30 minutes and while we did see a couple of fish worthy of landing, they were terribly skittish. "Maybe the water's too clean..." we thought, because these fish were taking off almost as soon as we could discern their outline in the distance. We...
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...
Type:
Article
Author:
Bob Diaz
Category:
SpearBlog 2011
Results 21 - 40 of 109
Gallery Spotlight
August 11, 2006 - A Beautiful day at Sombrero Reef.
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...
Back in March of 2010 I enrolled in and completed the FII Level One freediving course . I was extremely happy with the course content and the outcome (check out the SpearView ). Unfortunately for me, I'm not a professional freediver, so as with many people, life gets in the way and complicated which in turn keeps you from building a true regimen that reinforces all the good behavior learned in the course. Needless to say, I forgot some of the basics, fell back into many of my old bad habits...
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....
{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 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...
Seas: 3-8 feet Winds: 10-35 SSE Temp: ?? F Viz: ?? feet Thanks to the system that would become TD4 this weekend in the Gulf of Mexico, the weather turned to crap mid morning Saturday and got progressively worse throughout the day and into the night. We did get one break in the weather around 3:30p and headed out to see how badly the viz had gotten. Drifting with the tide and with minimal viz of only about 8 feet we were actually still able to shoot a few hogs and pick up 5 bugs too in about an...
Winds: 20-25 east (Sat)/5-10 east (Sun) Seas: 3-5 feet (Sat) / 1-2 feet (Sun) Surf Temp: 78F Viz: 10-15 feet (inshore) / 40+ feet (offshore) Unfortunately, this was another weekend without the advent of pictures of fish. The problem we run into is that the best day of the past few weekends has been Sunday and in efforts to take full advantage, we end up rushing to clean fish and just don't have time to stop and take pics. We didn't really slaughter them this weekend, but we did have some...
Sat 6/23 Winds: East 5-10 Seas: 1-2 ft Surf Temp: 82 F Viz: 20-25 ft Finally some weather worth diving for... The winds have laid down for about 4-5 days now and we are finally get back to business. The water is calm and a wonderful temperature too. We didn't catch a whole lot, but at least we got back in the water. Just the usual suspects today, black grouper and mangrove snapper. Still, it felt good to get back in the water after the last few weeks.
Winds: SE 5 Seas: 1-2 ft Surf Temp: 84 F Viz: 40+ ft This weekend was absolutely incredible for diving! As we headed out Saturday morning, we were running over areas that we can never recall being as clear as they were this day. There were times when the water actually seemed to sparkle. Driving down Friday night, I noticed the horizon was dotted with the anchor lights of dozens of night fisherman. The general area and proximity led me to believe that they were all bottom fishing for mangroves...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 NE Temp: 77 F Viz: 50-60 feet I had been watching the forecast for the past week to see if today would be the day that I get to jump back in the water for the first time since Labor Day. Last week, it was blowing a solid 30mph all over South Florida so I was a little concerned. I was hoping it would die down early and long enough to let the water clean up and get a shot at some dive time. After watching the forecast winds decrease every day over the past 3-4 days,...
Wind Seas Viz Temp 5-10 WSW 1-2' 15' 88F This past weekend the weather was still beautiful (beautifully HOT) as it has been for weeks now with mild winds and calm seas. But this week we were met with green, dirty water in almost every direction. In looking back at the weather, one thing had changed over the prior week that seems to support a theory I've been fostering for a while now about when and where we're able to find clean water depending on wind direction (hence the "cardinal"), the...
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