Shrimp Boats

Filed under Spearfishing Photos, Spearfishing Reports by on April 18, 2011 at 2:09 pm {no comments}

20110414_shrimp-boats_6333 Weather has just been too good to stay on land. Went on a trip with Nate, Corey, Robert and JT to go to the air force relay towers. We woke up super early and got out there at first light. The tower was kind of dead really no cuberas or cobia, a few jacks and snapper but not much else. There were a few permit and small ajs and tons of jewfish. The vis was fantastic and you could see the support beams clearly from the surface.

JT shot a big kingfish which took all of the line off his reel and drew in a few big bull sharks which circled us for a while.

After a bit we took off and found some shrimp boats.  Unfortunately they had already dumped their trash overboard and we were unable to obtain any to use as chum.  Seeing the sharks circling behind the boat, we decided to jump in.  There was a huge school of skip jack tuna and hundreds of sharks. Robert cut up one of the AJs we shot at the tower and started chunking and it started to go off.

20110414_shrimp-boats_6345 Big bonita charged right to the surface eating the chunks. Cory and I both shot one and handed them up to become more chunks. There were black fin tuna there but it was difficult to get them to come to the surface without a ton of chum. We got a few shots at the black fins but we failed. If only we had been there earlier to get the shrimp trash. Even with just the bonita chunks we were able to shoot more bonitas and a cobia. At one point there were dozens of small sharks surrounding us. You would almost have to push them out of the way to dive. The black fins would come up when the sharks were going nuts eating a bonito carcass, then once the commotion died down they would disappear again.

There were also massive bullsharks which occasionally would come up to check us out from the murk layer down below. It was probably one of the more incredible dives yet. If we only had been able to get more chum it would have been some pretty incredible shooting.

Then one day Catherine and I went out for a half day, we went to see if the trigger fish were starting to spawn yet. We found some big schools but not hundreds I was hoping for. We also marked a big bowl made of rock that was filled with little yellow tails. Circling and underneath them there was a school of 40 or more yellow jacks, a dozen big horse eye jacks,  a couple amberjacks, three or four nurse sharks, and a big lemon shark. I shot a couple yellowjacks but was coming down with something and could not dive or hold my breath very good. My weakened state made it not really fun so I went in early to lie down. I also shot a 14.4# mutton probably 15# with guts in it, I’m not sure but they may have been the biggest mutton I have shot.

Tortugas and Towers Video

Filed under Spearfishing Video by on September 8, 2010 at 2:18 pm {3 comments}

I put together some video from the past couple months. I am kind of torn on whether I should wait like a year saving up clips or just post whatever I have. I know the longer I wait the better the video is but at the same time, it eliminates a lot of stuff I would like my friends to see. So what the hell I guess post this as is.

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Dry Tortugas

Filed under Spearfishing Photos, Spearfishing Reports by on August 23, 2010 at 10:28 pm {2 comments}

tortugas_0054 I was fortunate enough this week to go on an overnight trip to the Dry Tortugas. What a blast! I went on Robert Trosset’s 34′ Yellowfin, along with Nate, Cory, Robert, Brad and Rob. Catherine couldn’t make it so it was me on the camera. Taking photos is more work then it looks like but I caught a few cool shots with the new camera. We dove a lot of places, big wrecks in the Gulf, Air Force relay towers, Tortugas Bank, Rebecca channel. We also dove some awesome stuff inside the Tortugas Sanctuary (without guns, of course) places like Sherwood Forrest and the windjammer wreck.

Fishing was good but the big black groupers were elusive. I shot the biggest hogfish and biggest mutton snapper I have ever shot. We got a variety of fish, and numerous lobsters. I freedove everywhere, along with Corey and Nate. Robert and Rob tank dove. The vis was tremendous pretty much the entire trip, 50+, sometimes closer to 80. I could dive down 20 feet and see bottom at the Relay towers, it was pretty amazing. The only thing that was a draw back was the lack of fish on the towers. Other then the permit and a few dinky AJs there wasn’t much on the towers that where freedivable. The tank divers were able to pull fish off the base of the towers but that was 100+ feet down. The same was kind of true on the big wreck we dove. I saw one big grouper, but he quickly scooted down to over 100 feet of water out of my range.

There were literally 100 jewfish on the big Gulf wreck.  Diving down you could count 20 in just one little section. I am not one of the “I have to be able to shoot everything I see to be happy” type of people, but there seems to be too many jewfish. 100 jewfish and one black grouper, sort looks like something’s out of balance.

We also dove something called Kingfish rock pile, which is located somewhere north of the Fort.  It was 100′ deep so it was a little deep for freediving.  Brad had equalization issues and everyone was pretty tired from the ride out so while Robert and Rob slept, myself and Brad set up a chum slick and hooked and lined yellowtals.  Corey would jump in and shoot the occasional mangrove snapper that swum up in the chum slick.  Robert’s brother had seen a large tiger shark in that area several times recently but it did not show up.  When Robert and Rob awoke they dropped down on scuba tanks and shot a large red and a close to 7 pound mangrove snapper.

tortugas_0067 Sleeping on the beach at the Tortugas was pretty great except that the wind went to 0 and it felt like trying to go to sleep in a sauna for awhile. It was so hot, sweat was just dripping off me even when I was holding still in the dark. The park rangers and FWC checked everything in our boat. So if you plan on going there, plan on having everything checked. We had a young and kind of zealous officer check our stuff, while two older officers looked on kind of indifferently. The younger guy couldn’t id half of our fish.

The wildlife on the island is interesting, rats and hermit crabs scurry around in the night. The birds also get up at first light and start making a lot of noise.

The windjammer wreck in the sanctuary is a blast to snorkel. There are huge mutton and dog snapper living on it that are practically tame. All the fish species seem much more approachable and in fact many swim right up to you. There are huge mangroves living inside the wreck, along with monster jewfish and large black grouper. The Sherwood forest was also amazing but at 70 feet was more difficult to free dive. I had a monster mangrove swim right up to the front of my camera on one dive.

The reef sharks that live around the Tortugas bank are also pretty fun. We lost a couple fish to them at first until we teamed up to fend them off. It’s pretty amazing how if you shoot a fish and let it struggle too long you will suddenly have 2-4 sharks all over you.  They move extremely fast, but seem to be very targeted on the fish, and will try to avoid getting too close to a person. When one of the sharks ate a grouper it actually drew in a large black fin tuna, but no one could get a shot on it.

Diving in Rebecca channel was also very interesting.  It was the only place we dove where the vis wasn’t good and the current  was ripping.  It made for extremely difficult freediving, but on tanks you could shoot a lot of fish. Brad, Cory and Robert did a few tank dives and each and every drop produced some decent fish.