Where to begin... I've been hunting my entire life. I can line up on the biggest deer you ever seen and drop it with a single shot from 700 yards. I can pop an elk at 50 yards. Never break a sweat. Coyote at full sprint, quartering away at a 1/4 mile? Dead dog. I have a 10 foot gator on on my wall, took him live with a fishing pole. And scuba is just relaxing to me.
So you can take it to the bank when I say that when I go after a lobster... I'm sucking air like im finishing a 5 mile sprint...
Anyway dive 1, poor viz, mild current, peek under a rock and found a good sized lobster. I tried stick and net. It's having nothing to do with it. Total fail. But I can work it around with the stick and im a borderline ninja so I gave up the net and just grabbed it. It was big, angry, and carrying eggs. So I catch my first lobster, but I'm guessing I can't count it.
A few minutes later the dm catches my eye, pointing under a rock, time for round 2. Back to the stick and the net, fail again. I'm excited, lacking patience, and give up the net sooner than last time. A little stick work and #2 in my hand. It's just as big and just as eggy.
Seriously I thought net was easy and hands hard...
A little while later, we're low on air and up we go. Everyone on the boat was skunked, 0 attempted, female or smalls.
Dive 2, stormy, even worse viz, heavy current. We dive, find our first 2 asap, I don't even bother with net. But both feel too small so released. Im working too hard, breathing way too hard. I think the viz, being in a tight canyon, and exertion is starting to trigger some claustrophobia tbh. I signal up and we ascend to 30 for a couple minutes, I catch my breath and down we go again, but we get blown off the reef. The current is not being nice and it's just work. Before toon long there's not enough air to get where we need to be and actually go after something if we found it. Viz is too poor to sightsee, so I called the dive.
Several people caught that trip, but barely legal, 2 or 3 at best.
So dive 1 was good, caught every lobster I saw by hand. Dive 2 wasnt good. Im not sure how to score since I brought home 0 bugs, but caught some the hard way