down a little bit, so after taking care of one or two items around the campground, we head out to see if we can find some clean water. As we pass Hawk's Channel, the water starts to clean up nicely and we are very encouraged as we head out to hit some...
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 also purchased a new gun. I wasn't really in the market for one, but this one fell into my lap so to speak. We were at the cleaning station one afternoon when we start talking about guns with a couple of the other fishermen. One thing led to another...
July 7, 2009 - After a couple of days of putting off cleaning fish we finally ran into some good ones. Unfortunately, one of them was a bull shark. Check out the blog
July 7, 2009 - After a couple of days of putting off cleaning fish we finally ran into some good ones. Unfortunately, one of them was a bull shark. Check out the blog
to another year of phenomenal diving and spearfishing and wish the same for all my brethren. Here's to a year of calm seas, clean water and bountiful catches!
that may be with me. This kit has enough items in it to let me do anything from repair spearguns to make new slings to clean fish (after making sure they're of legal size) without depending on anyone else to supply anything at all. Luckily, Carlos' boat...
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, when I saw...
hanging around for a good part of the day. We ended up taking a chance and going out around 10a to see if the water was clean close by and if the current wasn't too bad (since high slack wasn't until 1p) so we could do a couple of drifts and try to pick...
week or two. As we headed out, we were very encouraged by the clarity of the water and how it appeared to be getting even cleaner as we headed further out from shore. By the time we got to our first spot, the water appeared crystalline and everyone was...
talking about what spots we might want to hit today. Once everybody was up, we geared up and headed out. We found very clean water on our way out, so we were very hopeful that we would at least be able to spot the fish assuming they were there. We hit...
We were a little surprised by the lack of boats that were out that morning but headed out anyway. The water didn't look too clean, but we figured if we looked around, we would be able to find some clean water somewhere. Unfortunately for us (but I guess...
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...
add a few fish to our catch for the weekend since we didn't get to go out Saturday afternoon. We headed out in search of clean water only to find that the storms from the previous day had stirred up the seas a little and finding some clean water was...
wind had actually switched back to a SSW direction. We had been hearing that the temporary switch to the E wind had already cleaned up the viz as far as Islamorada, but it apparently didn't last long enough to push the clean water down to Marathon. We...
the area. During the time I was looking for the mutton, I kept hearing my brother-in-law's gun go off and I assumed he was cleaning up with the hogs that I was seeing in the area but was passing up on in the hopes of finding this mutton. I ran into a...
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.
{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...
After trying and being disappointed by the Omer Zero Cubed mask last year, I picked up a couple of other masks ( Mares Star and Sporasub Mystic ) that fit fairly well and did not disappoint, but were not the perfect fit I've been looking for in a low volume freediving mask so I didn't feel overly compelled to write a spearview about them. In defense of these masks, they are both low volume masks that are relatively inexpensive so for the money they are great purchases. Of these two, the...
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....
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...
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....
Winds: 5-10 South Seas: 1-2 feet (maximum) Surf Temp: +/- 80F Viz: 25-40 feet Another beautiful weekend in paradise. The winds were mild and the temperatures hot! We dove some of our preferred patch reefs this weekend. We knew it was still a little early to catch those large mangroves we love so much, but we just couldn't resist. We only took a few, but they were choice! We even got a couple of nice mackerels. As long as you arrived before the tide line, the water was pretty clear... green,...
Wind Seas Viz Temp 15-25 ESE 4-5' 30-40' 81F Once again, the most anticipated weekend for Florida spearfisherman rolls around and this year I actually got to plan some time off and hit it for a few days in a row. I hadn't had many opportunities to dive this winter (with the windiest winter I can recall) and even on those few occasions I did get to go, it just didn't live up to expectations. I was so excited to finally get back in the water this year for a full weekend of diving and...
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: 5-8 feet Winds: 15-24E/SE Viz: 5-10 feet Temp: 83F Well, they say that every cloud has a silver lining, but they always forget to mention how big the cloud may be or how far you need to look to find that so-called lining. Usually, I will be the first to tell people that my worst day spearfishing is still a great day diving but unfortunately this weekend has stretched my belief to the limit.
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: 1-3' Winds: 10-15 ESE Viz: 45'+ Temp: 82F In spite of the lack of a blog for last week, it was actually a good hunting weekend as we found big mangroves on the patch reefs for the first time this Summer. In fact, I shot what was probably one of my biggest mangroves yet, weighing in that 6-7lb class. I didn't think it merited a blog though, since I got it on a make up shot because my brother in law had missed it and we wanted to make sure it didn't hightail it out of the staghorn before...