Crap Vis, half day

Filed under Spearfishing Photos, Spearfishing Reports by on February 24, 2010 at 10:35 pm {one comment}

mola-missed-085 Well when I went to bed it was raining and the wind was blowing over 20 knots and when I woke up it was flat calm and sunny, so I loaded up the boat.  At such short notice in the middle of the week, there aren’t too many people to call to go out, so Catherine and I headed out by ourselves.  I checked the national weather service site and it said the gulf stream was only a mile from looe key and two miles from Sand Key.  I assumed that this meant we would most likely have blue water on the reef, or at least not far off shore.  I was wrong.

We headed to check the Vandenberg.  It’s probably one of the closest cool things to dive and the reef nearbyis often pretty good for spearing.  When we got there I looked down the moorings and there was around 20 feet of vis.  We motored out to around 250-300 feet and the water was still pretty crappy.   We came in to the shallows and ate lunch.  While we were eating, a huge ocean sunfish swam behind the boat, had to have been 6 or 7 feet tall.  We tried following it with the boat to get a video of it but we failed.  The vis was bad and it didn’t seem to like the boat.

Then we suited up and jumped in a shallow patch.  As soon as I jumped in there was a bunch of cero mackerel around me.  I have eaten enough smoked fish for awhile and passed on them.  Then a train of yellow jacks came through, must have been around 60 of them.  I tried waiting for Catherine to get to me to get a video of the jacks but they passed.  Catherine swam around and found a huge moray eel and harassed it for while taking its picture.  I saw a cubera snapper, a small one, and I tried to get him but as soon as I got close I spooked a black grouper, which in turn spooked him.  Then the yellow jacks were back and I stoned one about 15 pounds.  There were a couple huge jacks in the school but they kept their distance as soon as they saw me.  I also shot a large mangrove.

After that we sun bathed for bit, or basically just sat around and talked.  It’s odd that people just go boating isn’t it?  I mean they just drive a boat out in the ocean and then sit in it and talk.   Maybe it’s more odd to swim around with essentially giant rubber band guns trying to impale fishes?  While we were chatting a tired bird landed on the boat and we named him “Charlie”.   He got to rest for awhile before we went in and thanked us by crapping on the boat.

mola-missed-149 I was shooting a Tahitian flopper shaft, and have not been that happy with it. Firstly let me just say the floppers on Sumora Shafts break off.  I broke one once and thought it was just bad luck or whatever, but now I have broken 2 floppers on two sumora shafts.  I broke one on a nice grouper maybe 6 months ago and now this week I lost a medium sized yellow jack because the flopper broke.  Anyways I re-rigged the sumora  shaft with a rob allen flopper (which appears to be made out of heavier metal, I might add) but put it on the wrong side.  So now I have a Tahitian flopper instead of Hawaiian.  At first I thought it shot fine, but I have missed a few shots now which seemed like really easy shots.  I I think I might pull it off and put it back the other way.  Not sure if it’s messed up because it’s on top (which shouldn’t affect the shooting) or if maybe in the process of tuning the flopper I bent it.  I have missed 3 or 4 close shots using a single band now, and although I miss pretty often anyway, that seems like too many in too short of a time.

Also we found this recipe for lobsters, pretty awesome if you don’t mind eating something that is like 800 calories a serving – Lobster Pasta.

Pretty much a bust

Filed under Spearfishing Photos, Spearfishing Reports by on October 16, 2009 at 1:43 pm {no comments}

Went out spearfishing yesterday with Brad, Luis, Brian and Catherine. Luis had been out a couple days ago and  said the vis was better to the west so we ran west. The water on the reef was crappy, less then 20 feet of vis.   So headed out to the outer edge and found some clear water. We had clear water for about an hour. We drifted over some nice fishy rocks, marked a couple of nice ledges and saw nothing to shoot. There were a couple yellowtail boats in the area, maybe their chum slicks had drawn everything behind them?  I don’t know but we drifted rocks and ledges that had a ton of small fish on them, but nothing bigger. Then the water silted up so we started driving.

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We did a couple drifts over a deep water wreck, but didn’t see anything.  I was about to drop the flashers down when noticed that the swivel on them was messed up, so I fixed it. Then I dropped the flashers in without reconnecting them to the mainline and they sailed off into the abyss. That’s like the third set of flashers lost this year.

So then we ran west, hoping if we got past the Boca Grande channel the water would clear. It didn’t, and after driving around forever, we dropped anchor on a small shallow rock pile. Brian and I shot some triggerfish and yellow jacks, Cat took some photos. The rocks had basically unlimited mangroves on them, with a big school of yellow jacks orbiting the rocks. I saw what might have been a black grouper or a large black margate disappear into a hole but that was it really.

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Then we pulled anchor and drove back toward Key West. We made a couple stops along the way but the vis was still crap. For a minute there was some clear water on the bar on the way home, but it quickly silted up and a strong west bound current came with the bad vis.

Before we came home we went out to check the noaa buoy in 300 feet of water, but apparently they removed it, so we ran out there for nothing. All in the all the day was a big bust.

Half Day – Conditions kind of Suck

Filed under Spearfishing Photos, Spearfishing Reports by on July 7, 2009 at 5:42 pm {no comments}

Went out spearfishing for a half day on Tuesday with Catherine and Brian and it kind of sucked. We drove out past Sand Key and the water looked like green milk, we drove past western dry rocks and it didn’t get any better. so we went out deeper. There was blue water once you got out to 150-180 feet, we drove around for awhile out to 500 feet of water and didn’t see any signs of life. We checked the noaa buoy and there was some bait on it but that was all, current was around 5 knots. We came in to like 8 feet of water and checked some spots to see if the lobsters where there, there was some but we didn’t see any massive quantities. We shot a trigger and a yellow jack for dinner and came in. Vis was 15 feet or so.