Key West Spearfishing Blog - Deep-Blue-Water.com - Free dive spearfishing, Florida USA

Yellowtailing with Mom

Filed under Fishing Reports by admin on September 8, 2009 at 3:29 pm {one comment}

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.

August 21 and 23rd

Filed under Spearfishing Photos, Spearfishing Reports by admin on August 24, 2009 at 9:18 pm {no comments}

Went out Friday with Brad, Brian and Catherine, stayed pretty close to Key West. My boat is really dragging I have to clean the bottom this week. We just hit some spots around western dry rocks and didn’t have particularly good luck. We saw a lot of mangrove snappers but not a lot of fish. Saw a couple spooky black groupers but not much else. Brian shot a trigger fish and spade fish( he had never eaten one). I shot a hog and a bar jack. Pretty slow day. Vis was good, water was warm. Brad did the best with two muttons and a hog.

On Sunday Catherine and I went out with Jason and Andy, on their boat along with Jason’s son. We went a bit west but the lousy vis we hit once we got past Boca Grande made us turn back. Would it have cleared up past the Marquesas keys? Maybe but it was definitely clear east of Boca Grande so we headed back. We shot a bunch of fish, yellow jacks, bar jacks, hogfish, mutton snapper and one black grouper (it was so small I had to squeeze the tail to make it legal). Conditions were great: good vis up to about 60 feet, a bit of current but manageable. We had some drama when I shot a yellow jack and it looked like it was hanging on by a thread so I called for some one to shoot it again. Andy swam down and took a shot missed and got the shaft stuck in rock, this wouldn’t have been a big deal if there wasn’t a ripping current so he was stuck dealing with that. I had Jason throw me a gun and I swam down to shoot the fish again and at the last minute the fish ran more up current so I took a desperation shot which hit but then tore out. I had let go of my float line and had to swim like crazy to get it back. After all the excitement the fish just kind of died and I was able to just slowly pull him in.

Andy saw a tiger shark, but it was too far away for Catherine to get a photo, I was in the boat at the time. I also saw a huge black grouper, cruising on the bottom in 55 feet of water. A really beautiful fish, it swam with the current for bit but took off as soon as I tried to get a little closer.