Thoughts about lionfish

[100days-a-year]

On FB this week saw
1 friend get 40 pounds in a day off Jax,as incidental catch as he was targeting other fish.
2 friends get over 200 pounds in the Gulf on a multiday trip also as incidental catch.

 

[Curt Bowen]

[video=vimeo;131561437]https://vimeo.com/131561437[/video]


Watch this video I shot of a deep wreck in the Gulf of Mexico off Tampa Bay.

 

[macado]

Judging by the videos posted by Alex Fogg, they still seem to be a huge problem in Gulf of Mexico.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyisjQWxX64

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B91hSiTvPY8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwbsaxxsW0I

 

[HalcyonDaze]

Judging by the videos posted by Alex Fogg, they still seem to be a huge problem in Gulf of Mexico.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyisjQWxX64

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B91hSiTvPY8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwbsaxxsW0I

Yeah, that's bad.




I was watching those just after pulling some clips from my three dives on the Martin County lionfish tournament back at the end of May and was both horrified and jealous. Horrified because that is a serious infestation; jealous because I was sucking a steel HP120 down to bingo gas levels and racking up a wicked CO2 headache finding a measly nine lionfish in one dive along the Deep Ledge.

I get the impression that aside from spearos there aren't too many divers hitting the Gulf/northern FL sites, which would explain why they're so out of control. On the Atlantic side of South Florida the popular sites are kept pretty well in check and you have to go deep or otherwise off the beaten path to rack up the kills.

 

[RCF350]

Totally agree with you

---------- Post added September 8th, 2015 at 11:16 AM ----------

36? That's not a lot really unless you aren't diving too much. There must be a lot of hunting pressure where you are diving?
The majority of the spots I hit result in a full zookeeper...I can only fit 10-12 in the tube and usually fill it within the first 10 minutes of a dive. We need more hunters in NC.

What model ZooKeeper do you have?