posted by admin on Jan 30
Put together all the clips Catherine took over the last month, please excuse my mickey mouse video editing skills. When I have time I will work on learning more about editing. My hat is off to some of the other amateur video editors out there it’s almost like work.
Shot some decent fish this past month but didn’t really get any of the big ones on tape, taping action is quite a bit harder then snapping a shot at the surface afterward.
posted by admin on Jan 30
Went out spearfishing yesterday with Albie, Pat , Gabi and Catherine, finally. We had big plans and gassed up the boat to run to the Marquesas Keys but there were reports of crappy water out there. Instead of taking the lakes passage we went across the front of the reef. There was crappy water with 10′ of visibility covering the reef and out to 200 feet of water with no blue water in sight. So we turned around and ran east.
I have never actually been east of the sambos so it was pretty cool to see new stuff and also a bit frustrating not knowing where the good fish are. We found some nice rocks in 35-50 that showed a lot of promise but this cloud of white water moved in on the bottom and once you swam 25 feet down it was like a whiteout. The vis dropped to less then 10 feet, which sucked. The area had big schools of false albacore and yellowtails, there was definitely some big predator fish somewhere. We headed in a bit shallower and there was a band of good vis, but if you went too far north the vis dropped to less then 10 feet. There were bands and patches of good visibility surrounded by areas covered with a white cloud.
We drifted for awhile and also dragged Albie behind the boat on a rope. We found some decent bottom but not a lot of bottom fish. Since I just got a new smoker we decided to get a bunch of mackerel to smoke in it. The mackerel where everywhere and since they have a small size limit and large bag limit you could pretty much shoot at everyone that went by. It was a great change of pace, as I spearfish more I get more selective and focused on the more prestigious fish I tend to pass on a lot of smaller less desirable fish. Which means you can swim around forever without pulling the trigger. Yesterday was 180 degrees from that. I shot at every mackerel I could, often taking long hail mary type shots. They are just cero mackerel so if you miss, who cares? It was a blast.
Albie got a decent mutton snapper, and I had nice mutton tear off, we saw a couple spooky blacks not really a good day in terms of fish but the most exciting stuff to happen was the shark encounters. We were spearing for awhile in one spot and a hammerhead shark showed up. He was small compared to the ones we saw in the summer but still about 8 feet long. He was minding his own business on the bottom which was great, and a smaller about 15# kingfish swam in. I took the shot and hit the king but it tore out after 30 seconds or so. I should have totally let go of my float line but I was hoping to keep the shark from eating it and tried to put a little pressure on the fish, dumb mistake. Once it tore off the shaft was hanging down and the flopper got the shark excited and he chased after it so I pulled it away and reloaded my gun. The shark left for a minute and I swam down to look for it and here it comes back, so instead of standing my ground I started to back up and it started following my fins, I felt like the fins where exciting it so I stopped swimming and the moment I stopped swimming away it turned away. Then it checked out Catherine and then it checked out Pat and then it left. Probably one of the more awesome things I have ever seen.
Catherine video taped it, I got a bunch of video clips taken over the past month I have thrown them together and will try to post them later today.
After a bit we changed spots and got more of the same in terms of fish, but got a small bull shark to visit us. He was probably around 3 feet long. Then another unidentified shark around 6 feet long came to check Catherine and Pat out.
It’s funny we haven’t seen any sharks in a few months and we see 3 cool ones in one day.
posted by admin on Jan 14
Went out spear fishing yesterday with Catherine, Pat , Albie and Gabi. The weather forecast is showing that winds are going to pick up and blow for at least a week, so we figured we better get out there while the weather was good. Visibility ranged from 50-80 feet, there was even good vis in hawks channel, which almost made me want to stay inshore and scour the patch reefs, but since we all have fish still in the freezer from last week we headed out to the drop off in hopes for something big and photogenic.
It was pretty much perfect conditions, except for the current being opposite the wind, both were light but the boat still wanted to creep away on drifts. We shot some barracudas and jacks in the shallows and headed out deeper. On one drift while I was realigning the boat Albie started yelling there was a big Black under him. I told him to wait right there, and I will be over to shoot it for him. He didn’t wait though and got a head shot on it, it still managed to rock up hard. It took at least half hour or more to get him out.
After that we drifted in the deeper water from 80-200 feet chumming, and got nada. I saw some small kingfish and Albie saw some small dolphins but that was it. Also saw this squid.
Oh yeah we also picked up a danforth anchor on the reef.
posted by admin on Jan 10
Went lobstering on Thursday night and spearfishing on Friday. On Thursday it was flat calm and beautiful but my boat was being serviced so I worked all morning. In the afternoon I got my boat back and we were able to go out around 3pm. It was flat calm and perfect out, but since we got such a late start we just did some inshore lobstering. We caught 7 lobsters and Albie caught 2 spider crabs.
Since it was such nice weather we decided to go out spearfishing the next day, so I gassed up the boat etc. Noaa had originally called for 10 knot winds, by the evening they changed their forecast to 10-15, in the morning they said near 15 knots and the weather buoy was saying 20 knots from the northeast. So we went out anyway. Albie, Gabby, Brian from Marathon all went with me.
So I scrapped plans to run far west and just headed out to see if it was doable or not. It was rough but spearable. At first the blue water was only on the bar but as the day went by it moved onto the reef. Visibility ranged from 30 to 70 feet. There was a ripping current in the deep water going to the east, that with the northeast wind created not the most comfortable seas. We did some deeper drifts without seeing much and then came in to the reef.
We shot a variety of fish, triggerfish, yellow jack, dog snapper, black grouper , hog fish and margate. I shot possibly my best yellow jack, I should have weighed it but I think it was probably over 20#. The biggest I have shot was 20# with the guts still in it. The jack actually broke my shooting line and was swimming around in circles with a whole school of similar sized yellow jacks following him, with my shaft still in him. Luckily Brian was able to get a shot on him and I was able to recover my shaft.
I guess I should change my shooting line more frequently. Not sure if I should try lighter line because the wear and tear seems to come from the line being very snug in the hole where it connects to the shaft.