to be exceptionally effective, so effective in fact that it brought in a special visitor that I never even saw until I was reviewing the video back at home! Stoked to check a fish off my bucket list with a beautiful 25lb African Pompano!
in this rare shallow water visitor of a Sailfish. The really interesting thing is that I didn't even see it until I was reviewing my video footage from the day!
you I didn't get in much sleep before the alarm went off at 4:30a thanks to all the nervous energy and mental checklist review that I was dealing with in my head. Day 1 (Thursday) We actually launch right on time the following morning and are navigating...
this mask. I immediately went back and purchased the Mystic which had been highly recommended by other divers as well as reviews in the spearfishing publication "Ultimate Spearfishing" in their comprehensive review of low volume masks (I don't recall...
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...
day of the course has classroom in the morning, a pool session in the early afternoon and a final classroom session to review the material and happenings from the day's teachings. The class room portion of the course was interesting and quickly paced...
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...
make your underwater video almost production quality. I made my choice but will keep this spearview to the GoPro Hero2 and review the case I purchased in another article soon. In the end, I can't say enough great things about this device and when you...
to break in my new camera and even more so the specialized underwater case from Oculus (both of which I will definitely review in SpearViews soon). I wasn't looking to go terribly far today since we got a late start and the expectation from the crew was...
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 read it and...
for quite a while hoping to see something worthy of taking a shot with my new Hawaiian sling from hawaiiansling.net (my review of this sling to be posted in the near future in SpearViews), but I was very worried about missing and having to chase my...
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...
one of his shafts with two (2) notches for use on my Riffe Euro 100. After using it for 3 weeks, I decided I would review the shaft to document my results. My first concern was the thickness of the shaft. However, although I typically use 6.5mm shafts,...
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...
Over the weekend of March 27th & 28th 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...
But after following the link and reading the article, I started to get upset. This so-called "video workshop" is to review the status of Pompano, African Pompano and Permit (possibly) and see if the bag and size limits for these fish should be modified...
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...
1 being a gag or black. The limits are a little different if you are fishing exclusively in Gulf waters, so I recommend you review the regs for yourself and get acquainted because there were other changes too. I guess if I get to go out for some late...
Type:
Article
Author:
Bob Diaz
Category:
SpearBlog 2010
Results 1 - 19 of 19
Gallery Spotlight
June 19-20, 2010 - The viz wasn't with us this weekend, and neither were the fish
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.
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!
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.
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!
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....
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....
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...
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.
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...
Winds: 15-25 East Seas: 2-4 Surf Temp: 82F Viz: 10-20 feet The weather just did not want to cooperate this weekend at all. Tropical Storm Arlene was wreaking havoc in the Gulf and we were feeling the peripheral effects in the keys as well. We dove in spite of the weather, but weren't able to take anywhere near our regular catch.
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...
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.
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...
Seas: 2-6 feet Winds: 15-25 E/SE Viz: 8 feet Temp: 84F This past weekend we were visited by what started as tropical depression three and ultimately grew into tropical storm Bonnie. Although the storm itself was ultimately ineffectual, the build up for it was of monumental proportions. As usual the weather forecasters declare doomsday in the Florida Keys during the week as their forecasts had the storm building to over 50mph and traversing right through the middle keys. By Friday morning, the...
Winds: 5-10 West Seas: 1-2 feet Surf Temp: 83 F Viz: 10-20 feet Another day of picture perfect weather that doesn't provide perfect conditions. It takes so much longer to clear up the after effects of some bad weather. We have only been able to dive with visibility in our shallower spots (15-20 ft). Luckily, we were able to shoot up some decent size mangoes in a shallow patch reef. After that, we got a little excited and thought that some of our deeper patch reefs might have cleared up....