I was fortunate enough this week to go on an overnight trip to the Dry Tortugas. What a blast! I went on Robert Trosset’s 34′ Yellowfin, along with Nate, Cory, Robert, Brad and Rob. Catherine couldn’t make it so it was me on the camera. Taking photos is more work then it looks like but I caught a few cool shots with the new camera. We dove a lot of places, big wrecks in the Gulf, Air Force relay towers, Tortugas Bank, Rebecca channel. We also dove some awesome stuff inside the Tortugas Sanctuary (without guns, of course) places like Sherwood Forrest and the windjammer wreck.

Fishing was good but the big black groupers were elusive. I shot the biggest hogfish and biggest mutton snapper I have ever shot. We got a variety of fish, and numerous lobsters. I freedove everywhere, along with Corey and Nate. Robert and Rob tank dove. The vis was tremendous pretty much the entire trip, 50+, sometimes closer to 80. I could dive down 20 feet and see bottom at the Relay towers, it was pretty amazing. The only thing that was a draw back was the lack of fish on the towers. Other then the permit and a few dinky AJs there wasn’t much on the towers that where freedivable. The tank divers were able to pull fish off the base of the towers but that was 100+ feet down. The same was kind of true on the big wreck we dove. I saw one big grouper, but he quickly scooted down to over 100 feet of water out of my range.

There were literally 100 jewfish on the big Gulf wreck.  Diving down you could count 20 in just one little section. I am not one of the “I have to be able to shoot everything I see to be happy” type of people, but there seems to be too many jewfish. 100 jewfish and one black grouper, sort looks like something’s out of balance.

We also dove something called Kingfish rock pile, which is located somewhere north of the Fort.  It was 100′ deep so it was a little deep for freediving.  Brad had equalization issues and everyone was pretty tired from the ride out so while Robert and Rob slept, myself and Brad set up a chum slick and hooked and lined yellowtals.  Corey would jump in and shoot the occasional mangrove snapper that swum up in the chum slick.  Robert’s brother had seen a large tiger shark in that area several times recently but it did not show up.  When Robert and Rob awoke they dropped down on scuba tanks and shot a large red and a close to 7 pound mangrove snapper.

Sleeping on the beach at the Tortugas was pretty great except that the wind went to 0 and it felt like trying to go to sleep in a sauna for awhile. It was so hot, sweat was just dripping off me even when I was holding still in the dark. The park rangers and FWC checked everything in our boat. So if you plan on going there, plan on having everything checked. We had a young and kind of zealous officer check our stuff, while two older officers looked on kind of indifferently. The younger guy couldn’t id half of our fish.

The wildlife on the island is interesting, rats and hermit crabs scurry around in the night. The birds also get up at first light and start making a lot of noise.

The windjammer wreck in the sanctuary is a blast to snorkel. There are huge mutton and dog snapper living on it that are practically tame. All the fish species seem much more approachable and in fact many swim right up to you. There are huge mangroves living inside the wreck, along with monster jewfish and large black grouper. The Sherwood forest was also amazing but at 70 feet was more difficult to free dive. I had a monster mangrove swim right up to the front of my camera on one dive.

The reef sharks that live around the Tortugas bank are also pretty fun. We lost a couple fish to them at first until we teamed up to fend them off. It’s pretty amazing how if you shoot a fish and let it struggle too long you will suddenly have 2-4 sharks all over you.  They move extremely fast, but seem to be very targeted on the fish, and will try to avoid getting too close to a person. When one of the sharks ate a grouper it actually drew in a large black fin tuna, but no one could get a shot on it.

Diving in Rebecca channel was also very interesting.  It was the only place we dove where the vis wasn’t good and the current  was ripping.  It made for extremely difficult freediving, but on tanks you could shoot a lot of fish. Brad, Cory and Robert did a few tank dives and each and every drop produced some decent fish.

Finally some clear water, blue water has pushed in onto the reef and Catherine and I have gone out in it. Two half day trips this week, once just me and her and one time Andy was able to come with us. All the extra daylight in the summer, allows for leaving at one in the afternoon and still having enough time to get a good swim in.

