Things that are supposed to happen...
This year at The Blue Wild I was fortunate enough to meet Mike Hickey. I know of Mike from his appearances on Speargun Hunter on the Outdoor Channel with Sheri Daye. Mike was orginally a guest on the show and in later seasons participated as an underwater videographer. Mike is the USA distributor for FreeDivers ( FreeDivers USA ) spearfishing equipment. I came across his booth and after a great conversation about spearfishing, we started discussing the rising cost of spearshafts specifically....
Over the winter I looked into and purchased a couple of sets of Reef Runner Gear's fin skins. I had contemplated having my own manufactured but when I came accross these, it just didn't seem worth the hassle. You can create your own custom design for a few bucks more and although you can run into some small snags when doing so (I'll elaborate later on), Jon from Reef Runner Gear is an awesome guy to work with and he will do everything he can to make things right.
Over the 4th of July holiday I was able to break in my hawaiian sling made by HawaiianSling.net (Ray Uppstrom). I had purchased this quite some time ago in preparation for a trip to the Bahamas and I finally got to try it out in the waters around Cat Cay, South Bimini. This isn't your normal hawaiian sling. The design is completely unique and interesting in its approach compared to traditional slings. This sling is much more akin to a bow and arrow than it is to a regular sling and it looks...
I finally bit the bullet and decided to sell my No-Ka-Oi. It had gotten next to no use in the time I had owned it and it seemed a shame to have it just sit there so I Ebay'd it. With the funds from that sale, I invested in a gun that is a little more multi-purpose (at least that is how I convinced myself to get it :). I was extremely torn among 3 choices. I was considering the Euro 120, 120x and 130. After a couple of weeks of deliberation and a lot of flip-flopping, I decided on the Euro 120....
Believe it or not my latest addition to my spearguns is not one for shooting fish (well at least not shooting to kill them). But it hopefully will help others watch online what I love to do underwater. I have made a camera mount for my Riffe Euro guns. This mount will fit on any Euro that has the reel inserts (basically all of them). It was terribly simple to make. The only fairly tricky part was putting together the actual mount screw for the camera tripod mount itself.
I realized recently that I had overlooked the fact that I had purchased and used some new SpearGear at the beginning of the Summer of 2011 and hadn't gotten around to posting about it (here or in SpearGear). This article is going to be one that definitely crosses over between SpearViews and SpearGear because of the fact that I do own it but I definitely think it's worthy of a review as well. In the end, SpearViews won the coin toss deciding where I would put the article (especially after I...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 E/SE Viz: 35-40 feet Temp: 85 F This past week was Lobster mini season and even though I did not participate, I did have some friends that took their perennial vacation to hunt those highly coveted bugs. According to their accounts, there were a lot less hunters in the water this year. But luckily for those that were willing to take the time to do it, there were plenty of lobsters to be had by all. We had been observing a huge population of lobsters in every nook and...
Winds: 0-5 Variable Seas: Less than 2 feet Surf Temp: 84F Viz: 80-100 feet This is what I have been waiting for all summer long! This was without a doubt the best weekend in short term memory. We literally had no chop for as far as the eye could see. Water clarity once you were outside of Hawk Channel was easily 80 to 100 feet in any direction. We dove depths from 20-40 feet and there was no noticable change in the viz. The other thing we noticed was the uncanny number of Spanish Mackerel that...
So it's March 17th, St. Patrick's Day and everyone is excited to don their green garb and partake in their green libations. But green's just not my color today, I'm just too blue to be green. You see, blue doesn't just depict my mood because I haven't been able to dive since that memorable Saturday after Christmas when I was able to make that awesome day trip to Bimini . No... blue depicts much more than that. It exemplifies the dichotomy of my feelings, the bi-polarization of my emotions as...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 10 S/SE Viz: 35-50 feet Temp: 86 F All summer long, we've been suffering a grouper recession of sorts. This year was the first year of an experimental close on all shallow water grouper in Florida waters. Unfortunately, along with this closure, we also suffered the longest and coldest winter snaps in the spring that I can ever remember (and I'm born and raised here, so no need for me to check the almanac). This summer has been one of the oddest in recent and long term...
UPDATE: An article related to my story below was published in the April 2007 issue of Florida Sportsman. I post it here for the sake of any nay-sayers or persons who may be thinking that some of my descriptions or even the existence of Big Mo may be exaggerated or even fictitious. I invite you to read my story below and then enjoy the article as well. This story is true, and while actually pertaining more closely to my brother-in-law, is one that I was in the water for and probably closer to...
Unbenknownst to us, this would be our final weekend in the keys for this summer! Saturday allowed us to pick up quite a few bugs to stock our freezers, and it was a good thing too, because Hurricane (at least it was at that time) Ernesto had other things in mind for us. Once we got back from gathering yet a few more bugs on Sunday, we got the word about Hurricane Ernesto. After the two storms we experienced last year we decided to turn tail and get the heck out of Dodge. We made the decision...