Spearfishing the Navy Towers

Finally went out on the water yesterday. Catherine and I had been sick with some sort of sinus issues for the past couple weeks, so no water no working out. Which has been pretty crappy but it’s hopefully over now. We went out spearfishing with Nate, Cory, and Ethan on Nate’s friend Robert’s boat. Robert’s boat is pretty sick: it’s a 28 foot Whitewater. I am usually really satisfied with my little boat but after riding in that it has me thinking.

Anyways we decided to hit the Navy towers in the Gulf. After a bit of a drive we hit the first one. The water was dirty for quite a while on the way out then it turned blue and by the time we reached the tower there was 60 feet of visibility. The life around the tower was awesome. You could see big schools of barracuda and permit from the boat. Corey and Ethan were first in the water and quickly had shot our limit of big permit. In retrospect I should have had them wait until Catherine was in the water to get a video of the permit slaughter. Jacks in general seem to like to have their death filmed, whereas Black grouper and mutton snapper not as much, you will probably notice that if you watch the videos on this site.

Catherine and I then hit the water. Robert was going to tank dive the tower but he let us freedive it first. While Corey and Ethan were busy with their permit, I decided to see what was down a little bit deeper. I dove down to the first cross bar which is around 60 feet down and there were 3 cubera snapper hanging out on it. I kept dropping and I could tell they where starting to drop too so I took a long shot and hit the biggest. After that I shot a couple mangroves off the tower. I would have liked to push a bit deeper on the tower but at 55-60 feet the vis dropped to about 10 feet or less and I also didn’t want to push my ears just coming back from a sinus sickness.

Pretty much since we had gotten there, there had been a couple of sharks circling, but then a pack of sharks showed up. There were about 10 of them and they were going to take our fish. We stopped shooting and took some video and pictures. Then Ethan shot a big mangrove and the sharks pushed up on him to the point where he climbed up on the tower. We were in the boat at the time so it was pretty funny. After that we took off because we didn’t know how long it would take them to leave.

After that we hit the new grounds which was ok, we dove from 30-10 feet of water. Visibility was like 10-15 feet, tops. We picked up a bunch of big hogfish, (well big for the Keys) and some red groupers. Then we hit the next naval tower and it was pretty lame, not much on it. So we hit some nearby rocks, I shot a nice maybe 15# black. After that the vis was pretty bad and my ears were having trouble equalizing, so I stopped diving. The other guys hit some more spots and a small wreck and got some more snappers and hog fish. Pretty amazing day.