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...
after last week's results and obviously his enthusiasm went unrewarded. Unlike last week where we ended up regretting not cleaning our daily catch, we figured it was safe to assume that our bounty of 2 would not slow us down too much on Sunday...
mahi, dolphin|limit=1} All I can say is two things... "What a great day!" and "Damn, I wish we hadn't put off cleaning Saturday's catch...". It was a ton of work, but a ton of fun too and the exhaustion you feel is that satisfied exhaustion of having...
like women hoard pairs of shoes) I had some problems being the driver, navigator and spotter. The water was actually fairly clean (at least 30' viz) even though the winds were easily in the 15-20mph (WNW) range. It got a little choppy once we got out...
holiday toasts people have made over the past couple of weeks... Here's to the beginning of another year with calm seas, clean water, safe dives, straight aim, long breath and of course Big Fish!
must have been hundreds of them! Once we got back and refueled the boat, it was time to head out beyond the breakwater and clean our fish. Luckily I've done it once or twice before and was able to dispatch the cleaning duties relatively quickly, even...
6 for those that don't know). The forecast called for 1-2' seas all weekend so we were hoping for some smooth sailing and clean water. Since the craze is usually so out of hand in the keys, our plan was to be on the water before sunrise so we could be...
day frenzy. Come Saturday morning, we had a number of choices for activities to perform. There were boats to be worked on, clean water to search for and new territories to be explored. Luckily for me, we didn't tackle them in that order. We decided that...
close for the upcoming mini season, (where the viz ranged from 1-5 feet) we decided to venture out to see if we could find clean water beyond the reef line. As we cross Hawk's Channel, we are greeted by constant 5-6' seas but apparently my friend's...
the forecast called for and we of course hoped that it would settle down by morning to see if we could head out in search of clean water. As I awoke on Saturday and stepped outside however, it really didn't look like things were going our way. In spite...
boat. Saturday didn't hold any surprises either. We took off around 10a and headed to the reef line. We arrived to find semi clean water at the first couple of spots (#67 and #25). #25 is a spot that we found a couple of years ago with another dive...
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...
ice trips so many times before it becomes old hat. So even though we got a late start we head out to see if we can find some clean water. The seas didn't seem to be much more than 2-3' so we figured it was now or never. Our first stop, #58 (Ole...
the usual suspects so we can decide what we would do today. After a little discussion, we decided to head West to see if the clean water had continued to be pushed in that direction by the wind and tides. We hit some regular spots as well as doing some...
was another beautiful morning with 5 mph winds out of the East and dead calm seas. For the third weekend in a row, the water cleaned up beautifully as we passed Hawk's Channel and the blue water was in clear view. {phocagallery...
by noon, we would have enough time to check out some of our closer haunts during slack. As we headed offshore, the water cleaned up beautifully once again (just like last week) as we passed Hawk's Channel. Even at 30+ mph and in over 35' of water, the...
A short vid from our Summer 2019 Bahamas Pirate Trip of the quickest landing of a #50 black grouper I've ever had. Proof that it only takes one fish to make the spearinglife spearfishing trip! Thanks to the pirate crew for making every year an adventure!
A short vid from our Summer 2019 Bahamas Pirate Trip of the quickest landing of a #50 black grouper I've ever had. Proof that it only takes one fish to make the spearinglife spearfishing trip! Thanks to the pirate crew for making every year an adventure!
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...
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...
{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...
I finally bit the bullet and decided to sell my No-Ka-Oi. It had gotten next to no use in the time I had owned it and it seemed a shame to have it just sit there so I Ebay'd it. With the funds from that sale, I invested in a gun that is a little more multi-purpose (at least that is how I convinced myself to get it :). I was extremely torn among 3 choices. I was considering the Euro 120, 120x and 130. After a couple of weeks of deliberation and a lot of flip-flopping, I decided on the Euro 120....
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.
Winds: 10-15 SSW Seas: 2-3 feet Surf Temp: +/- 82F Viz: 20-25 feet First weekend back and it was both hard work and fun. It took us a little longer than usual to setup this weekend because we went back to our old campground this year and we are on somewhat smaller sites compared to last year. We did prevail however and got all setup with a little time left for a dive on Saturday. We headed out looking for clean water because we knew that we had missed the tide. Things didn't look too promising...
Seas: 0-2 feet Winds: 5-15 S/SW Viz: 45 feet Temp: 83 F This past weekend the forecast was once again looking abysmal. The campground dolphin fishing tournament was even postponed because the outlook was not very good at all. The forecast was calling for 2-4' seas inside the reef and 3-5' seas beyond the reef with 15-20 knot winds out of the S/SE (which usually means the seas will build even higher than the forecast) on Saturday with slightly calmer wind and seas on Sunday. The drive in on...
Winds: 5-10 variable Seas: 1-2 feet Surf Temp: +/- 80F Viz: 15-25 feet T his weekend the water was fairly clean in spite of the fact that we had a whole bunch of rain during the week. Too much fresh water usually clouds the viz and makes the water cool (it did do that). We missed high tide by about 1 1/2 hours on Saturday morning, but were able to swim right through to low tide by moving around so the current didn't affect us as much as it could in the wrong spots. We really racked up the...
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...
Sat 8/4 Winds: SE 10-15 Seas: 2-4 ft Surf Temp: 81 F Viz: 20-30 ft We headed out this morning after missing the early morning low tide to see if we could find some mangoes at the reef. At first sight, it didn't really seem to be too rough, but first impressions are sometimes wrong (really wrong). The water was choppy and extremely sloppy. We hadn't even made it into Hawk's channel and the water was already throwing 3-4 waves at us. We rough it and continue on. We got to our first spot to find...
Seas: 1-3 feet Winds: 5-15 ESE Temp: 80 F Viz: 40-50 feet offshore To say that I was looking forward to this weekend after the past few we have had would seem totally redundant. The last couple of weekends have been abysmal at best. But luckily for me, this weekend has let me make up for the past few (from a spearfishing perspective) and this blog will have me at my usual loquacious self with a little more verbal ammunition than I have had recently. Like last week, I want to talk about the...