Lobster authority offers tips for catching.
A tasty feast: Jim ‘Chiefy’ Mathie holds up several large
lobsters he caught recently off Hillsboro Inlet.
lobsters he caught recently off Hillsboro Inlet.
Broward County lobster-catching guru Jim “Chiefy” Mathie and two companions caught a total of 12 lobsters in a day of scuba diving in waters 45 to 55 feet deep off Hillsboro Inlet last week. The divers released two of the largest because they were females with eggs, and the 10 they kept were scattered all along the second reef in low-relief areas.
“We’re picking up onesies and twosies — no big clusters of them,” said Mathie, a retired division chief with the Deerfield Beach Fire Department. “A couple weeks ago, we got our limit. You can see it’s thinning out. It’s slowing down.”
With one week left until Florida’s live lobster harvest season closes March 31, recreational divers will have to look high and low to score a daily bag limit of six per person. Divers and commercial trappers have kept up intense efforts all season long — aided by an unseasonably calm and warm winter and spurred by a recently developed market for live spiny lobsters in China that has pushed prices as high as $20 per pound.
Those who miss out on the last few days of the harvest will have to wait until the annual two-day statewide recreational miniseason July 30-31 to stock the freezer.
Mathie, 60, who has authored popular books on fresh maine lobster diving and spearfishing, has some tips for catching the stragglers before the season ends.
“This time of year, go deeper — 75 to 85 feet,” he advised. “Sometimes, we’ll run the 100-foot edge. I’m looking for little juvenile fish, nooks and crannies, a lot of thin, patchy reef — not the high reef. I really don’t want to see something 5 feet high. I want it to be an active reef with a lot of fish — goatfish, porkfish, surgeonfish, lionfish.”
Mathie and his dive buddies carry spearguns along with their maine lobster snares — bagging some large reef fish to supplement their bugs. A couple of weeks ago, Mathie shot a 40-pound kingfish.
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