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posted by admin on Jan 24

There are black grouper everywhere and the season is closed. I saw more black grouper in the past couple days then I think I have ever seen, and bigger too. And on top of that I still have not put a wahoo in the boat.

Went out two days ago with Brandon, Andy, Gabe, and JB . We went and looked at some gulf wrecks. The wrecks were covered with cobia but the vis was about 5 feet. Brandon and I tried spearing it but the terrible vis along with the monstrous bull shark that swam up to us in the murk was too much: we didn’t swim it for too long. After they caught their limit on the cobia on hook and line we headed out to the reef. There was over 100 feet of visibility on the reef. We saw wahoo and yet again did not get any in the boat. It’s starting to get kind of Captain Ahab-ish with wahoo. The vis was beautiful and although many of the areas we were drifting were kind of deep I had fun doing practicing diving to keep warm. I shot a nice dog snapper in around 60 feet of water and then we came in.

The wahoo thing is getting a bit frustrating.  The only thing I have learned new this past time was that I should swap the 250# mono I use for hunting the reef with 300-400# mono for rigging the gun.

The next day I went out again,  this time with Catherine, Jason, Nate, Corey and Paul. We headed out to the wahoo zone again, and again were skunked on the wahoo. Supposedly they were deeper that day. The vis was still awesome and I did a lot of 70 foot dives(as deep as my float line would allow), I am going to have to get a longer float line for going diving with Corey and Paul. Once we were discouraged with the wahoo we hit the reef in around 50 feet of water. We hit one ledge that had a school of yellowtail on it, some of the biggest yellowtail I have ever seen. There had be to some pushing 8-9 pounds, they were the size of yellowjacks and would not let anyone get near them. Under the yellowtail we counted around 6 legal grouper, one of which was over 30#, and two were over 20#. The big one knew to take off when he saw us, but I almost got close enough to poke a 20# one with my spear tip. It’s like they know the season is closed. We shot mangrove and mutton snapper, yellowjacks, triggerfish and cero mackerel, and had to pass on grouper after grouper.  We then came in shallower but the vis kind of sucked.

I have been diving much better the last few months, for a while I was getting kind of frustrated with my diving.  My body could dive way deeper then I could equalize. After doing a few dives around 70 feet my ears would start squeaking and then over the course of the day I would have to dive shallower and shallower often having to quit early because of inability to keep equalizing.  Then I started taking nasal spray and this fixed problem instantly. I could dive whatever depth all day long. I noticed that even when I could equalize before the effort involved was cutting a lot out of my dive time, but now I was diving deeper and a lot longer.

The nasal spray is nasty stuff though and as much as I think you can get away with it once a week or whatever I tried to look for an alternative. My issues were not with mucus in my passages apparently, sudafed, mucinex, not drinking milk(I kind of think that’s an old wives tale anyway) did not seem to help at all. My problem seems to be with inflammation and swelling, which is why the nasal spray helped so much. So the last couple dives I have been taking gel coated aleve the night before and in the morning.  It’s an anti-inflammatory, and I have been able to dive all day with no nasal spray.  I guess I should not take anything next time to test if it’s the aleve that is helping but since it doesn’t have the negative side effects of the nasal spray, there really isn’t a reason to not take one.

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 Dec 9

Went out on the water the past couple of days.  Had been a while since I was able to go out because I screwed up my hand a week ago.  Anyway it’s healed and I now wear thicker dive gloves. Went out with Andy ,Chris, Catherine and Fenway on their boat on Monday. They had been hearing reports of wahoo  schooling outside the reef line and went looking for them. We got lucky and ran into them in 150 feet of water. Couldn’t ask for better conditions, 80-90 feet of vis with little current.

The string of bad luck that followed is painful to relive. The first one I dropped down on was probably around 30 pounds or more. I pulled the trigger on a relatively long shot and the shooting line and bungee somehow became entangled and the spear stopped halfway there.  The next one …. the next one I should have been a bit closer or used a slip tip. Andy and Chris had similar luck.  All in all it was awesome and sucked at the same time. Catherine found some sort of crazy jellyfish that could follow people or run from them.

Then we came in to the reef and at one spot I saw a cluster of 4 black grouper just sitting there. I dropped down to the bottom as slow as I could and drilled the biggest one. He tangled himself around some debris and generally made a big mess. Chris  helped me me get him loose, but in the end I had to cut my shooting line. I have to take Luis’s suggestion and get the little tank for the boat. Getting a grouper out of crevice at 60 feet, is kind of a pain in the ass.  It’s fun as long as you can recover the fish, but sometimes it starts to get dangerous and sometimes you can’t get the fish. I didn’t have another line so I was out for the little bit of the day that was left. Just as well: my hand hurt so much I kind of wanted to stop anyway.

The next day we got up at the crack of dawn mostly due to Brad’s ridiculous morning schedule.  This time Jason came with, along with Catherine. We met Andy and his crew out on the water in the same area as the day before but there was no wahoo to be seen. My boat’s engine died and we sent jason on Andy’s boat while Brad , me and Catherine fixed it (OK, Brad fixed it, while we held things for him). Once Brad got the engine running we anchored on a wreck in 200 feet of water and started chumming. The water was dirtier today then the day before and maybe that is why there was no wahoo around. We chunked up bontio and jack crevelle and had a pretty good slick going but nothing swam up that we could shoot. What did swim up was one the most kick ass schools of yellowtails I have ever seen. Dozens of fat yellowtails hung out about 40 feet under us, and would instantly drop as soon as you tried to dive down on them. After a while we gave up on that spot and then anchored on another wreck in around 90 feet of water.  We chummed that one also and had massive schools of bait surround us, but the only other fish that showed where Amberjacks.

Then we went snorkeling on the reef, took some little reef fish for dinner and also saw about 5 gag grouper, all were short. I haven’t seen a lot of gags on the reef so this was kind of interesting. Catherine took pictures of some old anchors we found. She is enjoying her new wetsuit top. The only company we found that makes a wetsuit, open cell , two piece in her tiny size was immersion. The 3mm top fits her so much better then her old 5mm top and she is still warm so that has been a big victory.

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.