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The Caribbean Spiny Lobster season will close in:

Mon20Jul2009

July 18-19, 2009

Information
Bob Diaz | SpearBlog 2009 | July 20, 2009 | Print

Seas: 1-3 feet
Winds: 15-20 SSW
Temp: 85-88 F
Viz: 10-45 feet
This weekend started out with more of the same as the past few weeks as far as the viz went. We dove on Saturday. We were able to limit out, but it took a few spots and a fair amount of work. We just haven't had any luck with the clarity over the past 4 or 5 weeks and it seemed like we were in for more of the same since the wind had actually switched back to a SSW direction. We had been hearing that the temporary switch to the E wind had already cleaned up the viz as far as Islamorada, but it apparently didn't last long enough to push the clean water down to Marathon. We have been making do with what we've been getting and limiting out most of the time in spite of the hard work.

After limiting out on mangoes in the morning, we headed out in the afternoon to look for some other species that might complement our catch (specifically Grouper and Hogfish). We caught the afternoon low tide and started drifting some ledges for a while. We were able to round out the catch a little with a few hogs, a mackerel and a mutton, but unfortunately the only grouper we saw was a little craftier than most and while we were making sure she was legal, she bolted on us and we didn't even see her go. She didn't even wave goodbye as she left (but I thought I heard a little laughter underwater :( ). I did end up with about a 10-12lb barracuda that got a little too close for comfort, but I gave it away to a neighbor before we took any pictures (it wasn't all that impressive anyway).

Sunday was a little different with respect to the water clarity thankfully enough. We found some clean water (actually crystal clear) on the east side of Sombrero light and shot a few nice mangoes. We didn't want to limit out at that one spot in case the clean water had found its way to some of our better spots, so we moved on after a few were in the cooler. We headed west and after making way for about 4 miles, we realized the clean water just hadn't made it that far yet. So we decided to turn around and head back in the direction we had come from to hit another spot to the east that hopefully would yield some viz and some fish.

Along the way, we traveled to the south of Sombrero light and noticed that even some deeper spots had cleaned up nicely. We were spotting silhouettes of rocks in as deep as 60 feet. So we kept traveling and when we saw very clean water in about 45 feet, we decided to take a chance and just jump in on some interesting looking bottom and see what we could find. The water was not perfectly clean, but you could easily spot anything moving on the bottom. My brother in law spotted and landed a mutton on his first drop. After making a few dives to get acclimated, I was feeling pretty good but wasn't really spotting much of anything that I could shoot (but diving in this depth is so much more fun that I was just enjoying the ambiance). After a while my brother in law found a large bait ball of small silversides on the bottom and a school of about 10-15 cero mackerels working the bait ranging in size from very small to torpedo sized (for cero's anyway). We worked the bait ball and ended up landing a few mackerels, a couple of nice mangroves and 3 muttons. My catch was on the smaller side of the scale but I still had a ton of fun diving some deeper water for a change since it hasn't even been an option recently. I am sincerely hoping we keep running into better clarity so we can start concentrating on some deeper dives as I believe the high water temperatures should be pushing the bigger fish into deeper cooler water. Only time and viz will tell if I am right.

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