Lobster lovers dive in
Stormy weather early Wednesday morning kept a fair number of people from diving for lobster on the two-day miniseason’s opening day, which authorities said claimed one life— that of a 60-year-old man from Little Torch Key.
Lobster enthusiasts on Wednesday weren’t bothered by a little rain, wind and bumpy seas. To them, lobster miniseason is the biggest holiday of the summer and they celebrate it no matter what.
“We watched the storm come in,” said Bill Dennis of Lighthouse Point, who went out to Hillsboro Inlet before dawn. “It got nasty.”
Dennis rode out the brief storm while his divers searched for lobsters off Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. After that, skies were sunny, the ocean calmed and conditions weren’t too bad, although visibility in the water wasn’t that great.
“Iwould call it about 15 feet,” said Mike Ziegler of Oakland Park, who dove with Dennis. “It got better as the day went on, maybe because the sun came out.”
A few more boats, aswell as beach divers on kayaks and paddleboards, showed up then, but Ziegler said “itwas not really as crowded as usual.”
“Itwas a little bumpy out there for guys with kayaks and paddleboards,” said Jim Mathie of Deerfield Beach. “We picked up a little of that storm stuff. I think that spooked a few people away .”
“It wasn’t crowded at all,” said Jeff Torode of South Florida Diving Headquarters in Pompano Beach, whose boats each ran several lobstering trips Wednesday. “As soon as the sun came out and the seas calmed down, the armada was out.
“All our boats, they’re all catching lobsters. They’re not big. I’d say the average lobster is a pound and a half.”
Mathie and his crew of Andy Rubin, Chuck Van Buskirk, Roger Soles and John Strunk on Mathie’s boat Chiefy had a strong opening day, catching their five-man-limit of 60 lobsters before 10 a.m.
Scouting trips Monday and Tuesday, along with an early start Wednesday, paid off.
“We were in that 35- to 40-foot stuff,” Mathie said. “We had scouted that area Monday and it was good, andwe did pretty well right there. We got 50 off that spot. We got there before anybody else did: We got there at the crack of dawn.”
After that, Mathie and Rubin still had some air left in their tanks so they jumped in on another spot and caught six more lobsters.
“Then we put Roger and Chuck on another little spot we had scouted,” Mathie said. “We only needed four and we knew there were at least six there from Monday and they said therewere10.”
They were checked inside Hillsboro Inlet for their saltwater fishing licenses At top, Bill Dennis, in waters off of Lighthouse Point, looks out at a rainstorm at the start of lobster miniseason Wednesday. Above, he plucks a spiny lobster from the ocean floor.
and lobster permits and to make sure their lobsters had carapaces measuring more than three inches by a Broward Sheriff’s Office marine unit.
When one of the officers told Mathie, “You’re the first boat that came through with a limit,” the Chiefy crew was justifiably proud.
Steve d’Oliveira, the Public
Information Officer for Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, was busy Wednesday weighing in lobsters for Bug-Fest-by-the-Sea’s Great Florida Bug Hunt. He said most people who stopped by the weigh station got at least some lobsters.
“Some people limited out, some people didn’t get any,” d’Oliveira said. “Some people didn’t limit out but they got a few.”
The biggest bug weighed was just over 9 pounds. It was caught by Bob Maler of Miami in 40 feet off Miami-Dade County.
The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office reported that a 60-year-old Little Torch Key man died Wednesday while scuba diving for lobsters on the Gulf side of Cudjoe Key.
William Simko was diving in 10-12 feet of water when he reportedly became distressed and called for help at 10:30 a.m.
His son was on their boat with four others and they jumped into the water and brought him back to the boat.
They performed CPR on Simko while calling for assistance on the VHF radio. A Navy helicopter responded, picked up Simko and flew him to Lower Keys Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. An autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of death.