Sophisticated As She Is Deadly {The Waterman Games Pt 5}

Freedive spearfishing for yellowfin tuna in Florida waters is more than just the thrill of the hunt. It’s cultivating a deep respect for the ocean and it’s inhabitants. Especially for those fish that we seek to provide for us.

After days of research on how to hunt yellowfin tuna in Florida waters, long road trips and exhaustive preparation, all that remains in the vast blue ocean water is you - a tiny speck consumed by endless, rolling waves… at the mercy of the ocean elements and alone with your thoughts.

With one mindful breath, you drop down freediving, hoping to encounter what the yellowfin tuna that took you weeks to prepare for. When the moment happens, it’s exhilarating.

This is our journey to the FADS, 80 miles out, deep in the Gulf of Mexico in Florida waters. Our mission: to hunt for Yellowfin Tuna, the most difficult fish to harvest for the Florida Spearfishing Tournament.

Our first day on the high seas proved to be victorious, with Christine Vartiainen and I catching enough Mahi to feed ourselves for several weeks through rod and reel fishing and freediving spearfishing in our Waihana wetsuits.

The hunt for yellowfin tuna, however, ended in massive disappointment after I finally came face-to-face with a school of big Yellowfin Tuna deep offshore. It was the best season to fish for yellowfin tuna in the Gulf of Mexico

I aimed my new Alemanni speargun gun, and FIRED. But the yellowfin tuna fish was able to escape.

It was a long shot, but my 10 mil spearfishing shaft landed on the fish and the shaft quivered as it stopped dead in it’s tracks. But unfortunately, the slip tip didn’t stick.

That was it. I had my shot and I messed it up. There was my dream for landing a yellowfin tuna for the Florida Spearfishing Tournament, everything I had worked for… gone in a flash. And I was heartbroken.

It was time to head back home by boat and get back before dark in Pensacola Florida. I was also pretty sure the school of yellowfin tuna would be spooked after having shot one with my speargun and hit one of them.

We headed back at full speed in the boat and made it back into the Pensacola inlet, just in the nick of time.

And even though we were tired from the day before, we set out once again… but the seas in the Gulf of Mexico weren’t as calm as they were the day before in fact they were quite rough waters with high winds and waves.

There were scattered thunderstorms littered on the Garmin GPSMAP 8616 Chartplotter. Halfway through, I see a tropical storm with lightning on the water that starts to develop right in our path while we were on the boat.

There was no way around it in my boat. Especially if we wanted to have a decent amount of time fishing and diving around the Gulf FADs. We had no choice but to go straight through the storms at full speed ahead with my new Mercury Verado 250 which was my best purchase for my boat.

Drive straight into a dark wall of a tropical storm in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico in a 23-foot boat 50 miles out from shore fishing in Pensacola Destin Florida.

The squall of a storm started getting worse. It started out as a green and yellow blob on the screen, and then quickly turned into red. And then a color I’ve rarely seen before…. PURPLE. And purple is not good. The worst of the worst on my Garmin navigation unit.

We now were running FROM the violent storm as it seemed to be following us in our boat freediving and spearfishing the Gulf of Mexico in northern Florida.

We spent the rest of the day trying to find fish and calm waters that I could freedive. But the seas were rough and I didn’t have a good feeling about me being in the water leaving Christine Vartiainen alone in the boat to drive by herself in such rough conditions. It would be easy for her to lose sight of me and I could be lost at sea and be eaten by sharks in the middle of the ocean.

We kept an eye on the ocean weather and saw another window or opportunity coming up in the next week so I decided to extend our stay in Pensacola to hunt for yellowfin tuna. But this time, we rented a place downtown in the historic part of the city in Pensacola Florida.

Victoria Vartiainen, Christine Vartiainen’s twin sister aka The Fisher Twins became available to join us as well hunting yellowfin tuna in the Gulf of Mexico, so we flew her out on a plane from the Florida Keys. And we now had 3 people on the boat: the ideal number so no one would have to freedive alone, with 2 people could be in the water watching each other also known as the buddy system while freediving.

There are 5 films so far in The Waterman Games Series
Pt. 1: https://youtu.be/FE__XB6zK14
Pt. 2: https://youtu.be/dGfrR05eKJw
Pt. 3: https://youtu.be/wtYEwKrBaSo
Pt. 4: https://youtu.be/f8zdshZAx9M
Pt. 5: https://youtu.be/rtwVqM2OVt8 (You are here!)
Pt.. 6: https://youtu.be/ZfUEqvdyXaA

Freediving Spearfishing Yellowfin Tuna Fads Northern Gulf of Mexico Florida Waters