updated 11.2.2016
Took advantage of the great visibility and reasonably calm conditions and went spear fishing yesterday near the Marquesas Keys. Five people went: Brad, Catherine, Mike, Chris and myself. My boat handled that many people reasonably well, and we had a great day, visibility ranged from 60-80 feet all day. In the morning the current was kind of cranking but the rest of the day it died down.
Videos Pre-GoPro = Pain in the Ass
Catherine took some stills and videos, I feel bad because the vids are primarily of me. I probably need to tell other people that Cat will take pics and vids of anything you ask her to, but the odds of her just following you around trying to get shots are pretty slim. She is just as interested in taking pics of purple sea fans and tropicals as she is getting pics of people shooting.
Our original plan was to hit a deep water wreck and try to shoot some pelagic species. With my small boat and 15+ knot winds from the south it looked like it would be a bit rough. When we hit blue water before even leaving state waters, it pretty much sealed the deal and we hit hawks channel instead.
Live Coral – Full of Life
I could probably shoot that much now by myself but I doubt it would anywhere near as fun
First spot we dropped on was absolutely alive with fish, and some of the healthiest coral I have seen while snorkeling down here. We picked up multiple snapper, grouper, jacks and a mackerel almost instantaneously. We had one shark steal a fish and a couple frisky nurse sharks. We pulled anchor and drifted the area a bit, picked up some more fish, then the vis started to decrease so we headed further offshore.
We drifted a bit in the deeper water and ran into a big ball of glass minnows, some bonito were attacking them but nothing else. The current had died down and we anchored and chummed a bit using lobster heads. We picked up some muttons and had a curious reef shark and nurse shark to entertain us.
Spearfishing Key West November 30th from Catherine Tims on Vimeo.
Then we headed into some shallower rocks which were just full of fish. There was a school of big yellow jacks and amberjacks circling the rocks, some porpoises came in and spooked the fish for a second. We anchored and picked up some more fish.
Giant School of Sharks
Then a big school of crevelle jacks came through extremely fast followed by 2 bull sharks and literally 20 or more nurse sharks. What I saw was a very large school of sharks. Only the front of the pack was clearly visible and the others behind were just silhouettes, but also huge. They were bulls out in front of the pack so naturally I thought a large school of bulls was headed our way, chasing after the jacks. It kind of made me want to s*#t my wetsuit.
But as they got closer I saw it was just the two Bulls out front and all nurses behind them. The bulls zipped past and the nurses stuck around swarming on the rocks. Pretty amazing really. After that we were all pretty spent and headed in.
