Stuart Florida Lobster Report

Well, by now mini-season is over and the regular lobster season has begun. I’ve been away from the writing on the blog and diving since mini-season so this is my first chance to report in on how we did. Where was I? I was busy welcoming my newborn baby girl into the world! The day after mini-season ended, August 1st at 8:05 Abigale Grace was born! She weighed in at 6lbs 4oz.

Thank you, thank you! Now - back to the lobster. Well, we did manage to get a few that matched Abi for size but the pickings were pretty slim. Day one wasn’t a good start, we spent about five hours in the water and only came out with eight lobsters to show for it. The bugs we got were all of good size, most of them four pounds or over but there just wasn’t many of them.

The year before we did well but had to pick through a bunch of females with eggs to get our limits, this year we just didn’t see many bugs at all. Day two ended up being only slightly better with nine lobsters, a small Spanish lobster got us up that one little notch. Again, we caught all we saw but just weren’t to many to be had. Not many shorts or pregnant females to throw back. I don’t know but I’m guessing they were just late coming in this season? I hope anyway.

The bugs we did manage to catch were mostly on deeper tank dives. We dove in the 50 foot range and both days got the vast majority of our catch in a single dive. After exhausting two tanks each we went inshore to try to supplement our haul on an air bouey but ended up just getting a good workout swimming across an empty reef. After about two hours I managed to only pull out two lobsters from the shallows. Again, just not many to be had. Didn’t even see many legs or antennas from any divers who may have hit the water overnight. At least the water was pretty clear on day two - making for at least a pleasant dive.

Photos coming soon.

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