Beautiful day on the water, but not a whole lot of luck. We headed south at daylight towards the Vermillion and made it our first stop. We anchored up and fished for about 45 minutes… lots of nice B-liners and one big something (I’d assume a sand tiger, since they’re all over the offshore wrecks right now) that hit my favorite Williamson Benthos jig and fought me like a freight train for 15 minutes before breaking off.
We then moved to some live bottom to the west, and Mike and I dove down to see what we could kill. Answer? Not much. There was lots of life/bait, but the big fish were notably absent. Mike did get a headshot on a nice gag, but the barb didn’t go in and he got away into a crevice. We saw several scamp, but none big enough to shoot.
The next spot was a HUGE ledge (about 20’ high) with lots of caves and crevices, but still no big fish (except for some of the biggest AJs I’ve ever seen.) I shot one medium sized hogfish, but neither Mike nor I saw any gags or any keeper-sized scamp.
Visibility was decent in both spots, but the water down there was COLD… 54 on the bottom, according to my computer. Brrrrrrr.
Meanwhile, the fishermen up top were filling the box with BSBs, pinkys and B-liners… Bob even caught a 4-5 lb. tautog on the Upchurch reef on the way home.
Not a bad day, but easily the slowest day diving I’ve had in my brief career.
Ryan