| Seas: 1-2 feet | Winds: 10-15 E/SE | Viz: 15-25feet | Temp: 82F |
On Friday once again, the winds and seas were cooperative and allowed us to get out for some more long awaited dive time. We stayed out west on Friday because we thought we had our best chances for clean water. We don't exactly get an early start as has been our habit this past week. We get underway around 10a and head southwest. We stop off at #67 to find that the water still hasn't cleaned up this close to home yet. In addition to this, the high tide is of course getting later in the day so we're doing more of our diving during low tide currents which are typically dirtier due to the dirty inland water getting moved offshore by the tides. There are 3 of us today thanks to my nephew coming in for a visit, so we're going to limit out at 15 mangroves which is the majority of our catch. #67 doesn't yield much more than a couple of mangoes, so we persevere westward.
We stop off at the Horseshoe (one of our spots in about 26') to find the welcome sight of clean water and fish. We land a few before the school starts to get quite skiddish and we have to move on. We finish the day at the Staghorn (see the video in the video gallery) where I'm able to land yet another mutton snapper. I think I've shot more muttons so far this summer than any 2 or 3 others combined. We get lazy today after a long afternoon at one of the nearby islands and decide we can clean fish tomorrow since the catch wasn't that large and we were having shrimp pasta for dinner so there was no immediate need either.
Saturday we head out with my nephews (today both of them are with us) with high hopes to continue to move further westward yet to hit some spots that we haven't made it to in quite some time. We start out at the Horseshoe because we think the fish are probably still there and should be considerably more at ease today. We arrive to find that we were right. Even though I personally wasn't shooting any personal best fish, my brother in law was finding and landing some very nice mangroves. He had moved toward the north end of the reef and had found the spot where the fish seemed to be congregating, so he took good advantage of the situation to load up on the mangoes.
We started our at a spot that we actually have in common (for us it's #25). It's actually quite interesting how the good reefs get found by more than one fisherman more often than you could imagine. We jump in and right off the bat 2 large mangroves are thrown in over the side of the boat. We're told by the divers that those thrown up on deck were average size for the school, so another couple of divers jump in. Unfortunately the school spreads out very quickly and we spend the next 30 minutes or so looking for fish that had already moved on. We move on and jump in at 2 more spots that prove to hold no viz at all so we waste no time in our fishing pursuit. Our fourth stop is at one of Adrian's spots in about 36'. The bottom looks very promising as there is a lot of life as well as great relief for fish to seek shelter. As we're swimming along I hear my name called out. It's Adrian and he on the fish! As I arrive, I see waves of mangroves passing underneath me, but my sprint to his location has left me out of breath and it takes me a couple of minutes to breath up before I am finally able to descend and pick a victim. The viz wasn't good enough for me to shoot any video, but we were able to spot our targets from the surface easily.
The first time the boat pulls up to me, I pull out 3 excellent mangroves from my shorts and throw them on deck. We spend another 30-45 minutes on this spot swimming over the reef to see if we can find the school again or if we can find any alternative quarry as the grouper has continued to be extremely elusive this summer. After some of the other divers land a few more fish, we decide to head back to #10 (our #10) to see if we can find the last fish to limit out on. We arrive to find the same clarity conditions we had yesterday, but luckily the fish conditions were the same as well. We were able to pick out our favorites from the surface and drop in to pick them off with relative ease. After a while I once again vacate my shorts of 3 more nice sized snappers. A few minutes and a quick count later, I get a holler from the boat that we've limited out and it's time to head home. Oh well, maybe I'll make it to one of these shoals I hear about next time...
The holiday weekend finishes with a whimper as the last day of the weekend suffers from overcast skies and rain for most of the morning. We relax and pick up everything we need to take home because soon enough it will be time to head back to reality. I stretch it out as much as I can, but it's inevitable. The time to head home will be at hand sooner than any of us would like.
