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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....
Throughout my relatively short history in spearfishing (as of this writing), I have only used a few different spearguns. Now obviously, my opinion in this matter is not one of extreme trial and error. Mostly it consists of recommendations made to me by those I spearfish with along with some of my own common sense. In the beginning (early 1990's), I used one of my brother-in-law's extra guns. Specifically, a 38" Arbalette. Now this gun had already seen finer days by the time I started using it....
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...
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.
{sigplus link=goprohero2 index=1} {/sigplus}I finally jumped on the HD bandwagon and bought myself a Hero2 HD digital camera by GoPro. These little beauties have been around for quite a while now so hearing about them isn't exactly news. But since I finally got around to purchasing one for myself and it happens to be that the Hero2 is the biggest leap in performance that they've given these cameras since their launch, I figured I would put in my 2 cents worth.
This past weekend, I finally got to go to The Blue Wild dive expo. After 3 years of everybody telling me about it and not being around to get to go to it, the stars finally aligned and I was able to check it out. Unfortunately, it meant missing out on 5-10mph winds and less than 1' seas inside the reef, but there were other reasons I couldn't get out this weekend, so I figured I would take advantage to check it out and possibly win something from the raffle to boot (I won't keep you in...
Seas: 2-3 feet (Sat) 1-2 feet (Sun) Winds: 10-15 S/SW (Sat) 10 S-SE (Sun) Viz: 10-15 feet (Sat) 40-50 feet (Sun) Temp: 82 F (Sat) 82 F (Sun) I had been looking forward to this weekend for months. My first weekend of diving and spearfishing since last December . Unfortunately it started going a little awry about a week ago when my wife gave me the news that she and my daughter wouldn't be coming along due to some last minute sports team issues. I'm not sure, but it seems that organized sports...
Wind Seas Viz Temp 10-25 ENE/Variable 3-4' 5-15' 78F In South Florida, probably one of the most anticipated and planned spearfishing outings (aside from those that take you to major global destinations) is the trip we make on or about May 1 of each year for the re-opening of Grouper season. It doesn't always fall on a weekend but when it does (like this year), the planning begins early. The season closure has barely taken effect on January 1, and we already start talking about how many grouper...
Seas: 5-7 feet Winds: 15-20 SE Temp: 74 F Viz: 30-35 feet I decided to make an overnight trip this weekend and take a Monday off for the heck of it. I was hoping to be able to get into some snapper since the forecast had the weekend winds dying down (and hopefully the seas as well). Unfortunately, as you might have noticed from the stats above, neither of those things happened. The viz was awesome, but you had to weather some serious seas to fish it.
Seas: 2-5' Winds: 10-25 SSE Viz: 2-45' Temp: 83-87F Well, it's that time of year again. The time of year when people that don't normally dive will take a chance as well as the risk and jump in the ocean to look for those prized crustaceans, the Caribbean spiny lobster. This year's lobster season opened on Monday August 6th so it was really easy for a lot of people to just take a long weekend to see if they can grab a few lobsters. Almost as if following suit with the rest of the Summer, this...
Seas: 2-4 feet Winds: 10-20 SSE Temp: 84 F Viz: 3-50 feet We decided to get in the water for some bugs on opening day since we didn't do mini season last week (actually it was the 2nd year in a row that we don't do it). Little did we know what we were in for that opening day. We headed out early to try and beat some of the spot squatters that wait for day break on the water (because you're not allowed to night dive for lobsters in the keys). We were a little surprised by the lack of boats that...
Winds: SE 5 Seas: 1-2 ft Surf Temp: 86 F Viz: 20-25 ft We had some very good weather this weekend (although the lack of wind does tend to make it extremely hot). We were able to easily head out for some diving and spearfishing without getting tossed around too much. Unfortunately we weren't seeing the same size mangroves that we were running into last weekend. That, and upon cleaning our catch from the first day, we noticed that a lot of the fish were no longer carrying roe. As long as they...