I got out on Sunday on a private boat. Top side conditions were amazing. It wasn't too hot, and the wave interval was high. Initial plan was to go north of the inlet and hit a spot where someone recently lost their scooter. We got to the area and the surface current was over 4mph. We opted to try south of the inlet. The surface current was still high, maybe 3 to 3.5mph.
Dive 1:
Visibility was 50ft and very hazy. The spot was intended to be fishy. I saw a nice lobster, it was between me and a dive mate. She had a few feet of a lead on me, so I moved on. It was a monster too, deep red in color. I found a few lobsters, but with the current, I had a heck of a time getting in position and they had deep holes. The holes were facing south and with the strong north current, it was more difficult than it was worth. I found some fishy spots, but nothing really worth shooting except maybe a porgy and the effort for that was too much too in the current. Others came up with lobsters and some hog fish.
Dive 2:
We went pretty far south, still looking for a change in conditions. Visibility was 35ft and the current below was a little slower, but still moving. I'm not sure how else to explain this. The area had a very sandy bottom and with mounds of 50ft x 50ft reef (sizes could be smaller or larger). You had to hop over the sand to the different spots. It was hard to identify where it was best to hop with the limited visibility.
On descent, I'm getting my speargun ready and I see a Tusa scooter sinking down. I hopped on my scooter to retrieve it. I was at depth and ready to either float it or see if I could find my dive mate when I hear some audible yelling. I couldn't find the person making the noise, and they eventually tapped me on the shoulder. It was the happy owner of the scooter. They followed my bubbles down hoping I grabbed it. A few min later, we crossed paths and run into another buddy who's pointing out a nice hog. Since both of them shot hogs on dive 1, they pointed at me to take it. Karma for saving the scooter
. I also shot a yellow jack and had another yellow circle around me, but I couldn't get a good aim on it before it swam off. I caught a few lobsters, but they were short. I did bring one up to the boat to measure again. It was too close, so I tossed it back in. We limited the boat on hog fish, everyone had one by the end of this dive. One buddy landed a 25 inch mutton. A couple came up with a lot of lobsters which were all found in 100+ft. I never navigated east to that depth.
Dive 3:
With the poor vis, we went north of the inlet to try our luck with the current and visibility. Visibility was around 50ft and the current was stronger. I found around 8 lobsters on this dive, a few shorts, 2 in my bag, and a few which the current aided in their escape. The amount of work required to catch some of these lobsters wasn't worth effort in the current. I hit a really fishy spot, and a monster mutton came swimming by and was moving really agitated by my presence. It wanted to swim by me on the ledge. I couldn't stop in the current to setup a shot and it made its move. It was a bad opportunity, and I missed. I see another big fish, maybe a grouper, go into the ledge, so I got my light out and couldn't figure out what magical hole it snuck in to because there wasn't a hole that I could find. It reminded me of Harry Potter movie when they run into the brick wall at the train station.
