posted by admin on Jan 10
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.
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.
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.
posted by admin on Jan 1
Went out yesterday with Jason, Matt, Nate and Jason JR. We ran way east to see if we could find some clearer water. We found some ok vis, after a while, maybe 30 feet or so. We shot a bunch of reef fish, cero mackerel, hogfish, mangroves (Matt shot a big mangrove), mutton snappers, I got one Black grouper, which was pretty cool because it was the last day of grouper season. Highlight of the day was Jason and I shot some African Pompano. It’s kind of nice when you go east of Key West since the federal waters are closer to shore then they are in front of Key West. So before people send emails telling me I can’t shoot APs, you should know you can spear APs and Permit in federal waters. Those APs really put up a fight and I had to recover mine somewhat from an excited reef shark. When push came to shove the shark backed off.
I’m freezing out there, my oceanos wetsuit lets water run through it like a sieve, it didn’t really fit that great from jump. Not sure why, I measured twice and emailed the builder to get more details on the measurements. The first suit he sent me was so far off in measurements I actually had to ship it back to get another one. I want to be happy with the oceanos wetsuit so bad. I mean it’s a custom suit for less then an off the rack price. Everyone else in the world seems to get one that fits perfect right off the bat, but yet after two tries my suit does not fit. The first suit he sent was over 10-15 centimeters smaller then some of the measurements I sent him. It was so tight in the chest and stomach, it was hard to breath up in. The beaver tail was also like a thong. Before he sent the next one I added a lot to the length measurements to try to avoid the thong again, and when it came it was like wearing a thong, again. I had to send the top out to seatux to increase the length of the beavertail just to make the top wearable. Sucks, I am going to have to replace the top, in order to be warm enough. I guess on the positive the pants fit perfect. I don’t get it, does a different person do the pants then the tops?
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.
