After winning the 2021 national championship with a record setting score of 263 points, Darvil and Fernando were humbled after a staggering blow in their attempt to defend the national title in the 2022 championship. Despite the challenges faced in 2022, their accumulated points with their 2021 victory narrowly qualified them for eligibility into the 2023 World Freshwater Spearfishing Championship, where they were determined to redeem themselves.
With their mixed bag of Riffe and Spearpro gear ready to go, the crew said farewell to their families and embarked on the 9 hour road trip from Southern California to Lake Powell, AZ. They were excited and nervous to compete against such high caliber divers from around the world. Knowing that the United States had never won the World Championship weighed heavily on their minds as they considered the great honor to represent their native country with a rare home-court advantage. They arrived with a plan to scout the lake for 3 days prior to the tournament and come up with a master plan. They heard of other teams hiring local guides to gain an advantage, but ultimately decided against the idea, determined to find their own path. Little did they know, the record rain and melting snow pack would cause the water level to continually rise by 1.5 feet per day. This resulted in sporadic fish behavior, poor visibility due to the sediment run-off, a constantly changing shoreline, and unpredictable water temperatures.
One day the fish would be plentiful at a given spot, and the next, they would seem to vanish. Despite these variables, they were confident that they had scouted enough spots to make a solid game plan. Day 1 of the tournament required that only Utah waters could be hunted. While previously scouting Utah waters, they entered Labyrinth Canyon, and explored the entire length. About halfway up the narrow canyon, they began to find ample walleye and catfish on every dive around 50 to 60 feet deep, beneath the thermocline, where their 5mm Spearpro wetsuits kept them warm in the frigid conditions. They were very excited to utilize the spot the next day during the tournament.
Unfortunately, that evening they would learn that the southerly portion of Labyrinth canyon they had planned to hunt, had actually descended just past the Arizona state border and was actually off limits for the tournament. Their back-up location was one in which they had found rich with striped bass only 2 days earlier. They committed themselves to that spot, then went to bed early on a full stomach of delicious blackened spiny lobster served over angel hair pasta with an alfredo pesto sauce & crispy buttery garlic bread.
Day 1 - Game Fish
The anxiety over the looming morning made sleep fitful. At daybreak, they gathered their gear & hopped onto the rental boat. Captain Garrett Kerr and deckhands Hunter & Tanner McBride gave words of encouragement as the crew headed towards the starting line. As they approached the starting line, Captain Garrett blasted their theme song “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus over the speakers. Their dancing quickly became contagious as other divers began to dance to the anthem. Before they knew it, the 7:00am horn blew and all the boats sped off racing to their coveted spots. To their delight, all but one other boat headed eastward towards Padre Bay.
They would have their Warm Creek location almost entirely to themselves. 8:00 am arrived and they dove in the water. It became clear that the visibility was much worse than the prior scouting days. The combination of the sun rays and particulates moving through the water gave them a murky 3 to 5 feet of visibility. Despite the bad viz, legendary photographer Evan Frost still managed to capture some amazing shots. To make matters worse, the thousands of fish they had seen only days before had disappeared.
In an emergency effort to relocate the fish they hopped from cove to cove, only to find similar conditions. After hundreds of dives, laying on the bottom waiting for fish to come into visibility, they were presented with few opportunities. Darvil had speared a catfish and 2 walleye earning the team 9 critical points. Fernando had seen and speared only 2 striped bass, only to have them rip off the shaft and disappear into the murk. When time was up, Fernando had contributed zero points towards the total which left him feeling defeated & embarrassed; he did not even care to show his face at the weigh-in.
However, Darvil and the team would not leave him to stay behind. Crestfallen, the complete team attended the weigh-in and they talked about leaving the unlucky day behind them, and keeping their focus on the following day. As they witnessed all the competitors submit their catches, they realized just how poorly they had actually performed. They ended the day in last place with an 82 point deficit from the leading team. Convinced they had zero chance of bouncing back, they convened and decided that they would put everything they had into the carp hunt, and try to win day 2 of the event. They would stay up late prepping gear and planning their moves for the next morning.
