We left the river about 9:30 and headed towards O-tower to dive the Miss Jem. Seas were 1-3 foot rollers and the wind was non-existent. We arrived shortly after 10 and rick and I were the first ones down in the 58° water.
Vis was aweful at maybe a cloudy 6 feet. Lots of "gunk" in the water made hunting impossible. I did manage to sneak up on a couple of mangroves and strung them up. Then I just started watching the fish go into holes and waiting for them to come out. But I quickly tired of that and went in after them. Rick thought I was crazy with my arm stuck up under a piece of metal up to my elbow, that is until I pulled out a 5 pound mangrove by the gills.
I repeated this again and was rewarded with a nice 4 pounder this time. I was back on the boat before Rick but it wasn't long before he came up with his first ever speared fish, a nice 24" gag.
I told Joe and Andre about the conditions and how I had stirred things up more and they decided to dive the actual tower itself. After about 30 minutes Andre came back with 3 nice sheephead to 8 lbs and joe brought back the skunk.
It was getting late and we needed another dive spot. 3 of us had never dove the Yamaha reef before so we decided for that since it was close.
We got positioned over the barge and Rick and I headed down. First we found some concrete light poles and followed them over to the massive barge. Holy cow this thing is big. Impressive to say the least. and absolutely full of fish. But since I was freeshafting I decided to stick to the top of it and quickly shot 5 of the biggest sheephead I've ever seen. I could have still been shooting them as there were hundreds of them.
Back on the boat I had 5 and Rick had 3 sheeps. We decided to give a couple of them to some guys fishing there.
Joe and Andre had a hard time finding the barge. Joe finally did but came back with another skunk. Andre never did find it.
We headed back about 3 and were in the river by 3:30.
Final tally was 11 sheeps, 4 mangroves and 1 grouper.
Sorry for the dark pic, the flash wouldn't work.
Good times and good friends can't be beat.
