posted by admin on Sep 8
My Mom was visiting this past week, she can’t really spearfish but she likes to yellowtail, so we chased after the yellowtails. We had decent conditions for yellow tailing dirty water and light current and at few points we had a pretty good bite going but for the most part the tails where small. A couple of the places where I found large schools of yellowtails while spearfishing, did produce a lot of tails but they where only in 50 feet of water, and the tails were small. Not sure if this is mostly just because it’s the summer and the water is so warm or what. We had better sized yellowtails in 80-90 feet of water.
The day we had the best luck on the yellowtails we also had a festival of sharks around the boat. When we first hit the spot after the chum was only in a few minutes a huge school of chubs appeared behind the boat. I was about to pull anchor but behind the chubs I could see the yellowtails, so we stayed. Then after a few minutes three reef sharks showed up two were pretty good sized for reef sharks and the the third was a monster. We lost many yellowtail to the sharks, I put some baits out with wire and managed to bring one shark to the boat side, another straightened out a hook. That seemed to make them back off a bit on eating the yellowtails. There where so many sharks I could not put a grouper bait down. If I put a bait on the bottom it would either be immediately cut off, or I would get a 20 minute tug of war with a big nurse shark. I don’t know how many nurses are down there, but it wasn’t the same one each time because I would look for the hook from the last shark brought up and it would not be there. Towards the end of the day, we discovered that the water was dirty enough to catch the yellowtails on 20# line, which dramatically improved the odds of getting them in boat. We caught 17 tails that day along with some triggers and jacks.
We tried yellow tailing a couple more times with mixed results, I have to find some deeper spots for doing this in the summer. We also caught a bird one day but was able to release it unharmed. I mostly suck at hook and line fishing, and find it very frustrating compared to spearfishing, I should probably devote some time into learning to hook and line better , even if its just for when people visit.
posted by admin on Apr 6
Went out spearfishing on Saturday with Mike , Chris , Matt , Catherine and myself. There had been crappy vis the week earlier and we were expecting the visibility to be terrible but it wasn’t. Gulf Stream waters where on the edge of the reef and pushing in with the high tide. The bar had blue water and 60+ feet of visibility all day and at high tide there was good vis at least mile on to the reef. On the way out we check the waters around Sand Key but on the low tide the water was chalky and less then 20 feet of vis. Pretty much to get good vis on the main reef it had to be high tide. The wind was from the south and the waves laid down as soon as the tide started coming in.
We ended up starting our day a little west of western dry rocks and worked back. Almost all the legal blacks we saw where in 50 feet or more of water and with the gulfstream current where pretty elusive. I got one and saw many more, some in the neighborhood of 30 pounds, which is really nice fish to get freediving. We shot a bunch of reef fish Mutton Snapper, Triggerfish( one was 8 pounds shot by matt), Amberjack, Yellow Jacks and bunch of hogfish (one shot by mike was 4 pounds which is pretty good for the keys ). Mike also shot a nice porgy but I lost it for him when his float got caught on the boat and I gave it a hard pull, not remembering there was a stringer attached.
My ear got messed up so I had to quit diving early but other then that it was pretty good day on the water.
Not to let the good conditions slip away, I went out spear fishing again with Brian and Catherine on Sunday I tried to go out after the tide started turning around at noon, but it was like the tide didn’t start coming in until like 2 pm. Which didn’t make sense to me because the tide charts said it was supposed to turn around a couple hours earlier then that. Pretty much the conditions before the tide turned around where mediocre , the south wind against the tide created pretty big waves and the vis on the reef was maybe 20-25 feet and chalky. Once the tide shifted it was awesome, flat seas and 50-60 feet of vis. Also there was 2 knot current at least on the edge of the reef but that chilled out as you headed away from the drop off.
Even though the conditions where excellent we couldn’t find a fish to save our lives. We drifted miles and miles and didn’t see anything. I didn’t see one legal black grouper all day, and only saw 2 legal muttons one of which I shot. It was pretty amazing really drifting along and only seeing bait fish, crevelle jacks, illegal permit, and jewfish. Finally we went in shallow and shot some hog fish for dinner and Brain shot a nice porgy.
Some other interesting stuff happened though. Brian saw his first hammerhead shark, we also had a pod of dolphins swim in to check us out. We had some sort of pigeon land on the boat to rest for awhile Then when we where entering the harbor we saw what we thought was a dead turtle but wasn’t . It was a live turtle trapped by some crab pot line. Brian jumped in and cut the line and saved the turtle.
posted by admin on Jun 13
Did some hook and lining with mom on Wednesday afternoon current sucked . So we took advantage and just drifted pinfish. I don’t know as many good fishing spots around key west as key largo, and I am reminded of this whenever hook and line fishing. We caught dog snapper, hinds, nassau grouper, barracuda and small sharks. Wasn’t a bad afternoon on the water but not tremendous for fishing.
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posted by admin on Jun 11
My mom’s plane arrived Sunday afternoon. After I picked her up we hung around my house for a while. My house isn’t that great for hanging around- I don’t actually own a couch or have any television, so it’s kind of boring, so we went to the harbor to try to get a tarpon.
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