On Sunday, we went out of Burt Reynolds Park. We ran north to the Loran Towers area. Seas were nice and calm. Visibility was 40-50 ft. I landed on the deep side of the ledge in the sand and the temp was 74, then really cold, back to 74, then really cold again. When I say really cold, it was 67 degrees. There was a strong west bound current. I had a DPV and felt sorry for the guys who didn't have one, they had to huddle close to the ledge to stay on it. I decided I wanted out of the cold, so I went east up the ledge and was blasted with the cold water. The west bound current was bringing 67 degree cold water down to the ledge which was mixing with warmer water. My toes were numb by the end of the dive! We did ok on lobsters. I saw a large southern eagle ray and a pair of goliath groupers.
We split the boat 3 and 3. After the 2nd group did their dive in the frigid water, we opted to run south closer to the Jupiter inlet. Seas were starting to pick up a little, but nothing to complain about. We dove one of our regular spots. Water temp was a stable 74 degrees. Visibility was 50-60ft. The current was still moving more west than north. Since the guys I dropped with didn't have scooters, I chose to head up on top of the ledge, so we weren't all fighting for the same lobsters. I unfortunately couldn't find any up top nor on the eastern side of the ledge. I ended up returning to the west facing ledge and immediately ran into lobsters. There were lots of nurse sharks observed on this dive, at least 7 of them, and one was really large. Saw another pair of Goliath Groupers who had some holes they went up under and barked at me as I got too close. One buddy shot some fish and had 3 small bulls and two Goliath Groupers show interest, so he opted to head to the surface since he was alone.
If not for all the shorts, I would have easily limited. Instead, I came up with 5 keepers. I ran my DPV hard on the second dive looking for that last lobster, zigging and zagging up the ledge and back. It got to the point that increasing gears didn't result in any audible change in the motor, so I knew my batteries were almost dead. It was perfect timing since it was nearly time to head back to the surface.
By around 3pm the seas were getting bumpy, 2-3ft with a 6-7 sec interval.
Back at the dock, before we could pull our boat out of the water, someone was asking if we had jumper cables. I told him I had a capacitor jumper in my truck. I just bought this thing a couple of weeks ago and hadn't used it yet. We hooked it up to his battery, we watched it charge off the dead battery to 100%, hit the button, waited for it to start beeping, and the boat started right up. He, his buddy, and their girlfriends were all smiles.
We split the boat 3 and 3. After the 2nd group did their dive in the frigid water, we opted to run south closer to the Jupiter inlet. Seas were starting to pick up a little, but nothing to complain about. We dove one of our regular spots. Water temp was a stable 74 degrees. Visibility was 50-60ft. The current was still moving more west than north. Since the guys I dropped with didn't have scooters, I chose to head up on top of the ledge, so we weren't all fighting for the same lobsters. I unfortunately couldn't find any up top nor on the eastern side of the ledge. I ended up returning to the west facing ledge and immediately ran into lobsters. There were lots of nurse sharks observed on this dive, at least 7 of them, and one was really large. Saw another pair of Goliath Groupers who had some holes they went up under and barked at me as I got too close. One buddy shot some fish and had 3 small bulls and two Goliath Groupers show interest, so he opted to head to the surface since he was alone.
If not for all the shorts, I would have easily limited. Instead, I came up with 5 keepers. I ran my DPV hard on the second dive looking for that last lobster, zigging and zagging up the ledge and back. It got to the point that increasing gears didn't result in any audible change in the motor, so I knew my batteries were almost dead. It was perfect timing since it was nearly time to head back to the surface.
By around 3pm the seas were getting bumpy, 2-3ft with a 6-7 sec interval.
Back at the dock, before we could pull our boat out of the water, someone was asking if we had jumper cables. I told him I had a capacitor jumper in my truck. I just bought this thing a couple of weeks ago and hadn't used it yet. We hooked it up to his battery, we watched it charge off the dead battery to 100%, hit the button, waited for it to start beeping, and the boat started right up. He, his buddy, and their girlfriends were all smiles.
