Regular season for lobster has been hit or miss so far for South Florida divers

After a lobster miniseason that was much harder work than usual, the regular lobster season has still been tough for many South Florida divers. But the lobstering could get much better depending on what happens with a tropical system that is forecast to move along Florida’s Atlantic coast.

During the miniseason, which was July 24-25, lobsters are typically gathered in good numbers, so catching them is easy and divers have to visit only a few spots to get their miniseason limit of 12 lobsters.

This year, divers found only a few bugs, as they are known, at their miniseason hotspots. They ended up hitting numerous locations trying to catch their limit. The hope was that the lobstering would be better when the regular season, which is Aug. 6-March 31 and has a daily bag limit of six lobsters, opened.

“In the beginning it wasn’t bad,” Jim “Chiefy” Mathie said. “We did pretty well the first week or so of the regular season. They had come in shallow.

“The last week or so it’s been a little bit of a struggle. We’ve found some shallow, but nothing clustered together, and that’s the key. Lately we kind of have been bouncing around. It’s not like last year where they were everywhere.”

One of Mathie’s recent dives with Christine Hawk, Silvia Garavito, Mike Mitson and me was a case in point.

At a hit-or-miss shallow spot off Pompano Beach that Mathie hadn’t been to for a while, he, Hawk and I caught several bugs, which was encouraging. With plenty of air left in our tanks, we hit another spot that had been good on previous dives, but the lobsters were scarce.

Mathie then dropped Garavito and Mitson on a productive stretch of reef, but the bugs were nonexistent, so they cut their dive short. The next spot was better, but Garavito’s tank had been under-filled by about 1,000 pounds, so she had to surface early.

Our second dives weren’t much better, and Garavito and Mitson had to come up early when a thunderstorm approached as they dove off Boca Raton, so we came up short of our 30-bug limit.

“The regular season has been tough,” said Garavito, of Fort Lauderdale. “The lobsters have been kind of all over the place. They’ve been shallow, they’ve been deep.”

Last week while Mathie, a retired Deerfield Beach fire chief, and several Chiefy crew members were spearfishing for lionfish in 100 feet, they caught their limit of lobster. Those diving shallow have had mixed results. Garavito caught one of her biggest bugs on a recent beach dive off Fort Lauderdale, but she added that there are not that many lobsters around. The beach diving also was tough when she and Hawk and another friend were out for miniseason.

“I think we got eight between three of us,” said Hawk, of Pompano Beach, who said they also had some bugs that were too short to keep. When Hawk was spearfishing before the miniseason, the lobster outlook was good.

“Prior to the season, you saw them everywhere. I think most people were very optimistic, but when we got to miniseason, it was, ‘Where did all the bugs go?’ ” said Hawk, who suspects that poachers might have taken lobsters before the miniseason, and said a friend saw lobster heads where he was diving. “I don’t think the regular season’s going well. I would give the season probably like a B-minus to a C.”

That grade could improve depending on how the tropical system develops.

“I feel like the lobsters have not been here yet,” Garavito said. “We need some storms to push them north. Maybe the depression will get them moving?”

“That tropical system could be a good thing,” said Mathie, the author of the book “Catching the BUG: The Comprehensive Guide to Catching the Spiny Lobster,” which is available at local dive shops and online. “By the middle towards the end of this week, the lobsters might come in. This could be one of those times where they come in real, real shallow. We could have a lobster walk.”

If that’s the case, then beach and boat divers will be feasting on the tasty crustaceans. I recently enjoyed a different and delicious lobster preparation — fried lobster tail with garlic scampi butter — by chef Jose Cordova at Shenanigan’s Eastside Pub & BBQ in Dania Beach (www.shenaniganseastsidepub.com).

Cordova splits the hard, top shell of the tail with a knife so he can pull out the meat, which is still attached to the base of the tail. Using a mixture of flour and seafood seasonings, Cordova puts a light coating on the lobster meat as well as in the bottom of the shell, then deep-fries it until the meat is nicely browned.

While the lobster cooks, he makes a sauce by sautéing roughly chopped garlic in olive oil in a skillet for about a minute, then he adds some white wine and squeezes in the juice of three lemon quarters. Next he adds a small amount of chicken stock, some chopped parsley and several cubes of butter mixed with flour. When the lobster is plated, Cordova pours some of the sauce on the fried tail and puts the rest in a container on the side for dipping. He serves it with saffron rice, grilled vegetables and garlic bread. The meal, which comes with a choice of soup or salad, is $24.99.