Mysteries of the Gulf: A wreck? A rock? A cargo container? We might never know.

We all know the expression, “If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?”

I now ask: If a boat sinks in the Gulf of Mexico, is it actually a boat?

Last week I was fortunate to fish with Jay Travis, his wife Stephanie and friend Brad Helbing.

Travis fishes with Team Seaveeche and has spent countless hours, days and weeks exploring the depths of the Gulf. His collection of “numbers,” aka spots, is held tight to vest, and for good reason.

As a modern-day explorer, he likes to stay off the beaten path and fish water that doesn’t have many others around.

With so many numbers deep in the Gulf and many more to find, it’s no surprise he doesn’t get to fish spots he found many moons ago. His game plan for our trip was to bounce around to places he hasn’t fished in about a decade.

This immediately proved successful as our first stop in 110 feet produced red snapper, big mangrove snapper, yellowtail snapper, a large kingfish and a small goliath grouper.

A quick run further offshore produced larger snapper and big red grouper.

The fish box filled quickly and we kept moving to more spots before finding a new spot that produced a trio of 15-pound red snapper in 150 feet.

And then we went to a spring he hadn’t fished in about 10 years, he said. It was here I caught my African pompano as Travis surveyed the bottom.

The depth finder showed an amazing looking drop from about 155 feet to 175 feet. “Let me drop my GoPro,” I said, always curious to see what the bottom looks like, especially on these crazier bottom spots.

I sent it down for a few minutes, and brought it back up.

Back at the dock we cleaned many fish and a bloody 32-foot Contender. After getting home I postponed my exhaustion to take a look at the video of the spring.

The GoPro hit the bottom and something odd, something I’ve never seen, came into view.

At the deepest point of this spring a pointed object that was covered in natural growth was surrounded by snapper and other reef fish. As the boat drifted away, the object was slowly lost in the distance, making it hard to identify.

I decided to post the video on Facebook to see if anyone had any ideas of what it might be. Of course, the variety of responses ranged from the comical (Davey Jones’ Locker, Atlantis, Sunken UFO) to the serious, saying it’s a wreck or a rock.

And then there was one response that caught my attention, stating simply, it’s a wreck of a captain’s boat who went down. I followed up with the respondent, who it turns out dives the spot frequently and was able to recognize the spot.

“That’s my snapper honey hole. It’s a 30-foot Center Console. The boat went down about 5 years ago,” the diver said. “It was a charter captain fishing the spring and went down in 7 minutes.”

According to the story, everyone was safe with the assistance of a nearby commercial fishing boat.

The diver gave me the name of the captain, but said he was still embarrassed to talk about it.

Wanting to know more, I reached out to the captain. The captain stated he did go down, but that’s not where. He went down in 120 feet. He didn’t offer much else to clarify what was or could be on that spot.

So the mystery remains, and the story has no official resolution.

So it might be a boat. Or it might not be a boat.

It might be a cargo container. It might be a sailboat. It might simply be a rock.

Whatever it is, fish seem to like it.

If you’d like to take a guess at what it is, visit http://facebook.com/captainjonchapman and see for yourself.