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posted by admin on Feb 16

Catherine, Andy, Cally, Fenway and I went out yesterday. Even though the winds have been blowing every which direction we found visibility up 70 feet at at high tide. The calm winds and clear water were quite a relief after being stuck in the house for a week or so. The only downside was it was around 58 degrees in the morning , which is pretty cold weather for going swimming.

We started our day free diving the Vandenburg. In addition to the hundreds of barracuda schooling on it there was a good number of amberjack. I shot one of the Ajs about 50 feet down and had it run right down the to the deck of the wreck. This was kind of a reminder of why I need to get a bigger float.  I am not sure I would have been able to stop an Aj over 40 pounds from running to the bottom with my gun. Luckily this one stopped at the deck which is around 70 feet down and I was able to horse him to the surface. I should have weighed him to see if he beat last week’s 37# aj but I forgot.

Then we moved west, checked another wreck but it was covered with cold milk water, once you got about 50 feet down. Then we checked some rocky areas on the bar but found nothing too exciting. Some triggerfish, mangroves a few cero mackerel. I took one triggerfish for some white meat and moved on. Then we checked some shallow stuff, nothing really except freezing cold water.

Then we went back deep and hit the mother lode of trash fish.  On top of rocks in 50-60 feet of water there was boiling water from huge schools of bar jacks, and under the bar jacks there were hundreds of yellow jacks from 8-15 pounds. I have never seen that many yellow jacks, at least not that size. To top that off under the yellow jacks there were amber jacks from 20-60 pounds.  We shot too many fish. We shot our limit of amberjack, Andy shot one that was 50-60# and it broke his line and took off with a shaft. Every yellow jack we shot would be swarmed by his buddies and the amberjack too, it was pretty ridiculous actually. We had a huge black grouper come out and try to eat one of the yellow jacks, like he was a jewfish.  Fired up nurse sharks were chasing our fish up to the surface in 55 feet of water. I can’t believe with all the blood and commotion more sharks didn’t show up.  I also shot a rainbow runner, I don’t know if it’s a big one or what, but it’s the biggest one I have ever seen.

After that it started to get dark, so we headed in, finally a day on the water after all those windy days. Any want any smoked jack, let me know.

posted by admin on Feb 4

Went out  yesterday and the day before, and on Tuesday Luis and I went out. Originally Luis had a doctor’s appointment, but the 6 knot winds and potential for shooting wahoo caused him to reschedule it. When he arrived in the morning he said “have plenty of time for doctor appointments when I am dead”.  We headed out west and found clear water but no sun. The water vis was very good like 60-70 feet but it lacked the crystal clear gulfstream blue quality that was apparent every other time we have seen wahoo. This was kind of disappointing and we didn’t see any all day. We drifted all day in water 50-240 feet deep. The first half of the day we passed on reef fish but when afternoon hit we just started shooting stuff.

The amount of fish we saw was pretty incredible, although most were not considered “quality fish”. Drifting in from the drop-off in waters 70-90 feet we would be greeted by huge schools of triggerfish, spade fish and King Mackerel.  All these fish would come in mass at the flashers we were using. I saw one school of king fish that must have had 50 fish in it, and on another drift a few miles away Luis saw a school of kingfish that had hundreds in it. We shot four king fish.  The school of mackerel had relatively small fish in the 7-10 pound range.  I also shot a 37# pound Amberjack (gutted), not really a big amberjack but a decent one for freediving in the Keys, and the largest I have shot so far. Luis had brought out a big riffe bluewater gun, rigged to kill something massive. Although we saw nothing massive tested it out on the king fish and he was happy how well it performed.

One of highlights of the day was Luis saw a group of cubera snapper in the water column in around 80 feet of water. He didn’t get one but it was pretty cool to see regardless.

