The text from my friend Carlos Casal comes in the day after Christmas with two simple words... "Bimini Saturday?" (there may have been more words, but those stood out) and all of a sudden I feel like it's Christmas all over again. That nervous anxiety that comes over you when you know the present you're getting, but you can't open until Christmas morning grabbed hold of me from that moment.  I've never had the opportunity to head over to Bimini with the sole intention of spearfishing for the day with no other distractions. A vacation in Cat Cay a few years ago afforded me my first trip to the Bimini Islands and I even landed some fish, but this would be different, and I was stoked. The plan was to meet at 4:30a in order to get underway before dawn. After a quick final check and a short drive, we were heading out of Crandon Park marina and setting our course Eastward towards Bimini under a cloak of total darkness thanks to a new moon. The seas were mostly as forecast with 2-3' of cho...

 

Wind	Seas	Viz	Temp
5-15mph SSE	2-3 SE Swell	40-50'	86F

 

The past couple of weekends were plagued with algea blooms and low viz thanks to the higher surf temps and a West wind that always seems to wreak havoc for us. But right around Wednesday of this week, the wind started to turn more Southerly with an occasional Easterly influence so we were hopeful that it would be enough to clean up the water in time for the weekend. We got some conflicting reports about viz from friends, but luckily we noticed that some of these friends were working drastically different areas. So when we woke up Saturday morning, we were still optimistic about the conditions we were going to find.

Wind	Seas	Viz	Temp
5-10 WSW	1-2'	15'	88F

This past weekend the weather was still beautiful (beautifully HOT) as it has been for weeks now with mild winds and calm seas. But this week we were met with green, dirty water in almost every direction. In looking back at the weather, one thing had changed over the prior week that seems to support a theory I've been fostering for a while now about when and where we're able to find clean water depending on wind direction (hence the "cardinal"), the tide and surf temperature that I have dubbed my "Cardinal" rule. You see, we used to struggle with which direction to head in almost every time we would head out to the reef for spearfishing. All our bluewater fishing friends couldn't really un...

Wind	Seas	Viz	Temp
5-10 SSE	1-3'	25-55'	85F

Many times I get asked the question, "How many fish have you lost to sharks?" and I always find it interesting how people that don't dive or spearfish frequently automatically associate what we do with sharks and attacks and how they typically believe that these are some kind of single threat. The truth is that although I have been buzzed by sharks and even surrrounded by sharks, historically, I have lost countless fish to barracuda while losses to sharks had always remained a distant second place (with none, thankfully). However, this past week sharks were surpassed by another denizen of the deep that many (not typically spearfishermen) overlook as a true threat to divers and spearfishermen with their brazen and sudden attacks of speared fish.....

Wind	Seas	Viz	Temp
ESE 5mph	1'	40'	85F

After almost another week of typical Florida Summer weather with afternoon thunder storms a possibilty on any given day, the wind started to lay down around Wednesday and the forecast really started to shape up for the weekend with calls for 5-8mph winds out of the SE and less than 1 foot seas. Of course my typical cynicism kept me thinking that at any minute (most likely on Friday afternoon) the forecast would flip from optimal to abysmal and we would be fighting wind and seas in our efforts to get back out on and under the water for some spearfishing action this weekend. Luckily for me, it was all in my head and the forecast stayed true as we arrived to nary a flying flag in the keys or the...

Wind	Seas	Viz	Temp
ESE 5mph	1-2'	40'	81F

 This past week started out looking very bleak. Storms rolled through the middle keys pretty much all day Monday and Tuesday with torrential downpours and winds in excess of 30mph. It was so bad in fact that people that had intended to stay the week decided to head for home and see how the week progressed from a distance. Between the wind that had picked up last weekend and the horrible weather at the opening of the week we pretty much thought that the clean water we had been able to enjoy for the past couple of weeks had come to an end.  But being ever the optimist (not me, someone else) checking the forecast on Wednesday, a different story unfolded. Tales and legends of...