Divers agree location was key to success for South Florida lobster miniseason
Catching lobsters is usually pretty easy during the annual miniseason, which was this past Wednesday and Thursday, but South Florida divers had to spend a lot more time in the water to get enough of the tasty crustaceans for dinner.
“We had to work Wednesday,” said captain Frank Schmidt, a private diving instructor in Lighthouse Point whose crew got its five-person limit of 60 lobsters, which in the past took only a few hours at a couple of dive spots. “We worked from 6 until 1 o’clock in the afternoon. We probably hit 10 spots.
“Where there were usually 10 lobsters, there were four. Again and again and again, meaning there were 60 percent less this year than in previous years.”
“It was very satisfying, but not very productive, the reason being there were so few lobsters out there that I was happy to get 12,” said Lou Nelson of Fort Lauderdale, who got four bugs diving off the beach on Wednesday and eight diving off a friend’s boat Thursday.
Jeff Torode of South Florida Diving Headquarters in Pompano Beach, who had his three charter boats take out divers both days of miniseason, said “location was everything” as far as lobstering success.
One of his boats went east into 65 feet and slightly north of Hillsboro Inlet on the Wednesday morning dive and had a total of less than two dozen lobsters. At the same time, Capt. Aria Cross and Capt. Dave Heaney went south out of the inlet on Black Pearl into 30-40 feet, where 32 divers caught a total of 110 lobsters, with every diver catching at least one. Cross said her key was having several accurate scouting reports.
“I don’t get to leave the boat,” said Cross, “so going out prior to miniseason, I’d ask my divers, ‘Tell me what you’ve seen. How many lobsters?’
“I just want my divers to be happy. You’re going out, you’re having fun diving, if you catch lobster, it’s a bonus.”
In Islamorada, Mike Goldberg of Key Dives at Bud N’ Mary’s Marina said it appeared to be a typical miniseason.
“I can take 10 people that walk in the door and five people will tell me, ‘I had a hard time,’ and the other five got their limit and were done by 8 o’clock in the morning,” he said. “On the flip side, there were certainly a lot less people diving. I gauge that based on the number of tanks I fill.”
Jim “Chiefy” Mathie, his regular miniseason crew and a film crew were out in two boats Wednesday. He realized pretty quickly that it was going to be a much tougher opening day.
“We’ve gone to the same spot every year for six or eight years in a row, and it’s always produced. Always,” said Mathie, a retired Deerfield Beach fire chief and author of “Catching the BUG: The Comprehensive Guide to Catching the Spiny Lobster,” whose crew had a limit at that spot by 7:30 a.m. last year. “What was funny was on that Monday before last year’s miniseason when we scouted that spot, there were only 12 lobsters. This time on Monday, we find two and I’m going, ‘This isn’t good.’ So we go there Wednesday morning and I think we ended up with nine between the two boats.”
Mathie checked out several other spots off Deerfield Beach and Pompano Beach where he and his crew had seen fair numbers of lobsters while spearfishing for grouper, hogfish and lionfish in recent weeks. But most of those bugs were gone. It wasn’t until the final dive that the four men on Mathie’s boat got their 48-bug limit.
One of those men was freediver Francisco Loffredi, who was taping an episode of his new television show “One Breath.” The captain of the United States spearfishing team, Loffredi said, “There were way less lobsters this year and they seemed skittish. It was like the afternoon of the second day instead of the morning of the first day. The lobsters were deep in their holes.”
“It was a tough go Wednesday,” said Andy Rubin of Dania Beach, who dove with Mathie, Loffredi and Chuck Van Buskirk. “I did three dives. That’s unusual. Usually we do one dive and we have our limit. We had an extra tank left over and I went in one last time to give it the extra effort to get it done.”
Chiefy crew members Carl Pennick of Pompano Beach, Ken Udell of Boca Raton and John Strunk of Fort Lauderdale ran into the same issue on Boatweiler, Pennick’s beautiful new Robalo.
Even though they and Strunk’s wife, Maggie, and her friend, Angela Creel, of Southwest Ranches, came up shy of their limit, they enjoyed the calm seas and the anticipation that the next dive was going to be the lobster hot spot.
“With us going out at 5:30 a.m., it was a long day but great fun,” Pennick said. “With the amount of boats that you know will be out there safety is No. 1 and it was a relief that conditions on the surface were good. I had a great two days.”
“It was nice spending time with friends and people that my husband respects and admires and have his back,” Strunk said.
“I enjoyed everybody and the boat humor, and being a part of the Chiefy crew,” Creel added. “I really had an amazing time with everybody.”