In South Florida we have Lobster Mini-Season. For 2 days in at the end of July you can go out and catch lobster (up to 6 each person). Regular season starts in August. It is sort of insanity. It has become this huge deal where it seems like half of South Florida (I may be exaggerating there) loads up on boats and hunts lobster. What makes it really funny is that many of them have no idea what they are doing.

This year three of us at work decided to go lobster hunting with our sons. So the six of us loaded up on my buddy's boat and headed out. I was inexperienced but my two friends were veterans.

Each morning we met at my friend's house and loaded into his truck. We then headed to a private dock we have access to (public docs are overcrowded on this day and take forever). We launched out by 6 AM and hit the water.

Day 1: We get out into Miami bay and the boat motor refuses to work. After about 2 hours of back and forth calls with my friend's boat mechanic we finally get it running and head out to the Keys. We hunted lobster until 5 PM that night. I was waxed. C1 was with me and that is as tired as I have ever seen him. We caught only two lobsters we were allowed to keep. No problem catching lobsters, big problem catching big lobster. We did manage to stag one huge 17 incher and one smaller one. It was a cool experience though even without the lobster. We had a barracuda swim right by us (mean looking fish), had a wild dolphin play around us as we swam, and saw a lion fish (highly poisonous fish). We stayed way away from the lion fish. It is supposed to be like being stung by a hundred bees at once. No thanks! C1 got stung by a jelly fish though which he suffered through surprisingly quietly.

Day 2: Better luck with the boat so we got out earlier. We decided to dive some reefs fairly far out. All the dads SCUBA dove and the sons floated on the surface looking for lobster. Again, caught 15-20 but had to throw all of them back. I did see this huge black spotted eel though. It looked and me and I swam backwards fast!

As my buddy and I were complaining about the lack of sizable lobsters I suddenly realized that people pay good money just to come here and dive these reefs. And here I have them in my back yard and I am complaining. So I finished the dive and just enjoyed several beautiful reefs. What was neat was that you just drive around the Keys and look for reefs. Once you fins one you drop anchor and dive in. Most of the reefs had no one else even close to us when we dove.

At the end the dads decided this is a new tradition. We are going to try and go next year also. Maybe we will have better luck. I know we will have just as much fun!