The issue is the lack of fish, and my lack of ability to shoot the ones I do see. It seems like spearing comes in waves, sometimes you can’t miss and sometimes you can’t even get close. The ripping current on the reef doesn’t help, but there have been a few times it’s been 100% user incompetence. But that’s fishing. Andy on the other hand can’t seem to miss and pulled a nice grouper and other fish out of spots where I saw nothing. On the upside the clear water and ripping current has been great for finding new spots. I have marked 6 or 7 new spots in the past couple days. I get stuck in a rut diving the same thing over and over again, and frankly fish move and some of my spots that are awesome in the winter don’t have any fish on them now.

I spent part of the day drifting in the water 80-120 feet deep with flashers out, and my big gun but nothing showed up. Zero, nada not even some triggers or cero mackerel to practice on. Just 100 foot of vis totally devoid of life.

I have splurged on some new gear. I am one of the cheapest people in the world, and I don’t like to buy stuff usually. It seems like most people like to buy stuff, I am the opposite. When I buy stuff most of the time it just makes me mad that whatever it is doesn’t seem to be worth the money. I often look at things and think “I can’t believe that piece of crap costs that much”.  I also never eat out, because whenever I do I get mad because I always think I am paying way too much for something I could have just made myself.

Anyways after months of diving with cressi fins with cracked blades and ripped foot pockets I bought some new fins. I have been kind of skeptical about the whole fancy fins thing. I find that spearfishing, or any sport whose main participants are young men who tend to have a little bit of money, it’s very easy to pay way too much for gear. I’ve seen the carbon blades, fiberglass blades etc. I was going to just buy a new pair of Cressi HF but they jacked the price on them up to $150, they were $100 when I bought them a couple years ago. So I said what the hell and bought a set of nemo pockets and blades, they cost a bit more but they weren’t crazy expensive. The first set came and they were way too small, even though they were the same size as my cressis. So I sent them back and got one size up.

The next size up fit fine and boy are they great. I can’t really describe the way they feel when I kick but all I can say is it’s better. They just feel better, snappier, I really don’t know how to describe it. I am actually super happy with them. I got medium stiffness, I am dying to try the stiff fins but didn’t want to get stuck with something I couldn’t dive with.

The other purchase was the Olyumpus E-pl1 camera with an underwater housing. It’s not quite our dream camera but since it costs half as much we had to take it. As much as I love our little lumix fx35, it’s a pretty weak little camera. E-pl1 has a huge sensor, shoots in raw, it basically blows away the fx35. The video on e-pl1 is the same size as the lumix, in pixels but the quality blows it away. The videos from the e-pl1 look almost 3d, they look like real HD video. The only issue so far with it is the weak auto focus. The auto focus is not that fast, and seems to only focus on one point instead of multiple points, but hey it’s half the price. Check out these pictures, I don’t think there’s any question about how awesome this camera really is. There is a lens you can get for the camera which is supposed to improve the auto-focus on the videos but its like $700 which is actually more then the camera cost.

The winds finally died down and the crowds from lobster mini-season are gone, so got out on the water this past weekend. First day Catherine and I went out in front of Key West along with Eddie and Andy. We had a pretty good day, well mostly Eddie had a good day. He got a 20# black grouper and a nice red grouper. I didn’t really get much, a big mangrove but that was it mostly. Andy shot a nice yellow jack and some other stuff. Vis was kind of weak, 25-35 feet. The vis was  supposedly worse to the west so we just messed around in front of Key West.

It was flat calm though and the lack of current made for very enjoyable diving. We also freedove on a couple of the wrecks out front which was fun but not really productive for getting fish. We also killed two lionfish.

Then on Sunday Catherine and I went out on Robert Trosset’s boat along with Nate, Dan and Lou. We did a long run west on the gulf side. The water is really clear on the gulf side right now which is uncommon. The amount of fish on the rock piles and patches out there is tremendous. Once you get 30 miles out, you are diving stuff which very rarely sees a diver. You add the fact that its dirty all the time, so there are even less diveable days out there, and you get tons of dumb fish. Red grouper were everywhere, we had shot our limit before lunch time. Hogfish are everywhere, and big ones for the Keys, there are also lots of big mangroves. It’s awesome shooting out there, and in some areas you can shoot fish as fast as you can reload. The only draw back to me, is almost every fish is less the 10# at least on the shallower areas we were working. The distance from people also seems to greatly improve the health of the coral and amount of bait.

