We warmed up on a little ledge in 25 feet or so, Pat picked up a decent yellow jack and Albie got a nice dog snapper from inside a little cave. Then we went out and hit the bar, we drifted around there was almost no current or wind, it was great conditions. Since we didn’t head out until 1 pm or so we didn’t run that far west. Probably should have to get the most out of the conditions.

We shot dog snapper, yellow jack, triggerfish cero mackerels, and hogfish. At one spot there was pretty much all you can shoot triggerfish. Once the sun started to set we came in shallow and looked for lobster, we got a lot of shorts and couple legals. Everyone had a blast and it was a good day on the water.

Even though we had limited chum we did get two shots at wahoo but both Cory and I didn’t  connect. We ended up getting a mixed bag of reef fish muttons, triggerfish, snapper, mackerels and a couple lobsters nothing particularly big or photogenic

Haven’t paid to be able to embed the HD video yet, probably will once we have a day with good vis and some action caught on tape.

December 21st spearfishing from Ben Shep on Vimeo.

The high tide was at 4 pm so we waited until around 11am to go out. Probably should have waited till noon or later though.

Catherine and I drifted with flashers most of the day. We didn’t see a lot of fish. Catherine practiced shooting little clips with the new camera. She loves it , it is way less buoyant and has way less drag then the old camera. She couldn’t stop talking about how easier it was dive down and stay down.

On one drift as we were about to head back up current and Kingfish swam in under the boat. I followed him for a bit and he didn’t speed up so I dropped down and shot him. Catherine was in the boat with the camera , of course. He ended up being 20#.

We headed in shallow after that. Catherine and I had both been a little sick the previous couple days and she got beat pretty quickly. We dropped anchor in the shallows and I got a shot on small black grouper but he out smarted me. I tossed in a couple lobster heads and had a ton of little fish come in along with 3-4 legal hogfish. I wasn’t really in the mood to clean little fish, so I held my fire.

It was good short day, only thing bad is that I was freezing. My expensive “toughest” wetsuit is full of holes. The damn thing was crazy expensive and now its looking like it might not make through 2 measly winters of diving. I already had it patched up last season and its full of holes again. Catherine was saying I should just get a 5mm because it will take longer for me to put holes through it.

We headed west yesterday and tried to drift over the top of some deep wrecks looking for Wahoo.  We didn’t see any. We did have a school of amberjacks bum rush our flashers. Also some small ciro mackerel and one kingfish followed the flashers too. The water was pretty blue but chalky offshore. After a while we gave up and headed to the reef which looked like crap. So we headed to the bar and the vis was good probably 70-80 feet.

We drifted on the bar, picked up a snapper and black grouper. We saw a lot of blacks and some amberjacks but we didn’t do so hot actually getting them in the boat. The winds where around 15 knots or so which wasn’t that bad but the current was cranking to the west. We tried to anchor and it was impossible to swim against it. So we drifted but with only two people and ripping current, it was sort of difficult.

At high tide we headed in to the main reef, on the high tide there was probably 45 feet of visibility the current was less but the winds had picked up to 17 knots or more. We picked up another grouper, a jack and another snapper. We saw a lot of other good fish but had difficulties communicating with each other so each one could chase their fish.  Towards the end we got our things together but by then the vis had decreased to less then 30 feet.

I brought a new camera out with me to test it and it the whole time when the vis was good and the sun was shining it sat in the boat. By the end of the day once the sun was setting, the vis was going away and I had a leg cramp I busted it out and shot a couple pics and a test video. It kind of shows without Catherine how many UW pics would be on this site

Nothing conclusive, the video looks good for the conditions and the price of the camera, snapshots are still up in the air.

To be fair to the camera the original doesn’t look quite so choppy and messed up in the beginning. Also Catherine is much better at holding the camera still then me. Larger Resolution version on vimeo here

There is new store in Key West with spear fishing gear, called Divercity, located on the southern end of Duval.

