How a Bradenton spearfisher got a first-place black grouper at the 2022 St. Pete Open

Born in Wisconsin, Moses Marquez never imagined he’d be swimming 180-feet below the surface face to face with giant Gulf of Mexico fish.

“In 2009, I moved to North Carolina after the Marine Corps and decided to get my instructor license for scuba diving,” Marquez said. “In 2015, I moved down to Bradenton without knowing anyone because I liked diving so much but wanted to be warmer.”

Marquez soon became a familiar face working at Scuba Quest on Manatee Avenue for those who shared his love for diving, which allowed him to make a group of friends he now spends weekends on the Gulf of Mexico with.

Last Saturday, he joined those friends when they geared up at first light 100 miles offshore to dive down hoping for a giant during the St. Pete Open spearfishing tournament.

“We left around 3 a.m. and took a slow ride out and got to the spot right around sunrise. The boat owner, Mike Jeanes, geared up with Andy Kane first to head down on a big ledge,” recalled Marquez. “Mike came up with a 32-pound gag and said there’s a lot of fish, preparing us to back dive the same spot.”

Casey Sims and Josh Taylor joined in with Marquez heading down to the bottom 180 feet below, but there was a problem.

“We landed on sand,” said Marquez. “The spot was a big ledge and we spent 10 minutes looking for it. We eventually found it but by that time I was about 2 minutes into deco (decompression limit), so I said I was going to just look into the ledge real quick to see if there was anything worth coming back down for later.”

What Marquez saw kept him down a couple minutes longer. A pair of big groupers, one a goliath grouper and the other a large black grouper, took refuge in the structure.

As he lined up a shot for the black grouper, the goliath swam in his line of sight. As a protected species, he did his best to move around to get a better look at the black grouper. In the commotion, the goliath stirred up the water.

“His tail was in my way and when he moved it was all churned up. I kept my eye on the black grouper and lined up a shot where I thought his head was. When it let loose, my shaft didn’t wiggle so I thought I missed him,” Marquez said. “I went to grab my shaft and reload but it was heavy. I stoned him. It was one of the luckiest shots I’ve ever taken!”

Stoning, referring to killing or paralyzing the grouper instantly, was essential in getting Marquez to the surface quickly. His decompression time began to add up with each passing second, requiring him to stop at various depths on his ascent.

“We only get 10 minutes of bottom time at that depth, so every minute after that requires deco (decompression). My computer stages it to stop at 60 feet for a minute, 50 feet for a minute and so on from there. I had about 10 minutes of deco on that dive.”

When the black grouper reached the surface, the crew was able to see just how big it was. Marquez has shot big black grouper before, but this one was his largest.

“My best before this was 108-pounds without it being gutted, and I was able to lift that fish up for a picture. The one on Saturday I couldn’t even lift so I knew it was bigger.”

The teammates worked their way shallower toward shore, picking up hogfish, scamp grouper, lobster and mangrove snapper to go with the pair of big grouper.

But at the scales it was Marquez’s grouper that stole the show when its weight showed 106.5 pounds after being gutted.

Second place black grouper went to Zachary Istre at 84.85 pounds.

Jeanes’ gag grouper would come in second, while the winning gag grouper was shot by Clay Glover at 32.95 pounds.

The biggest hogfish was shot by Kelly Reeder at 21.05 pounds, while Lonnie Reeder took biggest pelagic with a 38.5-pound African pompano.

First place snapper went to Ritchie Zacker with a 16.45-pound Cubera, and first place cobia went to Gary Sanchez at 33.5 pounds.