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Old 07-20-2007, 11:07 AM   #1
smilinmatt
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Bahia Honda Trip

My dad and I went down to Bahia Honda the 15th-18th. We took my 12' boat down and stayed in the campground.

We left Apollo Beach at 3:00 am and made it down to the west end of the 7-mile at about 10. We launched the boat at the small ramp there and headed out towards the patch reefs off Bahia Honda. The visibility was only about 10 feet, so we continued on out. We stopped at a spot where the reef rises to 20 feet and drops off to 60 within a 100 yard span. We dropped anchor on the inner part of the dropoff and swam out. At about 30 feet, the reef ended with a 5 foot tall ledge and was swarming with mangrove snapper. I followed the edge of the reef around until it ended, but didn't see any shootable fish. We came back to the snapper and shot a couple. The visibility was only about 20 feet and dropping, so we left the spot. We ran into a few shallow spots with big coral heads off the 7-mile. We found some nice hogfish and ended up shooting 6 of them. We didn't measure any of the fish (they were well over the limit, but well under bragging size ), but for size reference, the fish are sitting on top of a 120 quart cooler.



The next day after getting a couple hours of sleep in our sauna, I mean tent, we went back out to the reef, hoping to find clearer water. We went to a spot in 40 feet off Marathon where I got a big black, red and muttons in the spring, but it turned out to be completely fishless. It was also murky (15-20 foot), which made for some tiring searching. We went west, and almost directly off the Bahia Honda channel, found some clearer water. There was a dip in the blue water where you could see it being drawn in towards the channel. Unfortunately, there was no bottom structure in this area. It was a smooth and flat transition from 90 to 40 feet (40 foot was the edge of the murk line). We ended up dropping in 50 feet where the most bottom structure showed up and had nearly top-to-bottom visibility. I found a black and red grouper hiding under a coral head. They were both the same length, and I wasn't sure if they'd go 24", so I shot the red. Back at the boat he measured 26", so I went back to look for the black, but no luck finding him. We stayed there a little while and picked up two more mangroves and saw several blacks that may or may not have been keepers. To end the day, we went back inshore and found a couple more hogfish to round out the cooler.



The next day, with the lousy visibility, we tried going to Big Pine. In the past we've found it to usually have better visibility than other areas. It wasn't the case on this trip. The bluewater was staying off the reef, and the patch reefs were still too murky to be worth hunting (we did pick up two hogfish though). We ended up going into the shallow coral heads to collect fish for the aquarium.

Wednesday morning, we broke camp and were all packed up by 8. We decided to give it one last shot for a couple hours. My dad and I took turns diving the "super secret" spot. We were using his 75 cm gun (that's how good the visibility was). By 10, we were heading back to the boat ramp with three blacks from 26-30" and three more hogs (the other two hogs in the picture we gutted the previous day and left in the cooler).

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Old 07-20-2007, 12:04 PM   #2
keezdiver
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Re: Bahia Honda Trip

nice hauls....

its tough hunting here in poor vis, particularly when the water is warm...fish vanish
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Old 07-21-2007, 03:00 PM   #3
O.M.E.R.BPK
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Re: Bahia Honda Trip

nice ... i need hit up bahia honda
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