Its pretty small but they have a lot of free dive spear fishing stuff. It’s the only store in Keys that selling rabitech guns and free diver shafts. Actually they might even be the only store in Florida that sells either of those. They are also selling stuff on consignment. I guess they will be doing a bunch of equipment rentals etc.

It will be nice to just be able to go get a shaft if needed rather then having to order one online.

We ran a little west , but once we saw how the vis was we tried heading offshore. Ironically supposedly if you ran far enough west it cleared up, at least that’s what people are saying. So next time, I’m just going out the lakes passage and if it’s dirty then I will find out when I get out there. Anyways we went a little ways off shore and saw nothing, not a bird, nothing. The few weed patches we found where chock full of man-o-war jellies. They made it look real inviting.

So we ran in, we saw a leatherback turtle on the way in. I hoped that at the high tide there would be some decent water on the bar and I was right. The vis was good enough to make out bottom in 40 feet. So we started drifting, we picked up 2 nice black groupers and some triggerfish. The good vis only last a couple hours and was gone. On the way in we stopped in the shallows and picked up 8 lobsters.

Spearfishing Key West November 30th from Catherine Tims on Vimeo.

Catherine took some stills and videos, I feel bad because the vids are primarily of me. I probably need to tell other people that Cat will take pics and vids of anything you ask her to, but the odds of her just following you around trying to get shots are pretty slim. She is just as interested in taking pics of purple sea fans and tropicals as she is getting pics of people shooting.

Our original plan was to hit a deep water wreck and try to shoot some pelagic species. With my small boat and 15+ knot winds from the south it looked like it would be a bit rough. When we hit blue water before even leaving state waters, it pretty much sealed the deal and we hit the reef instead.

First spot we dropped on was absolutely alive with fish, and some of the healthiest coral I have seen while snorkeling down here. We picked up multiple snapper, grouper, jacks and a mackerel almost instantaneously. We had one shark steal a fish and a couple frisky nurse sharks. We pulled anchor and drifted the area a bit, picked up some more fish, then the vis started to decrease so we headed further offshore.

We drifted a bit in the deeper water and ran into a big ball of glass minnows, some bonito were attacking them but nothing else. The current had died down and we anchored and chummed a bit using lobster heads. We picked up some muttons and had a curious reef shark and nurse shark to entertain us.

Then we headed into some shallower rocks which were just full of fish. There was a school of big yellow jacks and amberjacks circling the rocks, some porpoises came in and spooked the fish for a second. We anchored and picked up some more fish. Then a big school of crevelle jacks came through extremely fast followed by 2 bull sharks and literally 20 or more nurse sharks. What I saw was a very large school of sharks. Only the front of the pack was clearly visible and the others behind were just silhouettes, but also huge. They were bulls out in front of the pack so naturally I thought a large school of bulls was headed our way, chasing after the jacks. It kind of made me want to s*#t my wetsuit. But as they got closer I saw it was just the two Bulls out front and all nurses behind them. The bulls zipped past and the nurses stuck around swarming on the rocks. Pretty amazing really. After that we were all pretty spent and headed in.

We took some pics and some vids, I pulled something in my arm and had a lot of trouble loading my gun, so I grabbed the camera, which is probably why half the vids were unusable shaking pieces of crap. Not much fish killing mostly just sightseeing.

Beautiful day yesterday, 8-10 knot winds we headed out to where we saw the wahoo the other day and were going to drift with flashers hoping for another shot. The water visibility was probably about 30-60 feet the same as the other day but the green and blue water seem to be mixing. the vis is better further up on the reef then it was but off the edge its not quite as good as it was the other day. We didn’t see anything big so we went in shallower.

We caught some lobsters for our Thanksgiving meal and Catherine shot a decent yellowjack for sashimi.  I think it’s probably her biggest fish yet outside of shooting barracudas.

I got a pic of a bonnet head on the reef.  There isn’t anything in the pic to judge its size and if I cropped it a bit I could probably pass it off as hammerhead .