After we had shot our fill in the shallows, we decided to hit one of the air force towers. It added another 40 miles to the trip but what the hell with all the people on the boat it wasn’t that big of deal. It was well worth it. When we got there the tower was surrounded by schools of permit, along with the occasional cobia and shark, and an army of barracudas. I didn’t bring my new big gun because I didn’t think there would be any need for it on a trip to hit gulf patches, but that was a mistake. I bounced my shaft off a large cubera; that fish  would have been mine with the big gun. At the long distance on a fish that large, my present gun didn’t even penetrate it. The shaft just bounced off while the big fish swam down into the muck. I shot a cobia, a couple ajs, and permit. The other divers put on tanks and dropped down to the bottom, the got some fish but said the base was just packed with jewfish.

Well, Brian is visiting and he brought my new gun. The water and wind have totally sucked pretty much all month. I got out a couple days in the middle of the month but it has now been windy for like 2 weeks straight. Not like 15 knots windy, where you can still go but it’s just kind of uncomfortable. It’s been more like 20-25 knots, sometimes up to 30 knots every freaking day. Then this past weekend we were going to be hit by a tropical storm, the day the storm was supposed to hit was the nicest day almost all month, of course I had no plans to go out, because what type of idiot would go out on his boat when a TROPICAL STORM is about to hit.

So mostly the conditions during Brian’s visit have sucked. We got out to the reef for a little bit the first afternoon he was here, and braved the seas and crap vis for bit. We left at like 3 in the afternoon as soon as his flight got here, because hey tomorrow there is supposed to be tropical storm so get out while we could. Brian shot a nice trigger and a couple snappers before the wind drove me in. We tried going to Cotrell and backcountry stuff today and that was like milk, less then 8 feet of vis.

I guess on the upside Brian brought my new gun and it is a beast. Is it too much gun for the Keys? Maybe sometimes. It shoots the same size shaft as my 130cm rabitech and overall is only an inch or two bigger but boy does it look bigger. It’s teak, with an enclosed track and is currently loaded with 5/16 KJ shaft from Florida Freedivers. I want to scale the shaft down to the 7.5mm the same size I shoot now, but haven’t gotten the shaft yet. I am going to try shooting it a bit with the heavier shaft and see how that plays out. I was worried at first how it feels in the water because it looked so much bigger then my rabitech. This was extra worrisome because I had Brian make the gun substantially longer then the original version, and if it was too long now , I would have really felt like a real dickhead. Frankly, once it’s in the water aiming it doesn’t seem any different. Sure its harder to drag from behind you then the rail gun, but the smaller version of this gun was hard to drag through the water as well.

I have only practiced shooting the gun a couple times and both times it hit exactly what I was aiming for. I found this pretty interesting because generally when I use a different gun I can’t hit the broad side of a barn with it for awhile. This gun, I just picked it up and plugged two fish. One was a small chub was at about the max distance the gun could shoot with a single wrap. I think this gun is going to kick ass on the bar when this weather clears up. I think that this gun is going to be awesome for wahoo, or any day when the vis is 50+ feet. It might kind of suck for the shallows and dirty water though. But I can bring my rabitech for that.

Which means, oh no, I am going to be one of those people who brings two guns. I understand why people want to bring two guns and that’s fine in a big boat. But on my boat that can kind of be a problem. You figure 4 guys, now you have 8 guns laying around all over. Kind of gets out of control. I actually dove with a guy one time who brought like 3 or 4 guns, it seemed like kind of over kill. Right now I just bring my rabitech with two shafts, one with a single wrap, one with a double and use which ever is better for the situation. Now am going to have to bring two guns, maybe. Or maybe I will just use this big wood gun all the time, regardless of the situation like I do now with my rabitech.