Went out diving the past couple days with a few people. All and all we just really haven’t been doing that great on fish recently. The water has been warm although kind of dirty. Went out with Jason, Andy, Eddie and Catherine one day. We tried to go west but the water got real dirty. We dove the bar for a bit but the fish just didn’t really seem to be there. We got some yellow jacks, Andy shot a grouper. Eddy had to save my yellow jack from a couple of big nurse sharks that were trying to eat it. The goat fish seem to be spawning again, mangroves are starting to stack up in large numbers on the reef.
Fishing was kind of slow, but it was an ok day anyway. I shot two yellow jacks at the same time by accident which was pretty sweet. Catherine got to spend some time in the shallows taking photos of hogfish. Andy has been obsessed with diving in the shallows lately. I don’t really like it, there are tons of fish but they tend to be small and the water is dirty.
The next day I went out with a boat load of people , Andy, Kevin from Hawaii, Romaine from France, and Josh and Brian from West Palm. We hit the wrecks out in front of Key West and did some diving along the reef line. The wrecks were pretty much deserted: the amberjacks have pretty much moved out, it seems. Vis was 30-50 feet so it was decent. All the new guys who came were excellent divers and could dive much deeper then I am used to diving. I tried following Romaine down to video tape him shooting something off the deck of a wreck at around 75 feet and quickly realized he can hold his breath much longer then I can.
We had a lot of fun with some reef sharks that were very interested in our catch. One bumped into Andy while he was gutting a mackerel out. We shot a lot of fish but nothing out of the ordinary. Big mangroves were all over. I saw one that had to be over 10# which is large for here but could not get him. Grouper were scarce. I only saw two legal fish all day both of which bolted when they saw me. I think the whole boat only shot a couple grouper. We shot yellow jacks , margates, mangrove snapper, cero mackerel, permit, mutton snapper, and grouper.
Fishing just seems kind of slow lately, although I had one friend say they crushed them in gulf but then another said they went to the gulf and there was a ton of algae and it sucked.
Sucks the fishing has been slow. Cat’s pics are looking good though. I’m hoping to get out off Jax (40-60 miles) to do some shooting Saturday. If we get out, I’ll post pics. Should be interesting.