posted by admin on Mar 9

Finally after weeks of terrible weather and water conditions we got a break and got to go out in the boat. Andy, Lou, Catherine and I headed out yesterday on Andy’s boat. We had uncertain conditions, so we hoped for the best. When we hit the reef edge we were pleasantly surprised with 25-30 feet of visibility on the main reef. We checked the bar but the vis seemed actually worse out there. When I jumped in, the water was cold, not sure how cold but too cold to be wearing a 3mm wetsuit in my opinion.  The first couple spots we hit kind of sucked, little mangroves, the occasional forbidden grouper, a couple of ceros, really not much in the way of fish.

Because of the weak vis we headed in a bit shallower, 25-35 feet of water and hit some big rock piles. When Luis and I first hit the water and cleared the first rock, I saw two cobia laying on the sand and yelled to him.  I got over top of one of them and waited for him to get over the other before I took my shot. Right before we dove down a big nurse shark swam through and spooked both of them.  Luis hit his mid water and took off in one direction.  I hit mine with a gut shot and it took off in the other.  After a few feet it tore off but the fish kept swimming along the rocks so I followed it, reloaded and shot it again.  This time it took off in the other direction pulling me with it.  Andy had dropped some flashers in and my float line quickly found them and tangled in them.  While I was cruising along , there were nurse sharks all over.  Then I started seeing other types of sharks mid water column, first a couple big reef sharks and then a bull shark, then a bigger bull shark, all swirling around me.  I then realized that the sharks were going after the flashers, and tried to untangle them.  I called for the boat but they were tied up with the other cobia.  I got the flashers untangled and the sharks backed away.

The next drift brought more cobia, and more sharks.  Andy shot a nice yellow jack and the sharks turned on like you hit a switch.  They went from drive bys to 5 sharks attacking the yellow jack at once.  After that the sharks would not let you shoot fish: they ate whatever you shot.  Andy shot another big yellow jack and the sharks ate it and took his shaft.  One bull got so aggressive that Lou poked him in the face with a spear.  On the next drift the same bull charged me and at the last second backed off.  I’m pretty sure my gun would have blow him away if needed but still, after that we dove kind of back to back, and the sharks didn’t seem to want to get near us when we were in a group.

The rocks we were diving were covered with fish.  In addition to the sharks and cobia, there where big schools of barracuda, some of the fish weighting 30-40 pounds, groups of big permit, and big schools of jack crevelles.  Even a big jewfish came out to see what the commotion was about, and nurse sharks everywhere.  In some spots there would be 3 or 4 nurse sharks just laying around next to each other almost in a pile.  After the action cooled down, we all realized that we were cold and headed in.

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

Watch the video

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

posted by admin on Jan 9

Went out yesterday with Catherine, Luis, and Andy, and had the best day we have had in a while. We tried to go out early this week but got frozen out, and had to come in. This time we headed back out with more winter clothing and a new wetsuit top for me. It was still cold but it was calm and sunny, and that made all the difference.

First spot we hit we looked for wahoo.  The water wasn’t that clear so I didn’t have high hopes on seeing any. We drifted for a couple of hours, and I shot a schoolie dolphin and we saw some sharks. We decided to hit the reef and run east to see if the water was  clearer.   First drift on the reef I picked up a black and we also got some hogfish and a mutton snapper.   I know the grouper ban is in effect for federal waters but you can still take groupers in state waters until the 20th. The next spot we went to check was a cave that holds groupers like 75% of the time but before we got to it we ran into a school of yellow jacks.  I shot a 15# one.  After I gutted the jack,  I see what looks like a small shark swimming right at me. I waited wondering what its deal was, and then I realized it was a cobia.  I dove down and shot it with one band from about 3 inches away, and it went nuts. Andy had to come and put another shot in it to keep it from ripping itself off the spear. First Cobia on a spear for me, he weighted 22# gutted.

We headed to humps to see if we could pick up some more grouper. They were covered with fish but there was a ripping current and cold milky water. I saw a nice black grouper and Andy saw a nice cubera but neither of us got either fish. We headed out to the bar next but the water was milky enough to make it hard to spot fish from the surface, so we headed in shallower.

On the reef line, Luis and I ran into a school of cero mackerel and took a few for the smoker, they were all over. You could probably throw a block of chum in at that spot and fill the boat with mackerel, if you wanted to.   It was getting late so we decided to check some patch reefs on the way home.   We jumped in on one reef in about 15-20 feet of water and in about 20 minutes, Luis had shot two grouper and I shot a 6# & 11# mutton. I bent my shaft at some point and missed two stupid easy shots on two other grouper. I changed out my shaft, and followed around another grouper for a minute. There was pretty much unlimited keys sized hogfish, but we didn’t bother with them. It was getting late, and as much as it would have been fun to keep hitting patch reefs, we had a ton of fish so we headed in.