Not sure if this is where to post this but here it is. We rented a 21' pontoon from River Safaris in Homosassa. Man do they jack the prices up for scalloping season. We paid $210 for the boat from 8-5. Got a late start thanks to babysitter and land nav problems. Started scalloping around 10:45, just at the peak of high tide. Plan was to be there before slack tide so it would be easier to move aroud without fighting the tide. Wish we would have made it for that plan because the outgoing tide was brutal.

It took us about 2 stops to find our first one and it never really got fast and furious. Just too many boats in too small of an area. We started NW of buoy 10 coming out of the Homosassa River but ened up straight west of 6 and 4 for our best scalloping. We were about 4 miles out in 6-8' of water. Clarity was awesome but there just didn't seem to be many scallops around. Once we headed south to our last spots we finally started getting into them. Sometimes 2 or 3 per dive. We ended the day with about 25% of a boat limit so not great but not bad. Learned a ton about it, marked a few good spots on my Navionics app on my iphone for next time. :)

This about about a 1/4 of what we ended with.

This was my, the other people on the boat, and the captian's first time scalloping after the age of 16. We went today too and used the same boat ramp as you. Tide was bad around noon but thanks to the outgoing and then the low we found loads of scallops in shallow water, 5.5 feet in the afternoon. We went and looked for the big pods of boats and this tended to yield 100 scallops in a 200 foot diameter area in the good spots. Twice we picked up 5 in one dive, and many other times 4 in one dive, 3 in one dive, and most often 2 in one breath of air.

Our purse after the work had been done is shown in a photo. We limited out today on our first attempt at scalloping on our own devices. This is a very fun, family friendly activity.

edit

Raymond wrote:
Nice job for your first time. I think we did OK for the effort we put in. We only had 2 people looking hard at any given time due to having 4 kids under 10 with us.

So you guys sought out the crowds of boats? We kind wanted to stay away from them. It definitely picked up in the afternoon, unfortunately we had to head back in at 3:30 to have the boat back to the ramp by 5.

Great report you guys! I def need to do this pretty soon. Those scallops look tasty! =)))

You guys still managed a nice catch. I got 8 gallons in 2 hours this past weekend, both Friday (hit the water around 2pm) and Saturday (hit water around 11am). Stay FAAARRR away from the crowds. There are scallops in deeper water if your crew can handle it.

me and a few people tried to rent a boat the other weekend but all the rental places were booked... Im still hoping to go later this month