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

lobster season is open

Filed under Spearfishing Photos, Spearfishing Reports by admin on August 7, 2011 at 10:54 pm {no comments}

Well lobster season opened this weekend and Cat and I went out. I usually just go out to the reef and spearfish and then catch lobsters as I see them or at the end of the day. I don’t really care about mini-season plus it was windy so I stayed home. Anyways opening of lobster season was beautiful so we went out.

The vis on the reef has been terrible so we decided to just stay inshore and get lobsters. Last time I lobstered inshore for mini-season we were exposed to all kinds of rudeness, including some guy with tanks in 10 feet of water jumping into a coral head we were working and also when one of my friends popped a lobster out of hole some stranger rushing in and giving chase. Ever since that experience I have just gone out to the reef.

Anyways I headed out to the nearest shallow stuff out of Key West and of course it was covered with boats. Once I got closer I noticed that pretty much all the boats were on the coral that is in less then 10 feet of water. All I had to do is head out to 15 feet of water and I pretty much had everything to myself. Pretty great really, caught our limit of lobsters in a short time using minimal gas.

As much as I enjoy catching and eating lobster, I am at a loss why people try to catch a year’s worth of lobsters in two days. They load the boat with everyone they can find and then some drop off their lobsters so they can go out and catch another limit. I live on a canal I watch people do this. I guess I can kind of see why people who are here on vacation do stuff like this, because they can only dive on vacation. I just don’t understand why people who live here go so hogwild on a couple days and then don’t dive the rest of the season. You can catch lobsters all season long, I mean obviously it’s not as easy but still. Is it really just about getting tails, I mean don’t people enjoy hunting and catching them at all. Cat & I just had a laugh at the amazing amount of gear involved in pulling lobster out of ten feet of water. Boats anchored up and out jumped divers towing 100 ft of bright yellow hookah tube.

I remember when I first came here and was exposed to mini-season and all the visitors talking about “limited out, limited out , got my limit, “ blah blah, all proud like it’s a big accomplishment. It’s kind of funny now.

More Terrible Vis

Filed under Spearfishing Photos, Spearfishing Reports by admin on August 4, 2011 at 5:48 pm {2 comments}

The vis is terrible, I guess it isn’t terrible further west at least that is what I hear.

Went out two days this week and both were pretty weak. Went out with Andy, Andrew and Rob one day. We were going to practice freediving out in the blue water. Andy is all stoked on freediving again because he just took the advanced PFI course. I have never taken a freedive class, I doubt I will take it. It’s not that I am really good at freediving, the deepest I ever dove was 90 feet, which is shallow compared to depths some people dive in a class. I just never dive with anyone who makes me wish I could dive deeper. I pretty much always can dive as deep as anyone else wants to dive, so I never really feel like I am missing out or anything.

Anyways we hoped that there would be crystal clear water offshore, there wasn’t. In 650 feet of water there was like 60 feet of vis. Then we ran into a pallet which totally distracted me from practicing freediving. The pallet had some schoolie dolphin on it, a couple triple tail, hundreds of trigger and file fish, and 3 or 4 mini wahoo. I tried to shoot the baby wahoo but they were too spooky. We hung out in this mass gathering of fish for an hour or 2, hoping something big would come in but nothing did. It would have been awesome if Cat was there for the photos. After a bit we headed to reef and it was pretty much undivable the water was so dirty.

Then yesterday I went out again with Alfonse, Artmedies and Cat. We headed to the gulf side. The first patches we hit the vis was ok , maybe 20 feet of vis with lots of algae in the water. To my surprise there was some fish on spot. We got a couple cero mackerels and a big mangrove. I actually saw 3 legal black groupers and about a dozen shorts. I could not get a shot on any of the groupers. The water was only 15 feet deep and with the vis, I was right on top of them before I saw them. I just couldn’t get the shot together. Plus that area I think had been really hit for mini-season. One of the blacks had a spear wound in his side that looked fresh. There were big schools of bait and a school of crevelle jacks came in and surrounded us.

After that we made the mistake of leaving that area. First we went out to some wrecks where the vis was terrible. Then we ran west for more terrible vis. Then we came home and stopped at kingfish shoals to grab a few hogs for dinner and called it a day.

Summer Sucks

Filed under Spearfishing Photos, Spearfishing Reports by admin on July 20, 2011 at 12:57 am {no comments}

Been a while since I posted and frankly there hasn’t been a whole lot to post. The water around Key West is green; there is some type of algae bloom. The water is piss warm like 89 degrees in some spots. Most large fish are absent. There are about million mangroves all over place, along with schools of school master snappers.

I haven’t shot any real nice fish in a while. A couple muttons , a little red, a couple yjs. I have been trying to get something going and run far out west just to see something different but with the vis reports coming in have not really motivated me to get out. A couple days I went out to the vandenberg and practiced freediving. I get bored kind of easily doing that, unless the vis is awesome which it hasn’t been.

I took some photos of Cat diving over the past couple weeks and am posting them up because frankly I haven’t shot any fish worth taking a photo of.

Oh yeah we went to the Busch wreck to dive it one day and as usual the vis on it was terrible. Did they research the area that they sank that in at all? I mean I have been to that wreck like 4 or 5 times now and every time the vis is terrible once you get down anywhere near the wreck.

I played around with some hdr effects on some of the photos, looks ok depending on the photo.