The next day I went out with Andy and Brian from West Palm Beach. Brian is captain of the USA spearfishing team and an instructor for a free diving class. We dove some reef and wrecks in front of Key West. It was a half day and it was dark but the vis was still good so it was a good time. We didn’t shoot anything that exciting. I got a small cubera and Brian also shot a cubera but some sharks came and ate it. We shot some yellow jacks, and snapper.

Probably the most interesting thing we saw was massive amounts of black grouper on the reef. I guess I shouldn’t say massive after seeing videos of some of the spawning gags up north, but a lot of black grouper compared to what I have ever seen diving so far. One ledge had one fish that was pushing 35 pounds and 3 other fish all in the 10-15 pound range next to it. It just hung out and looked at me, I could have shot it 3 times. Seemed like everywhere we dove there was a black grouper looking at us.

posted by admin on Jan 10

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Some video from the past couple months, also uploader a much larger version of the video here, I suggest right clicking it and saving it to your hard drive to watch it.

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posted by admin on Nov 26

Spent the last couple days on the water.  First on Wednesday Catherine, Luis, and Mike went out with me. We ran out to the drop off in front of Key West and were greeted with 80 feet of visibility and very little current. We anchored in 60 feet of water and threw in a chum block. It was kind of disappointing. Not much showed up this time, a few little muttons, some mackerel, and in the distance Mike saw a shark with two short cobia on it but it stayed away. Mike and I both saw a couple blacks but couldn’t get them in the boat. So after a bit we pulled anchor and headed west.

We hit some rocks in 50 feet of water, and I took a 20 foot shot on a roughly 25# grouper but just grazed his back. He was already running, so there wasn’t going to be a better shot on him. We saw a lot of fish, Mike missed a pair of cuberas. We saw a bunch of sharks, a huge school of horse eye jacks, and a jewfish the size of a small car. Then Mike shot a 33# Amberjack, which had a buddy with him.  I probably could have got a long shot on the buddy but instead put a second shot into Mike’s fish. We also saw a big black grouper over 30#.  It ran from me towards Mike , then took off. Mike said he saw a wound on its one side that looked like someone had speared it.

As we were going to the next spot, we saw something big swimming on the surface behind the boat. So we turned around and ran back.  It turned out to be a 25 foot long whale shark. Mike jumped in with the camera and the rest of us struggled to get our gear on. Unfortunately the shark didn’t seem to like people and slowly dropped deeper in the water column and took off. I had thought by seeing other people’s videos that the sharks just ignored people but apparently not.

Then we went a bit further west.  Luis and I jumped in on top of a school of amberjack. Luis shot one and I shot another. It’s going to take forever to smoke all this fish.  The three of us worked a couple more rocks in around 50 feet of water and picked up some smaller random fish, trigger fish, grey snapper, hogfish. Then we noticed the approaching storm, and headed in. We made it about halfway home before it hit, and the ride in really sucked. 30 knot winds, rain, it was terrible, but we made it.

The next day we woke up and saw it was flat calm out, so Catherine and I debated going out. Then Luis called so we were going, then Jason appeared at our door right before we left, so he jumped on too. We didn’t go far, just in front of Key West. We anchored in 65 feet and used the rest of the chum I had. Again no big payoff, tons of bait , yellowtails and cero mackerel but nothing exciting. I shot a small black grouper but he was actually ahead of the boat and there as soon as I jumped in, so I could have got him without any chum anyway. After a little bit we moved into 30-40 feet of water and drifted. We shot some small fish, mangrove snapper, hogfish, yellow jacks. Nothing big, conditions were great though, good vis, little current.

At the last spot there were rocks with a bunch of crevices that I had seen a couple grouper sneak up in, so I shot a small barracuda and chopped him up, to see if the grouper would come back out. They didn’t, but a fired up reef shark came in and snatched up all the pieces, including a couple which I had just dropped . It was pretty awesome having shark swimming and feeding that close, you could tell the shark recognized us and totally knew we were not food, but I kept the gun on him just in case anyway.

Then we headed home, as the winds were picking up and anther front moving in.