Went out yesterday in front of Key West spear fishing. Albie, Pat Catherine and Cal came, along with two of Cal’s friends. Pretty much both Cal’s friends were sea sick the whole day. I felt bad sort of but I warned both of them it would be rough and there was a chance of being sea sick, there is not much I can do about it.
The visibility in the shallower water was crappy so we did drifts in 50-60 feet of water most of the afternoon. Towards evening the water had cleared a bit with the high tide so we hit some shallower stuff. It was kind of a replay of the other day, seeing great fish but the current hampering our attempts to capture them. I saw some horse eye jacks that had to be in the 40# range but they where very weary of divers. I ended up shooting a small one to see how they taste.
There were massive schools of bait at a few of the spots, so many little fish it was hard see. Pretty amazing really.
I was going to wait longer and save more clips but I’ll post this anyway. Still not 100% happy in the end video quality of export vs file size. I guess this looks ok on vimeo but it could look so much better. By slapping clips together with quicktime they lose nothing and create a bigger file but still reasonable, but no transitions or leveling effects.
Got to keep playing with the software and see if I can get a happy medium between the two
The weather finally cleared up yesterday after 12 days straight of wind, so we loaded up the boat and headed out. The boat was really full this time besides myself and Catherine, we also had Albie, Pat, Gabby and Scuba Girl. We had heard the vis out west was terrible, and that there was dirty water out to 250 feet of water. Boy where those reports not helpful.
We headed out and hit the bar first hoping for some doable visibility, the ride out was crap but the as soon as we got near the reef line you could see blue. We hit the bar and it was 80 feet of visibility and awesome. The only thing was the current was screwing us up, again. Repeatedly we would see black grouper on the bottom in around 50 feet of water, and by the time you got down to their level you were almost too close, and as soon as they swam a few feet up current they where gone. The was getting a bit frustrating actually, but I did mark a couple more great yellowtail spots so it was worth it. We picked up some jacks and other little fish and then decided to check the reef to see if the vis was better.
South of Boca Grande there was 50 feet of vis on the reef, so we decided to drive west to some rocks south of the Marquesas Keys. We anchored up on one spot and chummed the area, almost immediately 3 reef sharks showed up, and two jewfish came out of the rocks to check us out. Brad shot a permit, Pat shot an amber jack, then Albie shot a mutton and then an Amberjack, and I shot an amberjack also.
Even though the spot didn’t hold any black grouper this time or multiple muttons, it was pretty action packed. The reef sharks where kind of disappointing, they didn’t do anything. We shot fish right in front of them and they didn’t even try to take the fish. In fact the jewfish punked the reef sharks for bits of food. Pretty much reef sharks are now almost on the same level as nurse sharks in my eyes. In fact nurse sharks can be way more of a pain when you have fish.
We drifted after that and picked up some little hogs. Everyone saw blacks and no one got one. It’s kind of sad really. We ran into unlimited triggerfish in about 60-70 feet of water, but I really had enough fish so I passed on them.
It’s been about a week since I went out, and since there is not much else to do on this island I got stir crazy to the point of going out regardless of the crappy weather. It was about 60 degrees out, which is cold down here and the winds where about 15-23 knots from the northwest. Not really the best diving conditions at least for down here. When the wind has been blowing for a few days out of the north the water just south of the island tends to clear up and if you hug the shore is often reasonably calm.
So yesterday we headed despite the wind and cold and tested it out. I guess I learned one thing, if there is a north wind over 20 knots even the inshore waters to the south of key west silt up. So the vis was no where as near good as hoped. I also learned that these conditions are too cold for my wetsuit at least in its present state. I was freezing, actually everyone was freezing. We still caught few lobsters a couple slipper lobsters before the cold made us call it day. Pat also netted some type of ray.
