Nature Coast

Grab your gear and dive for scallops

By ED WALKER
Published July 7, 2007

The scallops are back. That's the word around town now that the summer season for these tasty bivalves is open.

Snorkelers from Bayport to Homosassa and various points in between have reported catching good numbers in the well-known areas near the Homosassa River and in more remote patches of grass away from the primary spots.

When the visibility is good, hunting for productive new scallop spots can be as easy as standing on the bow of the boat while idling over grassy bottom. When you spot a few, stop the boat, put up your dive flag and hop in for a look. During the good years you should find dozens within an easy swim of the boat.

Scallops are a fickle lot. For reasons few truly understand, they are cyclical. Some years there are hundreds of thousands and the next year there are not enough to bother diving for. Their harvest is tightly regulated to ensure they are not overfished and the population remains healthy.

Each scallop lives for approximately one year. It starts out as a pea-sized organism that attaches to blades of turtle grass, then drops off when it gets too big to be supported. Once this happens scallops become mobile. By squeezing their shells together and ejecting water, they are propelled a short distance.

Continuous shell contractions can lift the scallop off the bottom and it can move from one area to another. This "hopping" is believed by some to be the reason the prime scallop areas can support continued harvest even after crowds of boats work it over.

Once the boat catches its limit of scallops, some divers have been moving a little further offshore and hunting grouper and snapper over rock bottom. Jeremy Gamble reported that in 20 feet off Homosassa the water was warm on the surface but cold on the bottom. This unusually cool water has been showing up in various places along the west coast all summer. With it are fish normally associated with spring or fall such as kingfish, mackerel and shallow water grouper.

Gamble said if you could stand the chilly water on the bottom, the fish were definitely there. He and his crew speared kingfish and grouper while freediving. G.R. Tarr reported similar findings on the shallow rocks off Hudson Beach.

"The water was cold on the bottom but there were tons of gags down there" Tarr said.

There are a few big sharks swimming around out there, too. Gamble said a 10-foot hammerhead joined him in the water 15 miles offshore.

"He didn't threaten me really, just slowly came in checked me out and went on his way. Luckily I didn't have a fish at the time."

The peak tarpon season is winding down with fewer and fewer fish being spotted on the flats and along the beaches. Many of the fish that came here to gather for spawning have finished their business and are heading out of town.

Some of these migratory fish will remain in places where there are large quantities of bait such as small thread herring, menhaden or glass minnows. Watch for the birds diving on dense concentrations of the tiny baitfish, then check to see of any tarpon are rolling nearby or gliding through the minnows with their mouths open.

This situation can provide some of the most exciting tarpon action anywhere.

[Last modified July 6, 2007, 22:22:59]