Day 2 - Rough fish
The team was tired but anxious at the chance for redemption. They loaded the boat and headed toward the starting line. The 7:00am horn blows and they sped off towards their carpy destination of choice. After about 5 seconds, Fernando yelled out, “Let’s go the other way!” Captain Garrett cut the engine, and the team quickly discussed options and agreed to turn around.
This last-minute decision was largely made because 90% of the boats were headed towards our original direction, and only a handful of boats were heading back towards Wahweap, where we had anticipated more boats to be competing for those spots. As they headed towards their new destination, the team felt worried about this sudden gamble but optimistic. Slowly that optimism turned to panic, as every cove they were interested in diving would become occupied by an earlier arriving team.
Although some of the areas were large enough to accommodate multiple divers, competing in close proximity would definitely place both teams at a disadvantage. At the final cove before the end of the lake, they stopped to debate whether or not they should battle it out with the occupying team, or continue onward and hope for the best. Time was ticking, they made a judgement call to move on. The water was already murky, it was only getting murkier, and a sense of impending failure was sinking in.
They soon stopped the boat as they began to see splashing all around. They parked the boat right over the massive spawning school and saw carp swimming everywhere. There were so many! They were swimming with their dorsal fins sticking out of the water like mini mud sharks, climbing all over each other. At the 8 AM buzzer they jumped in only to find a measly 6 inches of visibility. They had found the fish but now they had to figure out how to spear them without seeing them. They didn’t know where to start, as competitors are not allowed to practice hunting fish during scouting days, they had zero experience in hunting through such dismal visibility.
The volume of fish was so large that every kick of their fins sent startled carp crashing into every part of their bodies. They removed their Riffe dive fins and tried holding still in the water, letting their feet hang down into the buddy bottom, which seemed to work better. The fish were circling around and underneath them. After attempting several blind shots into the murk, they learned that this was not a winning strategy, resulting in regular snaggings of a scale or two but seldom a holding shot. Through trial and error, the duo began to only shoot at the carp that exposed their fins.
They floated in the water with their masks halfway below the waterline & halfway above, looking for fins in front of their spear tips. After the first hour, they had begun to master keeping their spear shaft trajectory mostly perpendicular to the surface of the water, which resulted in inadvertent captures. As the hours passed by they would begin shouting, “Double, Triple, Quadruple!” The excitement was electric. The deckhands, Hunter & Tanner, could barely keep up with the amount of fish that were being passed into the boat. The deckhands also dealt with tangles in the diver’s lines, as they would switch to their backup guns until tangles could be undone.
Although shooting multiple fish in one shot was amazing, it came with difficulties that would slow their progression. On some shots the shaft would penetrate the carp’s skull making it near impossible to pull the fish past a knot on the float line. There were also some interesting tangles that multiple fish on a stringer would tend to weave. They sometimes had to use their dive knives to make the entry holes larger but it cost them many precious competition minutes.
Captain Garrett gave a 20 minute warning which came as a relief to the divers who were overheating, mentally drained, and physically exhausted. With hands and bodies in excruciating pain from loading guns so many times, they pushed until their time ran out.
Times up! :
Finally! Captain Garret had them unload and climb back into the boat for the 2:00pm buzzer while the McBride twins dealt with the last two tangled stringers of carp. They noticed the mass carnage in front of them, filling nearly 6 trash cans and the boat was covered in slimy blood & roe. Darvil and Fernando looked at each other in amazement and renewed hope, thinking that they might have a shot at the podium, but first they had to get back to check in line by 3:00pm. With over a thousand pounds of carp on the boat they were dangerously front heavy.
Garret shouted at the crew to get onto the back of the boat as he set the throttle to full. Their hearts began to sink as the boat could not come to a plane, at such a slow pace, they had no chance of making it back in time. Garret instructed each of us to slowly bring our weight forward in the boat while the gas was pinned. As the minutes passed by, the boat slowly increased in speed until it finally began to plane!
The crew would constantly ask how much time they had left until they were within sight of the finish line. They held up their white sign with the big lucky number “7”, then let out a massive sigh of relief as the official signaled them “good to go.”
