin off. And with the African Pompano it's more difficult to scale skin whatever you want to call it in my opinion. The Kubera's got really tough skin and scale so you have to really mess up to cut through them. The African Pompano it's really thin skin and like I said they really don't scale so you got to really make sure that you don't accidentally cut through it and pay close attention to keeping your pressure right on the knife. I like doing this with African Pompano like I said it's kind of tricky to do so I'll stake it so right here about a about a third of that fillet I'm just going to cut this off so it's a more workable size. Any of this blood line on the Kubera and the African Pompano I want to take off right away as soon as possible because that's going to spoil the fish quicker. You want to keep as much of the nice meat on there as possible but I want to get all that off so right there I'm just going to angle my knife and go right there along all that blood line take that off and then you can see no more red on it. Little bits of red there I don't obsess over that too much this is good enough for me I'll throw this in the bag. I got this other half I'm going to do real quick and then I still have this whole African Pompano that I got to fillet. It's getting dark so I'm going to cut the video right now and then we'll pick back up when I'm in the kitchen cooking this I got the Kubera snapper right here and the African Pompano. I am going to cook the snapper and keep the African Pompano raw. This is one of my favorite fish to eat raw so we're not going to cook it. I'm going to have the Pompano as the appetizer and we're going to cook this Kubera snapper in the skillet with some butter herbs and a few other things. I'm going to keep both of these really simple because I want to be able to taste the fish and not add a whole bunch of fancy seasonings because I've only had Kubera one other time and I remember liking it but I want to see how it tastes flavor of it and not a bunch of heavy seasonings and then the African Pompano is so good raw so I don't want to do anything crazy with it. So the first thing I'm going to do is pat this Kubera snapper dry so I'm just wrapping this thing in paper towels and now I'm just going to put it right here. I got some sea salt I'm just going to cover this whole thing and roll it around. There we go. Nothing too fancy. I'm going to throw this in the fridge for about 15 minutes. This Pompano looks so good and now I'm just going to slice it as thin as I can. There it is. You really don't even need to season it or anything. So good. Got some African Pompano I was eating so much of it last night. Absolutely loves it. Oh it's gone. Got my African Pompano. I'm going to cut up a little bit of these pickled pineapples and then I'm going to add some olive oil on top of it. So I'm going to salt next. That's where we're at so far. Now last step is going to be just a nice little drizzle of this olive oil and there we have it African Pompano Crudo. Really simple and it's going to be so good and I forgot to add got some jalapenos right here. Add a little bit spice. Now it's really finished. I just added the jalapenos so we got African Pompano, olive oil, salt, pickled pineapple. I lost my jalapenos. So good. I just pulled the cabera out of the fridge. Sat for about 20 minutes. Now all I'm going to do is I'm going to add some salt. Not salt. It's covered in salt. I'm going to add some pepper on it now. I'm going to chop up some of these herbs over here. I got rosemary, thyme, and scallions and then I'm going to mince some garlic. Got some fresh garlic cloves right over here. Worked out really good that my buddy just gave me some fresh garlic. So gonna chop up that garlic. Add some pepper. I want to blacken this and get a nice crust on the outside. So trying to get this thing as dry as possible and get that cast iron nice and hot. Pineapple, jalapeno. Melissa just got home. She's about to try the African Pompano. Yes, it's pineapple, jalapeno. It's African Pompano crudo. It's olive oil, salt, pineapple, jalapeno. Oh my god. These flavors together. I can't believe we've never done pineapple with jalapeno before. Isn't that so good? So what is crudo? Crudo is just an Italian dish of raw fish where you use olive oil. I love it. Olive oil. Crudo. The sweetness of the pineapple and the like so good little spice with the jalapeno. Oh my god. It is the moment we've all been waiting for. Got the cast iron smoking hot right now. Gonna take some grapeseed oil. Oh this is like super hot. Oh yeah, it is properly smoking hot. Shibara snapper going on. All right, here's the flip. Okay, I got a decent crust. I probably should have gone a little bit longer. Now I don't want this to dry out too much. I feel like I got a decent crust. Not as good as I wanted to but good enough. I'm going to take some butter. Make sure that this keeps a lot of juice and flavor. So we're gonna go garlic. We're gonna take all of our herbs. Rosemary, chives, and thyme if I remember correctly. These are all grown right here on the deck by Melissa. I think those are correct. They're herbs. They smell really good. They're gonna taste really good. I'm just gonna dunk all these in right now. I'm going to flip that around and mix it all up. This just looks insane. I just checked the temperature with a meat thermometer. It's right there around 140 degrees so it'll cook through a little bit more. There it is. Slab of shibara snapper. So I'm gonna plate this food for Melissa and I. We're gonna give it a try and see how everything came out. Here you go Melissa. This is your plate. Oh my gosh. There's my plate. We're gonna sit down and try it and see how it came out. Good. That is insanely good. Wow. Yeah. Outside crust. Really good. Thanks Will for taking us out. Thanks Garrett. Thanks Mike for being good dive buddies. Hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thanks for watching.