Ok, Catherine made it out with us yesterday so I have some photos to post. Diving has been pretty good recently but mostly not for me. Actually that is not totally true I shot a 25# king fish earlier this week which was actually pretty exciting. But other then that have not really shot anything with any size to it except the random cuda here and there.
Yesterday was ok with Cat , Stoner , John and Andy. The conditions were ok but I could not shoot a fish to save my life. In addition to numerous misses, tear offs and gut shots, I also got the smallest grouper of the day, with a tail pincher right off the bat. Everyone else got decent blacks yesterday. But overall it was a good day on the water with fair to visibility and calm seas.
The huge schools of mangroves are still around but there behavior has changed back to normal. For awhile they were practically swimming into the spear, but now you can usually get one good one from the school and then the rest bounce. Catherine got a couple photos of me diving into a school of mangroves which was great. I just wish she had been with me last week. We found huge schools out west of grays, not only were there thousands of the them there were larger ones in schools for here, like 3-5# fish. The schools we saw yesterday had a lot of fish but the larger fish were around 3# max. Also last week there were huge schools of triggerfish shadowing the mangrove schools as well.
Stoner and John did some tank dives yesterday and they didn’t really produce.
I got a new riffe reel to replace the merou reel which I broke and it is ok. I think the drag system on the merou is better and smoother. The riffe is jerky when a fish is running out line. I broke the merou palming the reel and horsing fish. The frame broke which is kind of pathetic. It makes no sense to make such a nice reel and then put it on such a weak frame. I am kind of wondering if I should have just stuck with the merou and tried to be more careful with it.
I got a replacement for my leader fin I snapped last week. I got replacement blades in soft to give it a try. I actually like them. There has been a couple instances when swimming in current they seemed kind of weak but overall they have been good. Will see how long it takes me to break these. I have dove to 65 feet in them so far and they seem fine for diving that depth but maybe the medium stiffness would be better. I would kind of like to try the stiff fins for week and see if how there are.
