Shark River pre-Summer

With the coming of summer things change at the shore, you have to pay for parking, if you can find a spot, so many fishermen on the wall and the rocks and as of May 1st you can’t dive in Shark River Inlet during the day. So this last week end before the band the team headed up to Shark River to get in one more Sunday dive.

It was a good call as we had the south side of the inlet to yourself, no fishermen, tide just slowing down and bright sunshine and fairly clear water. 10 maybe 15 seconds on the shell drop. Big Joe was our surface support today, Lisa from Middletown Twp SAR was diving with Sue L and Rich G was teamed up Evan S and Joe OJ and I round out the divers in the water.

Getting everyone in the water down the jetty rocks is a lesson in team work and this is something we work on constantly. As everyone got in and headed down the tide went slack and we had a good hour of current free diving.

Sue and Lisa were first down and headed towards the mouth of the inlet. They didn’t have a tube so this was a look around and check out this area dive. Rick and Evan were next down and headed out behind Sue and Lisa but they had a tube so for them it was looking for sinkers. Both of them are fairly new to this so this is training on how and where to look. OJ and I were last in and we both knew where we wanted to search. 

In the past we have covered an area from the bridge out to about a hundred feet down the jetty so we headed farther out the jetty into new areas and we were rewarded with easy pickings. There were sinkers everywhere, we got so many I had to get a second tube as I fill the first one. OJ filled his also and had a fight with a lobster who though the sinkers were his. All together we came away with 143 pounds of sinkers.

After an hour and twenty five minutes under water it was time to come up and make that climb up the rocks. With all the training we do we know what to look for in an exit point. It all so helps to have people up on the jetty to pull up the sinker tubes. Rich and Evan and Big Joe all helped getting both tubes up the rocks and Evan found out just how slippery the rocks can be.

Everyone had a great dive, Lisa said she never saw so many fish in her life, two days ago you couldn’t find a fish and now they are everywhere. The water was 50 degrees down to twenty feet, below that it dropped a little. Visibility was 10-15 feet and as the tide turned it got a little better.
It was a surprise to see how many fishermen were on the rocks when I came up, but all worked out as they stayed away from the divers.