TARPON SPRINGS - Sponge divers are a hardy bunch, and there are few things that cause them to get out of the water.
"I had always heard that there was one thing they didn't like to see diving, and that was a big school of redfish," Ed Walker said. "Now I know why."
Walker and friends Blake Gaylord, Pete Katsarellis and Matt Butler were free diving west of Anclote Key last week, working a rock ledge in about 30 feet.
"The water wasn't very clear," Walker said. "You couldn't see the bottom. The visibility was maybe 12 feet."
Walker was resting on the surface while Gaylord hunted for a shot in the darkness below. The distinctive sound of a spear gun being fired caused Walker to look down.
"Then all of the sudden, I just saw this huge school of redfish swimming beneath me," he said. "There were hundreds of them, 8- to 30-pounders swimming all over the place."
Gaylord hadn't fired at a redfish (it is unlawful to spear red drum) but a triggerfish, one of many bottom dwellers gathered at the end of the rock ledge.
Walker and his free-diving buddies noticed some darker shapes.
"There were a couple of small, 4- or 5-foot blacktip sharks mixed in with the reds," he said. "Blake said that he also saw some bigger nurse sharks mixed in with the school down on the bottom."
The mass of red drum moved along the rock ledge, enveloping the divers. At the tail end of the school the divers saw why the redfish were running.
"Right behind the redfish was a solid wall of sharks," Walker said. "There were small ones, big ones, nothing but sharks."
Bull sharks, undoubtedly the most aggressive, are the bane of free divers in Florida. They appear in the shallow-water hunting grounds each spring and fall as the fish they seek move in and out of the estuaries.
Bull sharks are responsible for most fatal attacks in area waters, and in some areas, such as the southeast coast of Florida, are attracted by the sound of a spear gun being cocked.
Gaylord was dragging a stringer of dead fish, but the sharks seemed more interested in the redfish.
One, however, got curious.
"A big one, about 8-feet long and 300 pounds, turned and swam right up to me," Walker said. "It swam to within a spear gun and a half's length of my mask, looked me in the eye and swam away."
The four free divers agreed it was time to get out of the water.
"We made our way back to the boat, and as we were getting in there were sharks all over the surface," Walker said. "It was quite a sight."
Walker posted an account of his trip on a spearfishing Web site (Spearboard.com) and learned two other groups had similar experiences last week.
"One group was 35 miles off of Bayport, the other was south of the (Egmont) Shipping Channel," Walker said. "They saw the same thing we did, huge schools of redfish followed by big sharks."
Anglers hoping to target these big, "bull" reds will find it a challenge. The fish can cover a lot of ground in a day, and it is hard to predict where they will show up next. Pinellas County's artificial reefs are a good place to start.
"It was really something else," said Walker, a local guide. "I have seen schools of reds offshore before, but never from that vantage point."
