Catherine is back from NY and she and I went out yesterday afternoon. Vis on the main reef was kind of stirred up with maybe 20 feet of visibility. We just drove past it and hit the bar which was bathed in beautiful blue water with vis from around 60-80 feet.
On the edge of the main reef there was a weed line with tons of bait swirling around. We jumped in, the only fish other then the bait was small horse eye jacks, thousands of them. It was pretty cool swimming totally surrounded by small bait fish and then having the horse eye jacks charge in attacking them.
Catherine shot a little video, then her camera batteries died.
Swimming through schools of bait from Catherine Tims on Vimeo.
After swimming with the jacks got old, we headed out deeper and did some drifts in 50-80 feet of water. I chased around a couple nice muttons but couldn’t get them. Catherine and I shot 2 cero mackerel at the same time, decent sized for ceros, and the largest mackerel Catherine has shot. I shot some triggerfish, they were in pairs not in the bigger groups of 15-20 fish like they were a couple months ago. I wonder if they were spawning? We drifted a bunch more over some deep spots, that were good a couple months ago, its strange how the fish move, why were they congregated there the first time?
We also drifted on some spots where I did OK hook and lining kingfish before I started spear fishing. I got a shot at a monster kingfish, I’m not going to guess the weight because I’ll probably be way over, but it definitely was over 5 feet long. It was swimming in a pair, I got maybe close enough to hit the smaller of the pair but being greedy I tried to take the long shot at the big one. That was stupid , I should have just tried to get the closer one.
We checked some lobster spots on the way in and just got a bunch of shorts.
