posted by admin on Jun 16

Went out with Cal and Catherine the other day. We decided to go out to the gulf due to everyone saying how clear it was. First spot we checked was inshore and it was crystal clear for that area. The water was shallow and warm, and not a lot of big fish. We got some triggers, sheepshead, mangroves, a couple hogfish and a small dog snapper. Nothing big but the rocks where alive with bait and fish. Catherine took a lot of photos. After that we went out into the gulf, to a sunken barge. The vis was not as good out there but there was more fish.

First drop down Cal shot a baby cobia without a float line, which he purposely tangled in the anchor line to make sure he didn’t lose his gun. I shot it again before it tore off. Then Cal shot a permit, I would say that permit is quickly replacing amberjack as the number one fish people shoot and then do not want when we get back to the dock. I dove on the barge repeatedly but only saw jewfish and hundreds of Spanish mackerel.

After that my boat wouldn’t start, but then did after some monkeying around with it. Since I really did not want to get sea towed in from far out, I ran home. It was a short day but pretty fun anyway.

Then Yesterday Catherine and I went out for a half day with Jason and his son. We left the dock around 2 and came back around 6. We went in front of Key West and finally the water was clear, after weeks of being dirty. Catherine was wearing Jason’s dive watch and was excited to be able to see how deep she was actually diving.

Jason and his son shot a bunch hogfish, red grouper and yellow jacks. Jason finally shot two fish with his double gun. Jason builds spearguns and built a gun that shoots two shafts and has a double trigger. He seems to think it the greatest thing ever. I think it looks like a royal pain in the ass. With the number of times I have seen him have issues with it, it really doesn’t interest me. I get frustrated enough reloading simple guns sometimes. The gun might work ok with freeshafts on scuba or something, but I really don’t think it’s suitable to freedive with. I know in theory it sounds great but I like to keep things simple.

I shot a big mangrove off the towers on the vandenburg and also got a red grouper on patch coral on the reef. I had 6 foot long reef shark come up and hang out with me on the vandenburg. I really should have taken a photo. Not sure what I was thinking. He came right up on my fins and then went to see if my float was something to eat.

You could probably have shot a similar mangrove on the reef, or even on an inshore patch in 10 feet of water, but would that have been as much fun as diving 50 feet or so and shooting him off the tower of a wreck, in 60-70 foot vis? For me it wouldn’t have been.  Some people say that they don’t care the conditions as long as they are shooting a lot of fish, but that doesn’t really scale out for me. Yeah, I like to shoot fish but honestly I would prefer shooting less fish in deeper clear water then shooting a bunch of little fish in shallow dirty water.

posted by admin on Mar 20

Took advantage of the nice weather and went out yesterday with Catherine, Mike and Andy. We had calm seas and decent visibility.  I would say the clearest water we saw had around 50-55 feet of visibility. Strong current flowing to the east all day. We dove mostly in 30-55 feet of water. The fish we got was nothing spectacular: an amberjack, some yellow jacks – I got one yellow jack that was around 21-22 pounds – some mangroves, a cero mackerel , a hogfish. But we still had a great time, the air temps where kind of cold for riding around in the open boat soaking wet but it wasn’t that bad.

Andy recently got new shafts with the Tahitian flopper on them and they suck. He lost a bunch of fish including a a cobia, it was tough day for him. Some of the rocks that were covered in fish the other day were empty. Catherine was finally able to get back in the water after a dry spell. The unseasonably cold weather coupled with the spring wind, has made many days not worth going out. Catherine had a camera malfunction while swimming in the middle of a huge school of horse  eye jacks, which now has her talking about buying a real video camera for under water. We saw tons of nurse sharks laying around the bottom in the groups, large schools of rainbow runners, and huge horse eye jacks.

The big yellow jack I shot, broke my shooting line but I found his body with the shaft shortly thereafter so it worked out. I have been shooting the gun with a single wrap of mono and it is so much more enjoyable then dealing with all the extra line. I think I may just stick with the single wrap unless the vis is like 100 feet or when grouper open back up. I saw several grouper today a couple were around 25 pounds possibly more.

posted by admin on Mar 18

Well we finally got a little break in the weather and and was able to go out for a half day. The rain finally stopped around 1pm and we where headed out by 2pm. Kind of awesome to have a boat in a slip in Key West. The relatively short drive to the fishing grounds means you can hit the water at a moment’s notice and still have decent time. I went on Andy’s boat along with Luis and Cal. We headed out to areas where we saw the cobia the other day. Kind of a long run for a half day, but we all had been dying to get back out to that area to see if the cobia were still there.

When we hit the rocks we were excited to be able to see bottom; there was 30 or so feet of visibility. Pretty much all this past week the snorkel boats had been reporting that visibility was less then 20 feet, some days less then 10 feet. No cobia at all. We did run into the usual reef species: yellow jacks, mangroves, triggerfish, amberjack and I shot a big permit. I usually don’t take permit, in my opinion they are not that great to eat and although they are legal to spear in federal waters, I just don’t really want the hassle of explaining that to the FWC. This one was big though and I couldn’t resist. I am going to try smoking some of the meat and see how that is.

Everyone had gear break or lost. Luis broke a fin right off the bat, Riffe fins, his Riffes broke exactly like my Riffes did before. Cal had his shooting line break and lost a shaft to a yellow jack. I hit Luis’s float line with the engine and broke it. Myself and Andy were freezing, Cal was warm in his 5mm suit. I keep saying I am going to buy a 5mm suit, but then I tell myself it’s about to get warm and then it doesn’t get warm.

Cal had a reef shark attack his float and try to take some snapper from him.

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.