posted by admin on Feb 24

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.

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.

posted by admin on Feb 16

Catherine, Andy, Cally, Fenway and I went out yesterday. Even though the winds have been blowing every which direction we found visibility up 70 feet at at high tide. The calm winds and clear water were quite a relief after being stuck in the house for a week or so. The only downside was it was around 58 degrees in the morning , which is pretty cold weather for going swimming.

We started our day free diving the Vandenburg. In addition to the hundreds of barracuda schooling on it there was a good number of amberjack. I shot one of the Ajs about 50 feet down and had it run right down the to the deck of the wreck. This was kind of a reminder of why I need to get a bigger float.  I am not sure I would have been able to stop an Aj over 40 pounds from running to the bottom with my gun. Luckily this one stopped at the deck which is around 70 feet down and I was able to horse him to the surface. I should have weighed him to see if he beat last week’s 37# aj but I forgot.

Then we moved west, checked another wreck but it was covered with cold milk water, once you got about 50 feet down. Then we checked some rocky areas on the bar but found nothing too exciting. Some triggerfish, mangroves a few cero mackerel. I took one triggerfish for some white meat and moved on. Then we checked some shallow stuff, nothing really except freezing cold water.

Then we went back deep and hit the mother lode of trash fish.  On top of rocks in 50-60 feet of water there was boiling water from huge schools of bar jacks, and under the bar jacks there were hundreds of yellow jacks from 8-15 pounds. I have never seen that many yellow jacks, at least not that size. To top that off under the yellow jacks there were amber jacks from 20-60 pounds.  We shot too many fish. We shot our limit of amberjack, Andy shot one that was 50-60# and it broke his line and took off with a shaft. Every yellow jack we shot would be swarmed by his buddies and the amberjack too, it was pretty ridiculous actually. We had a huge black grouper come out and try to eat one of the yellow jacks, like he was a jewfish.  Fired up nurse sharks were chasing our fish up to the surface in 55 feet of water. I can’t believe with all the blood and commotion more sharks didn’t show up.  I also shot a rainbow runner, I don’t know if it’s a big one or what, but it’s the biggest one I have ever seen.

After that it started to get dark, so we headed in, finally a day on the water after all those windy days. Any want any smoked jack, let me know.

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.

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