mentioned pilot whales because I have never seen them in the wild. I have had friends see them while offshore fishing off of Miami and the Keys, but I have never seen them. As luck would have it, a short while later, we spot some spouts off the...
to feel like she had bad "sea mojo" because of our rough crossings, but that's really only been on the crossings from Miami. Our last trip to this island was plagued by bad weather for much of the week, but our crossing home (thanks to Carlos' radar...
and do some diving with his old man and uncle. This time, we decided to head out of Hillsboro Inlet in Pompano instead of Miami. My brother in law has had a couple of very productive outings there (he graciously sends me pics to demonstrate it... every...
be the case and I would be doubly happy. So rather than spend too much time scouting, we decided to hit a couple of our old Miami spots that we haven't hit for years. My brother in law starts gearing up and I make make way to MIAHEAD. By the time we get...
destination in mind. As we head out we decide to check out Hawk Channel which follows the Florida Reef from Fowey Rocks in Miami all the way down to Key West. From where we are, the channel is only a couple of miles offshore and although we cross it...
Seas: 3-4' Winds: 10-20 ESE Viz: 30-40' Temp: 78F It's been a crappy year on many counts. Truth is, before the holidays I thought (or rather, I hoped) that the year of crappy weather, fishing, diving and the breakin/robbery at my house (along with...
been one of the windiest springs I can ever recall and over the past few weeks without a doubt, the stormiest (at least in Miami). So the few times I might have been able to go were probably no good. At least that's what told myself to get through those...
the willingness to learn advanced techniques). {igallery id=4234|cid=22|pid=11|type=category|children=0|addlinks=0|tags=2011,Miami,Mutton,Hogfish,spearfishing|limit=1}
discovered, at least I still get to do those things anyway! I'm hoping to get out in February to scout some new spots in the Miami area to see if I can find some good Hogfish and Mutton spots (since Grouper is closed) or maybe even get out for some more...
was still hopeful. We arrived at the first spot shortly and I started the process that is getting ready for winter diving in Miami. I know some kooks in the northeast and other places will say that 69F surf isn't that cold, but I'm a tropical kind of...
was paying my dues on a 55 mile crossing with terribly frequent 6-7 footers for the first 30 miles of the trip. We departed Miami via the Stiltsville channel Saturday morning at 8:45am, at which time I turned to my wife and foretold “I have a feeling...
I realized it wasn't what I thought at all, but another ('another' referring to the first tiny octopus I caught on May 7 in Miami) tiny octopus that had somehow attached itself to my leg and started biting me with it's beak. The darn thing actually bit...
I wasn't really prepared to do or record this when it happened, but while offshore doing some Mahi fishing off of Key Largo in July '23, we had a bull mahi that would not leave and would not take a bait no matter what we did. Since we never leave home without our spearfishing gear, I suited up and what happened next was.... well, that's why you watch the video.
I wasn't really prepared to do or record this when it happened, but while offshore doing some Mahi fishing off of Key Largo in July '23, we had a bull mahi that would not leave and would not take a bait no matter what we did. Since we never leave home without our spearfishing gear, I suited up and what happened next was.... well, that's why you watch the video.
My final dive of 2011 out of Miami and my first time ever seeing a Ribbon Fish (had to look that one up). I got a little tired of seeing this as one of my only 480p videos on the channel so I remastered it in 4K. Original footage is 1080 so there was a little upscaling involved, but I think it was worth it.
My final dive of 2011 out of Miami and my first time ever seeing a Ribbon Fish (had to look that one up). I got a little tired of seeing this as one of my only 480p videos on the channel so I remastered it in 4K. Original footage is 1080 so there was a little upscaling involved, but I think it was worth it.
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...
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.
The summer had been busier than I would have liked this year and I honestly hadn't had as many opportunities to post much less given much thought to writing a new SpearView, but after having time to really reconsider, I realized that I had actually had multiple opportunities to try out new equipment this year (not all of it successfully). Further to that point, when I took the PFI Freediver course back in March I had decided to invest in a new mask and ended up deciding on the Omer Zero Cubed...
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.
{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...
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.
Well, this past weekend was supposed to signal in the start of my Summer with beautiful skies, calm winds, light seas and clean water. But as you should already have surmised from the lack of weather conditions at the top of this article (don't worry, I recorded them at the bottom), it didn't. I mean, I did get to take the day off from work and take a nice leisurely drive down to the keys with everything in tow. Unfortunately, that's where the fun started and ended. As I'm driving down and...
Winds: 0-5 Seas : Less than 1 foot Surf Temp : 87F Viz: 20-40 feet This was another very nice weekend for diving and spearfishing. The weather has been agreeable for a couple of weeks now, and now that I have some of my hearing returning (about 50%), I feel confident that I can begin to dive again. I didn't push it too hard this weekend, I just dove with my daughter piggyback and dove down a few times to get the feel of it and make sure I could easily equalize again. I was sorry I couldn't...
I'm not going to lie to you, I got a little lazy and didn't track any of my weather stats this weekend. Diving, cleaning fish and cooking start to take their toll on you and you get to the point where all you want to do is get some sleep instead of being responsible and entering your blog. Then again, I probably tell more people about our goings-on these weekends than actually read them here... Opening day of lobster season! What a madhouse!!! The really interesting part (and by interesting, I...
Preface : This is a particularly long blog that I wrote for reasons of personal recollection and has very little spearfishing content. What can I say? Ownership has it’s privileges. My first crossing to Bimini, Cat Cay to be specific, and what a day we pick to do it. After planning and weather watching for the past few weeks (quite the exercise in futility as it turns out), hoping for a smooth crossing, prayers were answered, unfortunately they must have been someone else’s prayers because I...
Seas: 4-7' (some 8') Winds: 15-25 SE Viz: 10-15 Temp: 86F I've always told people that even the bad weather is better in the keys. Well it would seem that Mother Nature is determined to test my resolve on my declaration this Summer. This has been without a doubt the Summer plagued with the worst weather and viz that I can recall. There have always been times of bad weather as is the case anywhere you go and anytime of the year, but this year the wind hasn't let up long enough to allow the viz...
Winds: 5-10 SSE Seas: 1-2 feet Surf Temp: +/- 82F Viz: 20-25 feet The first full weekend of diving for the summer finally arrived and I was raring to go. We still had a little setup to do, but not enough to keep us from catching high tide. Unfortunately, while we were ready, the tide was not. The full moon (or waning full moon) was still wreaking havoc with the tide and its duration. We arrived at what we thought was the right time for the high tide only to end up swimming for an extra hour...