bigscoop
Gold Member
- Jun 4, 2010
- 13,373
- 8,689
- Detector(s) used
- Older blue Excal with full mods, Equinox 800.
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
In the zone, it happens every time I slip those headphones on, peace and quite and the freedom to let my thoughts roam wherever they wish without interruption, completely oblivious to the stressful world beyond my immediate space. I love it! To bad you can experience bad days even when you’re in your favorite zone. Such is the case one beautiful Saturday morning as I was doing a little water hunting on Florida’s East Coast.
It’s not very often that we experience flat seas and clear water on this coast, usually it’s always fairly rough and the water is stained with churned up sand, but on this day it was absolutely a beautiful day to be in the water and the conditions were perfect to do some detecting. So, on go the headphones and a few moments later I was chest deep in the unusually clear and clam waters beyond the first sand bar. In that favorite zone for sure.
Fishing weights, I’ve grown to hate them. Especially the ones with those wires sticking out all around them. Most fishing weights are usually fairly deep and they take quite a bit of effort to retrieve, and the ones with those spider-like wires, these are real pains in butts because that are difficult to capture in the scoop. But the very worst of the lot are the fishing weights with the leaders and hooks still hooked to them. With this later scenario you run into all sorts of complications, sometimes the buried leaders keep pulling the weight back out of the scoop and other times the exposed hooks will drag across your toes or feet as you begin to the raise the scoop containing the captured weight. Dangerous, to say the least.
On this morning it was so nice in the water I had decided to parallel hunt the trough between the first and second sandbar since the tide was extremely low and the water conditions were so great, an event and opportunity we might only see a few times all year here on the East Coast. Needless to say, I had decided to take full advantage of the rare opportunity. For the most part this was unhunted territory and my expectations were running fairly high, glimmers of gold already dashing about in my little head. And suddenly there was that first tone, a nice solid mid-tone that excited my instincts and senses.
A fishing weight, with some line and the leader still attached, took me four tries before I was able to capture the darn thing in the scoop without it being pulled back out by the trailing leader and hooks. Yep, this one had two hooks as this is the traditional setup along this coast. Took a few minutes to wad the assembly up so it wouldn’t eventually uncoil and spring back out of my finds pouch. These things are such a pain and I hate them with a passion.
The next ten minutes had netted me a couple of coins and one junk toe ring and then suddenly another solid mid-tone, which unfortunately turned to be exactly like the first, another sinker with line and leader and hooks, this one being even harder to capture then the first. And from here it only got worse. After two hours and what seemed like a mile of hunting that trough I finally existed the water with a handful of coins, a few token finds, and over “a dozen” of those fishing assembles, some of them coming out of that sandy bottom like there struggling fish attached to the hooks. I was whipped and disheartened a bit, but even with all the weights it had still been a couple of enjoyable hours of being in the zone. As I walked back to the truck I felt completely at peace and totally relaxed despite being completely worn out.
As I was driving off the beach I ran into Rich, one of the beach patrol guys that I exchange conversation with on occasion. I was going to tell Rich about all the hooks and weights and make some small talk in regards how I can’t believe swimmers don’t routinely exist the water with hooks in their feet but I could tall Rich was already having a bad day. So, when I finally pulled up beside him our short conversation went something like this;
“Hey, Rich. Look’s like you’ve had a bad day already.” Rich shook his head as if in total disbelief of what he was about to tell me, and then he replied after exhausting a deep breath of frustration, “Yep. Apparently some troublemaker went wading between the sand bars this morning cutting everyone’s fishing lines so he could steal all their hooks and sinkers!”
(Just a little humor from the far side. 
)
It’s not very often that we experience flat seas and clear water on this coast, usually it’s always fairly rough and the water is stained with churned up sand, but on this day it was absolutely a beautiful day to be in the water and the conditions were perfect to do some detecting. So, on go the headphones and a few moments later I was chest deep in the unusually clear and clam waters beyond the first sand bar. In that favorite zone for sure.
Fishing weights, I’ve grown to hate them. Especially the ones with those wires sticking out all around them. Most fishing weights are usually fairly deep and they take quite a bit of effort to retrieve, and the ones with those spider-like wires, these are real pains in butts because that are difficult to capture in the scoop. But the very worst of the lot are the fishing weights with the leaders and hooks still hooked to them. With this later scenario you run into all sorts of complications, sometimes the buried leaders keep pulling the weight back out of the scoop and other times the exposed hooks will drag across your toes or feet as you begin to the raise the scoop containing the captured weight. Dangerous, to say the least.
On this morning it was so nice in the water I had decided to parallel hunt the trough between the first and second sandbar since the tide was extremely low and the water conditions were so great, an event and opportunity we might only see a few times all year here on the East Coast. Needless to say, I had decided to take full advantage of the rare opportunity. For the most part this was unhunted territory and my expectations were running fairly high, glimmers of gold already dashing about in my little head. And suddenly there was that first tone, a nice solid mid-tone that excited my instincts and senses.
A fishing weight, with some line and the leader still attached, took me four tries before I was able to capture the darn thing in the scoop without it being pulled back out by the trailing leader and hooks. Yep, this one had two hooks as this is the traditional setup along this coast. Took a few minutes to wad the assembly up so it wouldn’t eventually uncoil and spring back out of my finds pouch. These things are such a pain and I hate them with a passion.
The next ten minutes had netted me a couple of coins and one junk toe ring and then suddenly another solid mid-tone, which unfortunately turned to be exactly like the first, another sinker with line and leader and hooks, this one being even harder to capture then the first. And from here it only got worse. After two hours and what seemed like a mile of hunting that trough I finally existed the water with a handful of coins, a few token finds, and over “a dozen” of those fishing assembles, some of them coming out of that sandy bottom like there struggling fish attached to the hooks. I was whipped and disheartened a bit, but even with all the weights it had still been a couple of enjoyable hours of being in the zone. As I walked back to the truck I felt completely at peace and totally relaxed despite being completely worn out.
As I was driving off the beach I ran into Rich, one of the beach patrol guys that I exchange conversation with on occasion. I was going to tell Rich about all the hooks and weights and make some small talk in regards how I can’t believe swimmers don’t routinely exist the water with hooks in their feet but I could tall Rich was already having a bad day. So, when I finally pulled up beside him our short conversation went something like this;
“Hey, Rich. Look’s like you’ve had a bad day already.” Rich shook his head as if in total disbelief of what he was about to tell me, and then he replied after exhausting a deep breath of frustration, “Yep. Apparently some troublemaker went wading between the sand bars this morning cutting everyone’s fishing lines so he could steal all their hooks and sinkers!”
(Just a little humor from the far side. )Amazon Forum Fav đź‘Ť
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