Wednesday my good friend Ryan LaPete and I decided to sneak out and do some spearing from the Old "Snapper Slapper" my 26' Century. We only ran about 10 miles from the pass (7 from shore) at our furthest all day due to the grouper closure. The conditions were very favorable with 2' seas, light wind, 40' vis and no current so speak of. The downside is that the water was 59*.
The goal for the day was to run dwon some old chicken coop numbers ans see if they were still there or if the storms had moved them into parts unknown. The correct answer was parts unknown and we quickly switched into hunting mode after we had all we could of the search patterns being unproductive. Since this wasn't ntirely unforseen (75% of the coops are gone especially the ones this shallow) I made sure we had some nice hard bottom ledges and cheesy patchs in the area too. Sure enough they were holding plenty of grouper and more red snapper than you could shake a 60" freeshaft at, which we were frequently doing as they love to meander into your shot path playing body guard for those gags that won't let you get too close. Hopefully the season will open on them again one day. Ryan manged to get 2 gags and a nice mangrove snapper that he caims was taunting him and I shot a decent gag.
Dive two is a really nice ledge that I never got a chance to explore too much of since the fish kept me hovering by the jugline as I sniped away at 3 more gags. There were so many mangrove snappers on this spot it was crazy but we both decided to leave them alone since we were after grouper in particular. Ryan said he swam most of the reef line and it was huge, I'll have to check it out again in a month or two as he indicated there was good shovelnose habitat further on the West side of it.
I am not going to lie, at this point I was pretty cold and heading for the coffee thermos and dry clothes, but Ryan wanted to get some more "work" in running down old numbers in the GPS to see what was still around. I oblige him and we move a mile inshore to an old low relief patch of swiss cheese I haven't been to in years. The number was 120' away from a good enough show on the old bottom machine to make me happy I hadn't dressed out yet. Sadly everthing turned out to be juvenile, with some really large holes that seemed to be perfect for a 15# red grouper being occupied by 10" scamp and similar sized gags and reds. I did amange to find a nice shovelnose in the 1.5# class which made the dive at least alittle productive for me.
Anyway it was a very pleasant day of inshore diving that we decided to finish off with an act of supreme laziness. After all the engines were flushed and the regs were rinsed we left all the gear out on the deck for mother nature to rinse for us on Thursady. (10" of rain later everything was pretty clean!!!) Then we killed off the day by having our favorite dining establishment cook our gags for us..... Perfect!!!
The goal for the day was to run dwon some old chicken coop numbers ans see if they were still there or if the storms had moved them into parts unknown. The correct answer was parts unknown and we quickly switched into hunting mode after we had all we could of the search patterns being unproductive. Since this wasn't ntirely unforseen (75% of the coops are gone especially the ones this shallow) I made sure we had some nice hard bottom ledges and cheesy patchs in the area too. Sure enough they were holding plenty of grouper and more red snapper than you could shake a 60" freeshaft at, which we were frequently doing as they love to meander into your shot path playing body guard for those gags that won't let you get too close. Hopefully the season will open on them again one day. Ryan manged to get 2 gags and a nice mangrove snapper that he caims was taunting him and I shot a decent gag.
Dive two is a really nice ledge that I never got a chance to explore too much of since the fish kept me hovering by the jugline as I sniped away at 3 more gags. There were so many mangrove snappers on this spot it was crazy but we both decided to leave them alone since we were after grouper in particular. Ryan said he swam most of the reef line and it was huge, I'll have to check it out again in a month or two as he indicated there was good shovelnose habitat further on the West side of it.
I am not going to lie, at this point I was pretty cold and heading for the coffee thermos and dry clothes, but Ryan wanted to get some more "work" in running down old numbers in the GPS to see what was still around. I oblige him and we move a mile inshore to an old low relief patch of swiss cheese I haven't been to in years. The number was 120' away from a good enough show on the old bottom machine to make me happy I hadn't dressed out yet. Sadly everthing turned out to be juvenile, with some really large holes that seemed to be perfect for a 15# red grouper being occupied by 10" scamp and similar sized gags and reds. I did amange to find a nice shovelnose in the 1.5# class which made the dive at least alittle productive for me.
Anyway it was a very pleasant day of inshore diving that we decided to finish off with an act of supreme laziness. After all the engines were flushed and the regs were rinsed we left all the gear out on the deck for mother nature to rinse for us on Thursady. (10" of rain later everything was pretty clean!!!) Then we killed off the day by having our favorite dining establishment cook our gags for us..... Perfect!!!
