tree that were blown into the boat that night. You may not be like me, but if you are the work that goes into keeping a boat clean is considerable and jumping on my boat to find this was upsetting, so I proceeded to spend the next hour trying to...
way out on Saturday. Maybe I should be more negative more often... Saturday finds us heading East in search of mangroves and clean water. We get to one of our spots and at first the water looks deceptively clean from the boat as we peer into it. We see...
for the remainder of the day. After spending much of the morning watching everyone else give up and either take out and clean their boats or depart completely, I finally get the whole family up and going and start heading out around 12:30. With the tide...
of some advice given us by our offshore fishing friends that had actually gone out earlier. We were told that we could find clean water out at the reef with reports of 30+ feet of viz from the boat as they passed the reef on the way out and back from...
(a decision whose forward-thinking we would all have a much greater appreciation later in the day). We head out in search of clean water and no other particular destination in mind. As we head out we decide to check out Hawk Channel which follows the...
hadn't toggled through-and-through. It was starting to get near dusk so we headed home because we had a crapload of fish to clean and we hadn't even planned dinner yet. While cleaning fish well into the evening, I got a call from work that turns out to...
much dirtier than the low tide (actually a lot dirtier). We haven't been able to figure out why the low tide has been so clean lately since the outgoing tide from the Gulf usually brings out all the murky brackish water of the back country and the...
a little later. Starting Saturday, things actually didn't look that bad as we headed out in the afternoon and found somewhat clean water out to the East. We were actually able to dive water as deep as 50+ feet. We were able to dive some spots I hadn't...
quick count told me there were at least 5 or 6 of these invasive nuisances on this spot so I decided to take the time out to clean house to see if some of our more regular residents would come back home after evicting these unwelcomed guests. So down I...
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 to clean up substantially at all. The problem we face is that even if the water happens to clean up, we have to endure 4-6' seas in...
of doom, but being my usual determined (stubborn) self, I kept on keeping on regardless. After getting the truck unstuck and cleaning it off, we decided to get underway. The seas looked horrible, but we figured we would make at least one attempt to get...
really hasn't been my summer where grouper are concerned. In the afternoon, we headed out to the patch reefs in search of clean water. We first head out just West of the lighthouse to see if we can better our chances of finding this that has eluded us...
range which made for some building seas. Some old friends showed up for the day so we loaded up and headed out to look for clean water and see if we couldn't feed them some keys fresh fish later that day. We headed out full of vim and vigor and hopeful...
way back then. But things only seemed to get more complicated and weekend after weekend went by with nary a fish on the cleaning table. By that time I'm thinking "No problem", I'll surely get to go shooting once grouper opens on the first of May (Double...
and went and almost everybody packed up and went home on Sunday, much to our delight. We were hopeful that the water would clean up and the winds would lay down so we could make up for lost time while everybody else was gone this week. We were able to...
is now only 1 Black/Gag per person (and we weren't targeting Red Grouper in this depth) and a few Snapper but the water was clean and we figured this was our last stop on this whirlwind tour before heading home so we were really just hoping to fill the...
of the water beyond the South end of Cat Cay. The water I dove here was anywhere from 10 to 30 feet deep and a little less clean due to the constant wave action against the nearby rocks. There I saw a legal Black Grouper as well as a Mutton snapper that...
the side of the boat that are bigger than those they were catching on hook-n-line :). So we keep heading West chasing fish, clean water and open spaces with limited success. We hit a couple of spots with big numbers of snappers, but not very many were...
the winds 10-20 from SSE. The water clarity seemed pretty good as we came out of Hawk's Channel, what we typically call a "Clean Green". Even in 25-30' we could see the bottom but we couldn't see the thermocline that was lying in the bottom 4-5' of...
made the blunder in our favor.. advantage Team Breathtaking! As we head out deciding which cardinal to take in search of clean water because it's so late, we notice the radio is all a-chatter with tons of johnny-come-lately fisherman (a group we are...
Type:
Article
Author:
Bob Diaz
Category:
SpearBlog 2011
Results 21 - 40 of 107
Gallery Spotlight
June 22-23, 2013 - A grouper of my very own (actually, two)
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.
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....
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...
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...
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 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.
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.
The What'sApp chat group for this year's "Guy's Fishing Trip" actually started out as a discussion for a possible trip to Bimini in Dec of 2015 before the end of the year. I was stoked. Last year's Bimini Christmas was a blast and I couldn't wait to get back. Unfortunately, weather and responsibilities kept us from successfully making the trip. Gladly though, chatter started up again in February about this year's second annual Summer trip (which is now considered a tradition - at least by me)....
Seas: 4-6 feet Winds: 15-20 SSW Temp: 85 F Viz: 25-50 feet After a week of East winds (and the wind was still blowing), the clean water finally got pushed far enough West so we could try to hit some of our spots in that general direction. We headed out with 5 divers that morning hoping to find that clean water we had heard about from other fishermen and we weren't disappointed. The clarity was absolutely amazing in many of our spots from 25-35 feet deep. Unfortunately, the numbers of fish...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 10-15 E/SE Viz: 15-25feet Temp: 82F On Friday once again, the winds and seas were cooperative and allowed us to get out for some more long awaited dive time. We stayed out west on Friday because we thought we had our best chances for clean water. We don't exactly get an early start as has been our habit this past week. We get underway around 10a and head southwest. We stop off at #67 to find that the water still hasn't cleaned up this close to home yet. In addition to...
Seas: 2-3 feet Winds: 5-10 SW Temp: 82 F Viz: 10-15 feet This was a real good news/bad news weekend which sort of makes it a fitting sequel to last weekend. Fact is, the viz was even worse this weekend and it got worse from Saturday to Sunday as well. We headed out Saturday for a late morning patch reef dive so we could kill time until the 4:30p high slack tide, hoping it would be clean. We headed to a spot that had been productive recently in about 30 feet of water. Upon getting there we...
Winds: 5-15 South Seas: 3-4 feet Surf Temp: 84 F Viz: 20-35 feet This weekend we finally started to find some cleaner water without having to go too far offshore. For the past few weeks, the real clean water was unfortunately a little deeper than we are accustomed to diving. But over the past week, it seems as though the blue water has moved in a little closer to shore and started to give us a break on viz. We were actually able to spot and follow most of our prey without having to commit to...
Seas: 1-3' Winds: 5-15 SSE Viz: 15-20' Temp: 86F So this was supposed to be the weekend I get back to spearfishing after lobster season started last Monday. Since we had gotten bad viz reports from some friends that had spent the last week down in the keys and it's the last weekend before the kids' first day of school (meaning Sunday is a very short day), we figured time was short and we wouldn't waste it for wanting. After a quick decision to stay close in search of some hogfish, mangroves...
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