Tough Daily Decisions in the Keys

Waking up the last couple mornings to beautiful weather here in Marathon, which can make for difficult group decisions.  Shall we fish the reef, fish offshore or lobster in the gulf??  Based on the upcoming weather forecast of northerly winds, we decided to spend a couple more days of lobstering while the conditions weren’t too rough in the gulf.

On Wednesday we explored some new areas east of us near the Long Key bridge.  This was based on some intel from friends back in Jacksonville who had lobstered back in August.  Arrived for the slack low tide, which is best when trying to snorkel around the bridges.  The ladies jumped in and drifted from the atlantic side back into the gulf.  They didn’t end up finding much other than some jellyfish stings, so we moved onto another area.  Located some historical spots on the GPS, but they didn’t turn out very many keeper lobsters.  Shot a couple lion fish for an appetizer.  A storm was starting to brew near us, so we ran back to the Atlantic side to try some scuba diving on the patch reefs in about 20 feet of water.  Beautiful water with plenty of fish and coral!  The storm kept getting closer, so we decided the safe choice would be to head home for a bit.  Unloaded the gear, then Michael and I headed back out for a sunset topwater fishing excursion.  Kinda slow for most of the time, but the last 20 minutes was action packed with jacks and a couple keeper mangrove snapper.  Missed a few bigger fish as well, likely either tarpon or snook.  Had a first in catching a snapper on a topwater lure.

Ready for a dive

Doing our part with lion fish removal

Lobster gymnastics

Thursday was another great day on the gulf side, trying our best for a limit of lobsters.  Ended back out in some deeper water and marked a bunch of new spots with the great water clarity.  Quite windy for the entire day, but everyone contributed to our success of a limit of 24 lobsters and 2 red groupers!  First fish shot with my grandfather’s speargun, rather than the pole spear.  The speargun worked immensely better than the pole spear.

Definitely the best lobstering and fishing success yet since our Keys trips began in 2007.