Catherine, Andy, Cally, Fenway and I went out yesterday. Even though the winds have been blowing every which direction we found visibility up 70 feet at at high tide. The calm winds and clear water were quite a relief after being stuck in the house for a week or so. The only downside was it was around 58 degrees in the morning , which is pretty cold weather for going swimming.
We started our day free diving the Vandenburg. In addition to the hundreds of barracuda schooling on it there was a good number of amberjack. I shot one of the Ajs about 50 feet down and had it run right down the to the deck of the wreck. This was kind of a reminder of why I need to get a bigger float. I am not sure I would have been able to stop an Aj over 40 pounds from running to the bottom with my gun. Luckily this one stopped at the deck which is around 70 feet down and I was able to horse him to the surface. I should have weighed him to see if he beat last week’s 37# aj but I forgot.
Then we moved west, checked another wreck but it was covered with cold milk water, once you got about 50 feet down. Then we checked some rocky areas on the bar but found nothing too exciting. Some triggerfish, mangroves a few cero mackerel. I took one triggerfish for some white meat and moved on. Then we checked some shallow stuff, nothing really except freezing cold water.
Then we went back deep and hit the mother lode of trash fish. On top of rocks in 50-60 feet of water there was boiling water from huge schools of bar jacks, and under the bar jacks there were hundreds of yellow jacks from 8-15 pounds. I have never seen that many yellow jacks, at least not that size. To top that off under the yellow jacks there were amber jacks from 20-60 pounds. We shot too many fish. We shot our limit of amberjack, Andy shot one that was 50-60# and it broke his line and took off with a shaft. Every yellow jack we shot would be swarmed by his buddies and the amberjack too, it was pretty ridiculous actually. We had a huge black grouper come out and try to eat one of the yellow jacks, like he was a jewfish. Fired up nurse sharks were chasing our fish up to the surface in 55 feet of water. I can’t believe with all the blood and commotion more sharks didn’t show up. I also shot a rainbow runner, I don’t know if it’s a big one or what, but it’s the biggest one I have ever seen.
After that it started to get dark, so we headed in, finally a day on the water after all those windy days. Any want any smoked jack, let me know.
That area we where in almost always has sharks, so it was kind of surprising. The good air force tower is too far for my boat, but there is the smith shoal tower and the air force tower closer in. There where huge schools of cobia on some gulf wrecks we checked the other day but the vis was around 5-7 feet. We can go gulf side when you are here if you want, but there is a chance of getting no visibility. Or if you want to see some stuff you have never seen we could just go to the tail end on the atlantic side, or halfmoon shoal, but we have to have decent weather.
Awesome pics Ben. That is a ton of jacks, and very surprising there weren’t more sharks that showed up. Looks like you’ll be smoking for a while though. Definitely looking forward to getting back out when I get down in March (maybe a trip to the navy towers for cobia???).
We videoed some stuff the last couple trips but not much. Catherine primarily takes the video and her work schedule and breaks in the wind have coincided that much. Unless you have someone filming every dive or dive with a camera on your gun it takes awhile to gather together enough clips to put something together.
Nice. Great Pics. I love rainbow runners.
Any videos coming soon?
glad you got out again..nice big fish..cute dog!