Where to start…what a day we had today.  And I cant lie, I owe it to my group.  After 2 straight days of very slow, even close to pathetic days of fishing post Tropical Storm Debbie I tried to convince these guys to just cancel and we would get them another day.  This was originally a spearfishing charter, but it was obvious that was a lost cause.  That is except for Mark, but we will get to that later.  So we canceled the diving part and they convinced me to go and try and fish for our gags.  We met at the dock and were on our way by 7am.  1st spot was a wreck that I know is loaded with big gags but we just could not get them to feed without being right on top of the wreck.  Well that is not how you fish a wreck but given the visibility we had no choice.  Outcome was 1 nice cobia and about 16 lost rigs.  From there we hit what was supposed to be the 1st spot when gags opened 2 years ago.  Funny thing was that 2 years ago when we hit it on opening day all the gags that where there a few weeks prior had checked out and caught nothing.  Not the case this year as we absolutely killed it.  We boated 11 of our 12 keepers and none were less than 24 inches.  6 were between 28 and 31 inches.  Right after Capt. Ray told the story from 2 years ago about the spot, Jeff Green turned around, looked backack at Capt Ray and said straight faced, “better late than never.”  NOW FOR THE HUMOR.  So Mark P. is 21 and invincible.  He showed up to the dock with his wetsuit on and dive gear ready to roll.  Who am I to stop this guy filled with passion to spearfish.  So we get out and at 1 of the spots, another Mark hooks what was probably a big gag.  It rips drag on a Penn 6/0 with lockdown drag and rocks him up.  No big deal Mark P. is ready to roll in and follow the line down and shoot the gag that rocked Mark C. up.  So down he goes…….we see the fishing line shaking as he is dropping down…….then all the sudden the line  shakes violently……..and up shoots Mark P.  I look at him and ask what was wrong!!  Are you ok??  Mark looks at all of us and says, ” You know, I have done some stupid stuff in my life, really stupid…..but I am smart enough to know that there is no way in hell I am going down there!!!”  We all started laughing our asses off.  He was going to concur the ocean today but after about 30 feet, and unable to see his hands 2 feet in front of his face he decided to catch his gags on rod and reel.  I have to give him a ton of credit for trying and even more respect to know when to say when…………  He did however shoot his first ever cobia………..in fact he shot 2!!!  From the boat that is.  We on the 2 Shea are not big fans of using gaffs, so instead we like to use spearguns.  It is a lot more fun!!  So the final count of the day was a limit of 12 really nice gag grouper and two 38 in cobia and we were back at the dock by 1.  Not a bad opening day.