After we finished our dive at Alexander’s Wreck, we headed to Jewfish Basin to anchor out for a few days.  Jewfish Basin is just north of Key West on the Gulf side and its a great anchorage. We had first heard about it from one of our neighbors at Snook Bight a couple years ago and we actually anchored there overnight in 2014 on our way to the Dry Tortugas. Since foul weather had ruined our plans of heading back to the Dry Tortugas after Key West, we decided we would spend a few days at Jewfish Basin and explore the area.

We spent 2 full days at Jewfish Basin and loved it. The boys were on a mission to spear fish some dinner, so each day they would head out in the dinghy with their mask, fins and snorkel gear and the speargun. They found a great ledge and rock where they got several keepers — 5 hogfish and 4 snapper. They also found a speargun laying on the bottom in the sand that actually worked just fine. This gave them 2 guns so they could increase their chances of catching fish. Needless to say, we had fresh fish each evening!

While the boys were spearing fish, I got caught up on some blogging and relaxed with a book. There was a fabulous breeze the first day which helped with the heat.  On day 2, I went with them to snorkel the area they had been catching fish at. The ledge and rock they were spearing fish on was huge and there were a lot of HUGE stingrays just laying in the sand on the bottom. It was a very nice snorkel spot. In the afternoons, we would pack a cooler and the dog and dinghy over to one of the sandbars where we would cool off in the water.

We’re glad we got to explore Jewfish Basin a little more since it is a beautiful area to anchor, fish and play on the sandbars. On Wednesday morning, we pulled up anchor and headed toward home where we planned to anchor at Cape Romano just south of Marco Island.