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Went out  yesterday and the day before, and on Tuesday Luis and I went out. Originally Luis had a doctor’s appointment, but the 6 knot winds and potential for shooting wahoo caused him to reschedule it. When he arrived in the morning he said “have plenty of time for doctor appointments when I am dead”.  We headed out west and found clear water but no sun. The water vis was very good like 60-70 feet but it lacked the crystal clear gulfstream blue quality that was apparent every other time we have seen wahoo. This was kind of disappointing and we didn’t see any all day. We drifted all day in water 50-240 feet deep. The first half of the day we passed on reef fish but when afternoon hit we just started shooting stuff.

The amount of fish we saw was pretty incredible, although most were not considered “quality fish”. Drifting in from the drop-off in waters 70-90 feet we would be greeted by huge schools of triggerfish, spade fish and King Mackerel.  All these fish would come in mass at the flashers we were using. I saw one school of king fish that must have had 50 fish in it, and on another drift a few miles away Luis saw a school of kingfish that had hundreds in it. We shot four king fish.  The school of mackerel had relatively small fish in the 7-10 pound range.  I also shot a 37# pound Amberjack (gutted), not really a big amberjack but a decent one for freediving in the Keys, and the largest I have shot so far. Luis had brought out a big riffe bluewater gun, rigged to kill something massive. Although we saw nothing massive tested it out on the king fish and he was happy how well it performed.

One of highlights of the day was Luis saw a group of cubera snapper in the water column in around 80 feet of water. He didn’t get one but it was pretty cool to see regardless.

The next day I went out with Andy and Brian from West Palm Beach. Brian is captain of the USA spearfishing team and an instructor for a free diving class. We dove some reef and wrecks in front of Key West. It was a half day and it was dark but the vis was still good so it was a good time. We didn’t shoot anything that exciting. I got a small cubera and Brian also shot a cubera but some sharks came and ate it. We shot some yellow jacks, and snapper.

Probably the most interesting thing we saw was massive amounts of black grouper on the reef. I guess I shouldn’t say massive after seeing videos of some of the spawning gags up north, but a lot of black grouper compared to what I have ever seen diving so far. One ledge had one fish that was pushing 35 pounds and 3 other fish all in the 10-15 pound range next to it. It just hung out and looked at me, I could have shot it 3 times. Seemed like everywhere we dove there was a black grouper looking at us.

There are black grouper everywhere and the season is closed. I saw more black grouper in the past couple days then I think I have ever seen, and bigger too. And on top of that I still have not put a wahoo in the boat.

Went out two days ago with Brandon, Andy, Gabe, and JB . We went and looked at some gulf wrecks. The wrecks were covered with cobia but the vis was about 5 feet. Brandon and I tried spearing it but the terrible vis along with the monstrous bull shark that swam up to us in the murk was too much: we didn’t swim it for too long. After they caught their limit on the cobia on hook and line we headed out to the reef. There was over 100 feet of visibility on the reef. We saw wahoo and yet again did not get any in the boat. It’s starting to get kind of Captain Ahab-ish with wahoo. The vis was beautiful and although many of the areas we were drifting were kind of deep I had fun doing practicing diving to keep warm. I shot a nice dog snapper in around 60 feet of water and then we came in.

The wahoo thing is getting a bit frustrating.  The only thing I have learned new this past time was that I should swap the 250# mono I use for hunting the reef with 300-400# mono for rigging the gun.

The next day I went out again,  this time with Catherine, Jason, Nate, Corey and Paul. We headed out to the wahoo zone again, and again were skunked on the wahoo. Supposedly they were deeper that day. The vis was still awesome and I did a lot of 70 foot dives(as deep as my float line would allow), I am going to have to get a longer float line for going diving with Corey and Paul. Once we were discouraged with the wahoo we hit the reef in around 50 feet of water. We hit one ledge that had a school of yellowtail on it, some of the biggest yellowtail I have ever seen. There had be to some pushing 8-9 pounds, they were the size of yellowjacks and would not let anyone get near them. Under the yellowtail we counted around 6 legal grouper, one of which was over 30#, and two were over 20#. The big one knew to take off when he saw us, but I almost got close enough to poke a 20# one with my spear tip. It’s like they know the season is closed. We shot mangrove and mutton snapper, yellowjacks, triggerfish and cero mackerel, and had to pass on grouper after grouper.  We then came in shallower but the vis kind of sucked.

