Went out Friday with Brad, Brian and Catherine, stayed pretty close to Key West. My boat is really dragging I have to clean the bottom this week. We just hit some spots around western dry rocks and didn’t have particularly good luck. We saw a lot of mangrove snappers but not a lot of fish. Saw a couple spooky black groupers but not much else. Brian shot a trigger fish and spade fish( he had never eaten one). I shot a hog and a bar jack. Pretty slow day. Vis was good, water was warm. Brad did the best with two muttons and a hog.
On Sunday Catherine and I went out with Jason and Andy, on their boat along with Jason’s son. We went a bit west but the lousy vis we hit once we got past Boca Grande made us turn back. Would it have cleared up past the Marquesas keys? Maybe but it was definitely clear east of Boca Grande so we headed back. We shot a bunch of fish, yellow jacks, bar jacks, hogfish, mutton snapper and one black grouper (it was so small I had to squeeze the tail to make it legal). Conditions were great: good vis up to about 60 feet, a bit of current but manageable. We had some drama when I shot a yellow jack and it looked like it was hanging on by a thread so I called for some one to shoot it again. Andy swam down and took a shot missed and got the shaft stuck in rock, this wouldn’t have been a big deal if there wasn’t a ripping current so he was stuck dealing with that. I had Jason throw me a gun and I swam down to shoot the fish again and at the last minute the fish ran more up current so I took a desperation shot which hit but then tore out. I had let go of my float line and had to swim like crazy to get it back. After all the excitement the fish just kind of died and I was able to just slowly pull him in.
Andy saw a tiger shark, but it was too far away for Catherine to get a photo, I was in the boat at the time. I also saw a huge black grouper, cruising on the bottom in 55 feet of water. A really beautiful fish, it swam with the current for bit but took off as soon as I tried to get a little closer.
