Florida fourth report - mutton snapper and snorkel fishing

[BenCantrell]

Fourth Florida report! I recently bought a diver down flag, and on Saturday I wanted to try it out by snorkeling a wreck just off the beach in Vero Beach. It seemed like a cool way to check out what species of fish are down there that I haven't caught yet. Our launch was the easiest we've done in the surf.



Early in the morning there wasn't anyone else diving the wreck, so we drifted around it and fished a bit. There wasn't anything biting besides a couple of hairy blennies.



We wanted to troll lures up and down the beach too, so we did that before snorkeling so the sun would be higher when we got in the water. I trolled a pair of Rapalas and got my first kayak mutton snapper.



Ally got one as well.



We paddled up to a small private pier and saw a school of decent sized jacks, but I didn't get any follows when I cast to them, and pretty soon I lost track of where the school went.



Trolling back to the wreck I got a blue runner and another mutton snapper.





Back at the wreck I dropped my anchor, but I didn't like how close my kayak was to some other people snorkeling, so I pulled it up and towed the kayak forward to a better spot. I was really amused with myself, haha.



Ally tied her kayak to mine so they'd make a steady platform for climbing back in.



We both have waterproof cameras, but mine has a floating wrist strap, and hers doesn't, so we took turns using mine and left hers safe in her kayak.





Visibility wasn't the best, but we still got to see a lot of fish. It was a really cool experience. Here's a school of mostly silver porgies and sergeant majors.



Juvenile damselfish, probably cocoa.



Juvenile yellowtail parrotfish (a species I need) and adult Molly Miller.



Bar jack flanked by two yellow jacks.



Molly Miller posing.



Bluehead wrasse (another species I need) and dusky damselfish.



Found this and a pair of sunglasses.



The last thing I wanted to try was snorkel fishing. I've done this in shallow water near shore, but fishing the wreck in deeper water with a bit of current would be more challenging. I saw three fish species I hadn't caught before - yellowtail parrotfish, bluehead wrasse, and some sort of scorpionfish - but I wasn't able to catch any of them. There was always something more aggressive that got to my bait first, even though I actively tried to jerk it away from them. Here's the worst of the worst, a slippery dick.



The paddling and the snorkeling and the sun wore us out, so we called it a day even though there were fish that needed to be caught. This was the first time we were able to land on the beach exactly where we wanted. It wasn't as crowded as previous days/beaches.



Here's the route. We barely left the beach!



Miles: 6.6
Hours: 5:59
Water Temp: 82