Hurricane Gustav just went past, and there are possibly 2 other hurricanes on their way into my area. Although it doesn’t look like we will be hit directly with any of the current storms, we have been having winds up to 40 knots. I really don’t think there will be much spear fishing for awhile, you probably can’t see your hand in front of your face on the reef. Starting to get a bit stir crazy, so I am going to take a break from working and mess with this blog a bit.
Yesterday I got in the mail a bunch of bulk rubber tubing and some wishbones from Above and Below Extreme, in Marathon Florida. They don’t actually have a website, so in order to find out their contact information I had to actually find a post on spear board where they were advertising a tournament to find their phone number. They don’t seem to have their phone number on their myspace page either, so here is their number in case you want to contact them (305) 743-1880.
So anyways I was tying some back up bands for the rabitech and for the biller and I noticed something. When I first started tying the bands, I bought a bunch of black rubber off of ebay and its been sitting in various fishing tackle boxes around my house. Now comparing that black rubber to the black over amber rubber from Above and Below, the Above and Below rubber is visibly thicker in diameter. Now both rubbers are supposed to be 5/8 of inch thick.
What is sort of funny about this, is when I rigged my Rob Allen 130cm gun with two bands of the ebay rubber I followed the band size chart and the gun shot very high. So I went with the single heavy band. It would seem it probably shot high because the bands where too weak, which probably is because of the thinner cheap rubber.
Little details, it never ends.
| Posted by admin on Aug 28
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Catherine is back from NY and she and I went out yesterday afternoon. Vis on the main reef was kind of stirred up with maybe 20 feet of visibility. We just drove past it and hit the bar which was bathed in beautiful blue water with vis from around 60-80 feet.
On the edge of the main reef there was a weed line with tons of bait swirling around. We jumped in, the only fish other then the bait was small horse eye jacks, thousands of them. It was pretty cool swimming totally surrounded by small bait fish and then having the horse eye jacks charge in attacking them.
Catherine shot a little video, you can download it HERE by right clicking and hitting file save as. Then her camera batteries died.
After swimming with the jacks got old, we headed out deeper and did some drifts in 50-80 feet of water. I chased around a couple nice muttons but couldn’t get them. Catherine and I shot 2 cero mackerel at the same time, decent sized for ceros, and the largest mackerel Catherine has shot. I shot some triggerfish, they were in pairs not in the bigger groups of 15-20 fish like they were a couple months ago. I wonder if they were spawning? We drifted a bunch more over some deep spots, that were good a couple months ago, its strange how the fish move, why were they congregated there the first time?
We also drifted on some spots where I did OK hook and lining kingfish before I started spear fishing. I got a shot at a monster kingfish, I’m not going to guess the weight because I’ll probably be way over, but it definitely was over 5 feet long. It was swimming in a pair, I got maybe close enough to hit the smaller of the pair but being greedy I tried to take the long shot at the big one. That was stupid , I should have just tried to get the closer one.
We checked some lobster spots on the way in and just got a bunch of shorts.
| Posted by admin on Aug 22
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Totally unrelated to spearfishing, but apparently the Iguanas Hatched a mess of babies near my backyard. There is like a dozen of these little things running around out there.
I know a lot of local people hate them, but I think they are cool
| Posted by admin on Aug 22
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Andrew and I went out the saturday before Fay hit. Conditions where good to great but didn’t see a lot of fish, well at least not any big snappers or groupers. Vis ranged from 40- 100 feet. 8-12 knot winds out of the south west.
Saw lots of yellow jacks, mangrove snappers, triggers, prohibited permits and big schools of spade fish. I didn’t shoot anything. I kind bought into the Storm Fay hype and thought we might not have power for a minute, so I didn’t want a bunch of fillets in the my fridge with no power.
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| Posted by admin on Aug 15
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Went out yesterday, with Ted, it was a nice day about 8-12 knot winds from the south. The first spot we hit in front of Key West was green but you could still see 40 feet or so. It was weird this boat pretty much followed us out and stopped with us on the spot, and started fishing and SCUBA diving! I almost felt like telling them you should probably go with one or the other if you are trying to catch fish, but whatever. We picked up a mutton and a mangrove at the first spot, then we headed west.
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Went out Thursday with Catherine, it was really nice day. Flat calm, visibility ranging from maybe 50 feet on the main reef and around 85 feet on the bar. Little less then a knot west ward current on the bar and even less current on the main reef.
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Went out with Al and Dusting first day of lobster season. We didn’t leave the dock till 6 pm and when we got to my spot there was already a boat with several scuba divers and a hookah rig on it.
Needless to say we didn’t do that good, 6 legals and bunch of shorts and eggers. If we had more time we would have search around more, but whatever.
Saw an octopus and medium sized eagle ray. Still was a pretty good time for a couple hours on the water.
Lobster Mini-Season day 2 - Was supposed to go out with Al and Dustin in the morning but they switched up and wanted to go out in the afternoon. Al Canceled his last parasailing trip which is a major thing for him. Al hasn’t taken a day off in like a year or something like that, crazy if you ask me.
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| Posted by admin on Jul 31
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Got up super early yesterday to go out at the beginning of mini-season. My neighbor Al had been out scouting and had come back with big news of a large area where there where tons of lobster. He was so excited it was infectious. So I agreed to take my boat first thing in the morning along with some of his friends to the spot so we could pillage it.
