re: Sad Loss of an Avid Outdoorsman

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The trip,

Mike texted me earlier in the week, that he wanted him and I to go diving Saturday, March 1st. I told him I’d already be down in Venice fishing and that we could make that happen. Through the course of the week, he got David Hood, another one of my closest personal friends to join us.

It was going to be great because David, knows my boat in and out. This was also Mike’s first time on my boat. I told David, that him and Mike were to get my boat from my house in Kenner, and bring it on down to Venice, 2 hours away.

February, 28th, that evening, David called me and told me they were having problems, the front disc brake on David’s truck locked up, so the next plan was to use Mike’s truck, but when Mike got to Metairie, his alternator went out. They were both at Wil Demuth’s house to pick up tanks, so with both trucks broke down at Wil’s, Wil offered them his truck. I knew they weren’t going to get down to Venice until very late so I went to bed. I woke up to them at around midnight.

The next day, I got up at around 7am and David woke up with me, I had to go into Mike’s room twice to get him up, I told him no hurry but he needs to start stretching or something. I’d say we left the dock around 8:30am. Mike had brought a friend, Justin to come along as a fisherman.

We headed down river, and out of this little pass called Southeast pass, entering the gulf about 35mi. away from the marina. And we were going to head east for about 20 mi. once in the Gulf, then dive our way to the north in order to keep the waves at our stern and come back into land thru a tiny pass called Octave pass, some 20mi. north of Southeast pass. We were going to make sort of a loop and dive a few select rigs in this loop.

The entire way down the river and out into the Gulf, Mike was an absolute chatterbox. I mean he didn’t stop, and David was on the other side of me, so I was being bombarded. The whole time I’m trying to concentrate on driving, he’s asking me questions about this and that. We were making plans to go bluewater fishing the next day, we were planning to go to Toledo Bend to shoot catfish, we were making plans! I could tell he was so excited and so happy and I was only thinking about how much fun we were going to have, and how much fun we were going to have with all the bullshitting and laughing we were going to do on the ride home.

We pulled up to the first rig and David grabs the rope, and Mike tells Justin, watch how these boys throw the rope, to catch the rig. He told Justin, “these boys know what they are doing.”

We had to tie up twice, because the current was going the opposite way of the waves, but we hung off the South side of the rig just fine. There was very little current and very little murk on the surface. The rig sits in 240’ of water.

Mike had asked me how deep it was and when I told him 240’ he said that’s perfect. I told him this rig had a bunch of scamp groupers on it, and that we shouldn’t have a problem shooting one and coming up. Mike said he wanted to go down and start stringing scamps up and shoot a whole bunch of them. I told him, NO YOU DON’T. I specifically told him this is a one shot game, you go down, shoot and come straight back up. He sort of argued with me, and then he reassured me that he would go down, shoot one time and come back up. We suited up, David on the bow, and Mike in the back next to me. I had told him that last week, I’d seen about a 70lb. cubera on this rig. BTW, cuberas always hang in the shallower column of the water level. So I hadn’t planned on even diving deep.

Mike had attempted to put his GoPro camera on his head but somehow after charging it all night it wouldn’t come on.

Before we entered the water, Mike said something to me about, “y’all just go ahead, I take a little extra time to get ready”, I told Mike, “no way”, I told him, “we all go down together, we all come up together.” I told Mike and David, the best way to get that cubera, was for all 3 of us to swim to the second pipe on the rig, and all of us stay behind that pipe, and descend, staying hidden behind that pipe.

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