I have been diving much better the last few months, for a while I was getting kind of frustrated with my diving.  My body could dive way deeper then I could equalize. After doing a few dives around 70 feet my ears would start squeaking and then over the course of the day I would have to dive shallower and shallower often having to quit early because of inability to keep equalizing.  Then I started taking nasal spray and this fixed problem instantly. I could dive whatever depth all day long. I noticed that even when I could equalize before the effort involved was cutting a lot out of my dive time, but now I was diving deeper and a lot longer.

The nasal spray is nasty stuff though and as much as I think you can get away with it once a week or whatever I tried to look for an alternative. My issues were not with mucus in my passages apparently, sudafed, mucinex, not drinking milk(I kind of think that’s an old wives tale anyway) did not seem to help at all. My problem seems to be with inflammation and swelling, which is why the nasal spray helped so much. So the last couple dives I have been taking gel coated aleve the night before and in the morning.  It’s an anti-inflammatory, and I have been able to dive all day with no nasal spray.  I guess I should not take anything next time to test if it’s the aleve that is helping but since it doesn’t have the negative side effects of the nasal spray, there really isn’t a reason to not take one.

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Some video from the past couple months, also uploader a much larger version of the video here, I suggest right clicking it and saving it to your hard drive to watch it.

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Went out yesterday with Catherine, Luis, and Andy, and had the best day we have had in a while. We tried to go out early this week but got frozen out, and had to come in. This time we headed back out with more winter clothing and a new wetsuit top for me. It was still cold but it was calm and sunny, and that made all the difference.

First spot we hit we looked for wahoo.  The water wasn’t that clear so I didn’t have high hopes on seeing any. We drifted for a couple of hours, and I shot a schoolie dolphin and we saw some sharks. We decided to hit the reef and run east to see if the water was  clearer.   First drift on the reef I picked up a black and we also got some hogfish and a mutton snapper.   I know the grouper ban is in effect for federal waters but you can still take groupers in state waters until the 20th. The next spot we went to check was a cave that holds groupers like 75% of the time but before we got to it we ran into a school of yellow jacks.  I shot a 15# one.  After I gutted the jack,  I see what looks like a small shark swimming right at me. I waited wondering what its deal was, and then I realized it was a cobia.  I dove down and shot it with one band from about 3 inches away, and it went nuts. Andy had to come and put another shot in it to keep it from ripping itself off the spear. First Cobia on a spear for me, he weighted 22# gutted.

We headed to humps to see if we could pick up some more grouper. They were covered with fish but there was a ripping current and cold milky water. I saw a nice black grouper and Andy saw a nice cubera but neither of us got either fish. We headed out to the bar next but the water was milky enough to make it hard to spot fish from the surface, so we headed in shallower.

On the reef line, Luis and I ran into a school of cero mackerel and took a few for the smoker, they were all over. You could probably throw a block of chum in at that spot and fill the boat with mackerel, if you wanted to.   It was getting late so we decided to check some patch reefs on the way home.   We jumped in on one reef in about 15-20 feet of water and in about 20 minutes, Luis had shot two grouper and I shot a 6# & 11# mutton. I bent my shaft at some point and missed two stupid easy shots on two other grouper. I changed out my shaft, and followed around another grouper for a minute. There was pretty much unlimited keys sized hogfish, but we didn’t bother with them. It was getting late, and as much as it would have been fun to keep hitting patch reefs, we had a ton of fish so we headed in.