# Scallops!



## firecat1981 (Nov 27, 2007)

A little late, but we decided to give scalloping another try last week on Tuesday. We went out of Homosassa and the weather was beautiful. This was the first time I have been up there and navigating the river was a new experience. Man is it a long ride in a small boat!

We followed the channel out and found the floatilla. Hundreds of boats were anchored up with dive flags, the pack went on for miles. We had some mild success this time and ended up with a bit more then 2 gallons. Not bad, not great being we could have limited at 6 gallons.

20160802_150259_1470274717508 by kevin lefkowitz, on Flickr

Here is our track, we ran 29.4 miles total. That is a long ride for a little boat.

scallop trip by kevin lefkowitz, on Flickr

Here is a time lapse I took of the ride out. Click on the image to see it.

time lapse by kevin lefkowitz, on Flickr

There is a little island next to the ramp with monkeys on it. I don't know why. This one was caught doing something naughty, lol

20160802_164223_1470274717282 by kevin lefkowitz, on Flickr

Fun times and we will be doing it again.


----------



## anytide (Jul 30, 2009)

next time use the ramp at the end of ozello trail
no channel madness for small boats.
-closer.

good job !


----------



## firecat1981 (Nov 27, 2007)

We have plans to go out of Crystal River next. We will see how it goes. It's about 15 minutes further away by car, but will shave 30-45 minutes off our boat trip out to the floatilla.


----------



## firecat1981 (Nov 27, 2007)

I want to go further north because they say they are in shallower waters up there. I discovered I am to blind to see them well. We caught them mostly in 8ft or so, but checked from 5-11ft. In 5-6ft I could see them ok, but they were scarce, in 7+ my old eyes couldn't keep up. Might be time to look into lasik again.


----------



## anytide (Jul 30, 2009)

this was a good year, caught most in water you could stand in about 6'
when the tides slacks you can see them better - grass isnt folded over.


----------



## firecat1981 (Nov 27, 2007)

Crazy thing is the tide never went slack. We did our first dive around 11:15 and our last about 3:15, and the tide was ripping the whole time. Low tide was supposed to be at 1:30 but we never saw it.


----------



## yobata (Jul 14, 2015)

How did that full face snorkel work?


----------



## firecat1981 (Nov 27, 2007)

Wellllll......I'm not a total fan, but it did ok. There were pluses and minuses. We had 2 with us.

Pros - It did what it says, mostly. It was great not having a mouth piece, we could easily talk to each other if we were close. When you dive down the valve slams shut and for the most part the water stays out. The bottom drain valve worked best if you were not submerged, otherwise you had to forcefully blow out the drain all the water that did get in.

Cons - You can't look under yourself, I mean if you tilted your head to far down the water would hit the snorkel valve closing it and you couldn't breath. It made it hard to dive deep, I didn't have fins to use, so when you dive the mask holds a bigger pocket of air around your face and it pushes you back up. There is some salt spray to the eyes, my eyes started stinging after a bit, but I think with more use I can avoid this part.

Conclusions - For calm waters and floating around the surface sightseeing I think it would be great, for diving not so much. That being said my buddy loved his and used it the whole time, but he had fins on so swimming down was not such a big deal to him. I'm going to keep it and try it again to see if I like it, but I'll always have a snorkel and mask as a back up.


----------



## jimsmicro (Oct 29, 2013)

I've run the Homosassa in a Gheenoe during scallop season and it solidified my belief that the area should totally be avoided during scallop season. I'd much rather put in to the north at some of the less insane areas that have way shorter runs. Like Crystal River or some of the skinny water ramps near Steinhatchee or Horseshoe Beach. You can be on the scallops in a 3 mile run at some of those places.


----------



## firecat1981 (Nov 27, 2007)

We go during the week, you can see by the time lapse that there was traffic, but it wasn't horrible. Still it's a loooong ride in a skiff! With 3 of us on deck I could only manage about 14-15mph. I'll be upgrading to a bigger boat soon so I may go back then.


----------

