The Tampa Bay Times
The underwater visibility is still poor in most depths. Hurricane Idalia caused the bad visibility and now it’s just a question of time to see when the water clears up enough to see the fish and make good shot before the fish sees the diver. The water is clearing up faster in some areas, more than others. For example, this past week our divers found, in the same depths of 60’, and just 10 miles apart found un-consistent visibility. On the same day in these depths, two dive sites, just north of Clearwater had fair visibility and two spots just 10 miles south had terrible visibility. Gag grouper season opened at the beginning of this month, but the wary gag groupers are hard to see and spear in such curt visibility conditions. The divers who are finding minimally better visibility are able to successfully spear the watchful gags. The deeper water, from 130’ to 190’ is the same way. Some dive sites have shootable visibility and just a few miles away in the same depth and water temperatures, the visibility goes down to distances less than the length of a speargun. The Florida Middle Grounds has some clearer spots. Some of our “Grounds” divers speared gag groupers up to 15 pounds, some hogfish in the same weight class and Florida spiny lobsters were hiding in the deep crevices of the “Grounds” Lobsters are being found in most depths and some big ones have been caught in water less than 70’ deep.
- Jay Mastry - March 26, 2024
- Captains Corner, Gorta - March 23, 2024
- Dave Zalewski - March 12, 2024
