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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 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 weekend of March 27 th & 28 th I took the Level 1 Freediving course offered by FII (Freediving Instructors International) at their Headquarters in Pompano Beach FL. FII was started by Martin Stepanek, a multiple time freediving world record holder. The Level 1 curriculum is taught over a 2 day course. The first day is classroom and pool based and spans almost 9 hours. This course is designed for beginning freedivers and is supposed to get novice divers to a depth of 66 feet.
It didn't take me long to finish rigging up the 120 with a new reel and 2.2mm dyneema line. Unfortunately as of now (Apr 2009), I haven't had an opportunity to get into the blue water to put this new toy through its paces. I am definitely jones'ing to give it a try! I am also working on making my own flashers for use in blue water. I have been watching these being used on a few spearfishing shows and their reasoning seems sound for their success. They didn't seem too hard to make, so I decided...
{sigplus link=oculusr5 index=1} {/sigplus}Hot on the heels of my review of the GoPro Hero2, I felt I would be remiss if I didn't follow up with a review of the case that resolves the one (and only one in my opinion) flaw in the Hero2 design, it's underwater focus (or lack thereof) flaw. You see, as I wrote about in the Hero2 review the curved lens on the stock case creates a focus fallacy when shooting underwater. It's fairly common knowledge now, so if you want to read about it, you can check...
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....
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...
Winds: 15-25 East Seas: 2-4 Surf Temp: 82F Viz: 10-20 feet The weather just did not want to cooperate this weekend at all. Tropical Storm Arlene was wreaking havoc in the Gulf and we were feeling the peripheral effects in the keys as well. We dove in spite of the weather, but weren't able to take anywhere near our regular catch.
Winds: SE 5-10 Seas: 1-2 ft Surf Temp: 81 F Viz: 20-30 ft This weekend brought back our perennial foes the moon jellyfish. They moved in quickly over the past couple of weeks and moved in thick. In some spots we had trouble surfacing without almost colliding with a few of them on the way back to the surface. For the second weekend in a row, we found that same thermalcline that created a layer of extremely warm water at the bottom that also made it difficult to see near the bottom in depths...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 10-15 E/SE Viz: 15-25feet Temp: 82F The winds continued to to calm down today so we headed out to see if the viz had improved as well. We headed west today hitting some spots in about 25-35' hoping we could run into some more large mangroves. It was just 2 of us today (my brother in law and me) so the limit would only be 10.
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...
Winds: 10-15 SE Seas: 2-4 feet (sloppy) Surf Temp: +/- 80F Viz: 25-30 feet On Saturday we started out like we normally do, procrastinating about where to make the first dive. We headed out to one of our reliable spots and were able to get into a couple of decent sized mangroves before they thinned out and we moved on. From there we decided to head to a spot that has recently been a little active with bull sharks. Little did we know how active it had become. In the first 45 minutes of the dive...