Weather has just been too good to stay on land. Went on a trip with Nate, Corey, Robert and JT to go to the air force relay towers. We woke up super early and got out there at first light. The tower was kind of dead really no cuberas or cobia, a few jacks and snapper but not much else. There were a few permit and small ajs and tons of jewfish. The vis was fantastic and you could see the support beams clearly from the surface.
JT shot a big kingfish which took all of the line off his reel and drew in a few big bull sharks which circled us for a while.
After a bit we took off and found some shrimp boats. Unfortunately they had already dumped their trash overboard and we were unable to obtain any to use as chum. Seeing the sharks circling behind the boat, we decided to jump in. There was a huge school of skip jack tuna and hundreds of sharks. Robert cut up one of the AJs we shot at the tower and started chunking and it started to go off.
Big bonita charged right to the surface eating the chunks. Cory and I both shot one and handed them up to become more chunks. There were black fin tuna there but it was difficult to get them to come to the surface without a ton of chum. We got a few shots at the black fins but we failed. If only we had been there earlier to get the shrimp trash. Even with just the bonita chunks we were able to shoot more bonitas and a cobia. At one point there were dozens of small sharks surrounding us. You would almost have to push them out of the way to dive. The black fins would come up when the sharks were going nuts eating a bonito carcass, then once the commotion died down they would disappear again.
There were also massive bullsharks which occasionally would come up to check us out from the murk layer down below. It was probably one of the more incredible dives yet. If we only had been able to get more chum it would have been some pretty incredible shooting.
Then one day Catherine and I went out for a half day, we went to see if the trigger fish were starting to spawn yet. We found some big schools but not hundreds I was hoping for. We also marked a big bowl made of rock that was filled with little yellow tails. Circling and underneath them there was a school of 40 or more yellow jacks, a dozen big horse eye jacks, a couple amberjacks, three or four nurse sharks, and a big lemon shark. I shot a couple yellowjacks but was coming down with something and could not dive or hold my breath very good. My weakened state made it not really fun so I went in early to lie down. I also shot a 14.4# mutton probably 15# with guts in it, I’m not sure but they may have been the biggest mutton I have shot.
