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 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.

posted by admin on Oct 11

Went out this past Thursday with my neighbor Luis. Catherine had to work so no pictures. We  fished the reef in front of Key West and had a pretty productive day on the water. We shot a couple big yellow jack, a cubera snapper, mutton snapper, triggerfish, cero mackerel and hogfish. The wind picked up and the vis dropped a lot in the afternoon.  Vis ranged 25-50 feet with the best vis on the outer edge of the reef.  Luis has been spearing in Key West for over 20 years and it was interesting to hear about how much fish there used to be here.

On Saturday Catherine and I went out. We brought a bunch of lobsterheads and chum and planned on chumming the outer edge of the reef.  But when we got out to the edge the waves were just a bit much. So we came back on to the reef. We burned some chum in a couple shallow spots and it really didn’t attract a lot of desirables.  Lots of triggerfish, mangrove snapper, mackerel and yellow jacks but not many grouper or mutton snapper. I have plenty of fish from Thursday and was pretty much just looking for blacks or muttons to spear. It did attract the biggest nassau grouper I have ever seen, around 15-20#.  We also attracted a bonnet head shark and some huge barracuda.

Last spot, just as the chum ran out a fat mutton cruised in.  I only had one band loaded because I was checking holes for reds and lobsters.  I dropped down and hit him right in the middle and he went nuts.  I could see the the flopper was barely held to him by a finger width piece of skin.  So I did what I always do when it looks like a fish is going to tear off, I let go of my gun. But I had forgotten since the boat was anchored and it was shallow I didn’t have my float line. So there goes my gun out into the sand behind this mutton. After a crazy swim I get a a hold of it again and after 5 minutes of coaxing I get the barely on mutton back to the rocks, hoping he will rock up so I can get a hold of him. Finally I get him wedged between rocks and I grabbed the shaft and drove it all the way through. I think I am just going to shoot muttons with two bands from now on, even if they seem close.

posted by admin on Aug 3

Catherine, Jason and I went out spear fishing on Sunday. The weather forecast called for 10-15 knot winds. In the morning the Sand Key weather station was reporting 20 knot winds.  Right before we left it was down to 17 knots, but that still sucks so we headed to the gulf side. The winds were east to southeast so the gulf side wasn’t that bad. There was 15-20 feet of vis on the gulf side, which is pretty good for that area. We hit a bunch of rocks and coral heads.  We also hit a beat up wreck, which didn’t have much desirable fish but was pretty good snorkeling.

One thing I have noticed on the gulf side is the large schools of tiny fish, not as common on the Atlantic or so it seems to me. A small rock on gulf side will be covered with life, filled with lane snapper and maybe a school of glass minnows hovering over it.

We spent the day in shallow water and the fish were small but plentiful. I practiced with my new pole spear. The pole spear’s simplicity seems to make it great for lower vis and shallow water. There is no shooting line to be tangled on rocks, and I am not blasting my shafts through little fish and into rocks behind them. I shot a bunch of hogfish and a couple snapper with the pole spear. I saw one nice black but it was gone into the distance almost instantly. I might have had a shot with my gun , maybe. The only thing I really didn’t like about the pole spear was that it unscrews in sections. I bought it for traveling so that was necessary but I will keep my eye out of a used one piece for use at home. I was hoping to shoot some sort of bigger fish with the pole spear to see how that goes, and if I need a slip tip for it, but there wasn’t much that was big on these gulf side patches . I will take it out to the reef later this week and see if I can pop a big yj with it.

Total catch was a bunch of hogfish up to 19 inches long and a couple of snapper that were more for target practice