Williams Bay, Lee Stocking — 12•08•21
Up early with a good breakfast, we readied the dinghy (affectionately called the station wagon), and landed her up for our lobster hunt. Our first stop was about 2nm away. We checked a few spots but found nothing. Pete said let’s check one more “Rock”. He got in before me and found a nice rock outcrop he was exploring. I dove in and instantly saw lobster antennae sticking out of a rock near the dinghy. I proceeded to try to spear him. But missed. I’ll come back later for him was my thinking. I swam a little further and saw another one. Again, I missed this one also.
I swam over to Pete who had easily 3 lobsters around the rock he was looking at. We got one to come out and we both missed a supper easy shot on him. Having been in the water for over 4 hours we were getting tired and sloppy. Pete and I needed to slow down and be more patient with our shots. In a small cave, we saw one just standing there We had seen an eel earlier there. A little apprehensive if it was a moray eel, I calmed down and went down slowly making sure I had a good view. The eel was not seen, but the lobster was standing there. Moving in slowly, making sure I had a perfect shot, I got the pole within inches of the lobster. BAM! I nailed him in the face for a great shot.
Lobstered
With one lobster, we needed another for a meal. By this time I’d had lost most of the tips from my spears. I had a new one called a slip tip. This is usually used for fish, but It’s all I had left.
We left the rock Pete was at as we had been there too long and everything was deep in hiding. leading us back to the previous lobsters, I’d had missed, I dove down and deep in a hole, I could just see the legs of the lobster. I had Pete go down and get it, but he couldn’t see it. So, went down, and barely seeing it, I thought I’d just make a blind shot. Well, I just speared the end of his tail, and drug him out of the hole. Pete grabbed him before he wiggled off my spear.
We had dinner for the night and were both dead-tiered. We headed back to relax at the boat and prepare our dinner for the night.
Ooh, Barracuda — 12•09•21
The next morning we were stoked to get out lobstering again. We headed back to “Petes Lobster Rock”. In the water, we noticed a large barracuda close by watching us. I swam towards it a couple of times to make it go away. But it seemed every time we turned around he was there. While not usually dangerous, they are pretty freaky with how they follow and watch you.
Looking at all the holes we saw lobster in yesterday, we saw nothing. It seemed like they ALL just got up and left. We tried a few other spots around the “Rock” but the current was getting strong and darn cuda was just always on our tail. We bailed on the Rock Lobster and went off to find a different spot.
After snorkeling a few spots that had nothing we headed to “Tug and Barge”. This is a pair of rocks that look like a tug pulling a barge from the distance. This tuned out to be a beautiful dive, with lots of stingrays, large schools of fish, and some nice-looking coral. On the way back to the dinghy, I looked down and saw a conch. I dove down to get it, expecting it to have been already harvested. It was still in the shell. We proceeded to pick up 6 conchs in a short time. I’ve never seen that many live conchs so close together. With enough conch for a couple of days, we headed back to Trouble.
Conched Out
Back on Trouble, we got to cleaning the conch. We had made it look easy that last time we did this. This time we struggled to get conch out. It was a total mess with bits of conch shell everywhere. We stopped after the 5th one and just let the last one go. Done with cleaning conch, and even though the conch salad Pete made was great, we didn’t seem to enjoy it as much. We had leftover conch we put on ice till another time. I think we had a couple more beers than usual that night to hide the memory of trying to get that conch out.
