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Mon7Sep2009

September 5-7, 2009 (Labor Day)

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September 07, 2009 | Print

We headed back and had some lunch as even more storms rolled through. After lunch, one of our campgrounds friends offered us a ride offshore on his larger boat, which would be more comfortable, so we packed up our gear and headed out to the reef. The winds had laid down since the morning and although still rough, the seas were considerably milder (I'm sure the boat had something to do with it too). We started out with a warm up dive in about 35 feet since our friend mentioned that he had some spots in 50-60 feet but I didn't want to hit the deep water right off. After bagging a couple of nice snappers we moved on.

The highlight for me was when we jumped in a spot that started out in about 45 feet and sloped down into 55-60 feet where the reef ended at the sand's edge. The reef wasn't productive but I did enjoy dropping down to peer under some very attractive ledges. This depth is pretty much my current max and I always enjoy pushing my limits just a little bit. I wasn't sure I would be up to the task today as my head wasn't really in it. As much as I love diving, there are days that you're dealing with distractions and it doesn't really do much good for your bottom time. It was nice to be able to hit my limits in spite of my apparent lack of focus. At one of the last spots we hit, I chased a couple of nice cero mackerel (to no avail) and shortly after doing so, an 8 foot bull shark swam across the reef. Luckily he wasn't interested in me at all. After a while, it was getting very late so we decided to head back home to prepare our steak dinner since today hadn't produced any considerable amount of (picture-worthy) fish. We just hoped that tomorrow would be a little more productive.

Sunday morning was more of the same with respect to the winds blowing about 15-20 so we decided to do a couple of chores around the camper before heading out around noon. The winds had laid down just a bit so we stayed closer to home looking for lobster and hogfish because we had friends coming over for dinner. So today was more of a meal hunt than a trophy hunt. We did limit out on lobster within a couple of hours so we decided to head offshore in search of some more clean water and mangroves. On the way, we jumped in on two reefs that looked promising. Unfortunately for us, they were very nice to look at but didn't hold a lot of fish. I did manage to bag a couple of nice mangroves and gave my brother in law a hand with a black grouper that had picked a pretty good hiding spot. We headed back to the campground around 4:30p to make sure we had enough time to clean fish and start cooking before the guests started to arrive. The rest of the night was spent eating good food (if I do say so myself) with good friends. Not a bad way to close out the weekend. Sadly, Labor Day weekend is the official end of my summer so I will have to say ooodbye to my summer friends for now.

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