tail... It was a nice mutton. I immediatley pursue the fish and thanks to it's own curiosity and the long reach of my 9' Riffe pole spear, it wasn't long before I was tossing him over the side of the boat. I was feeling pretty good, two fish spotted and...
my partners let me know that had I landed a shot on that behemoth that probably would have been the last I saw of my Riffe pole spear, in essence making it a $400 learning experience. Very soon after Jorge bags the first fish of trip in the way of a...
fish is exactly where I said it was and asked if I was ready to take the shot, my first shot on a Bahamas grouper with my Riffe carbon fiber pole spear. I think it took longer for me to calm down at that point than it did to rest up after chasing the...
my own. I was considering doing this because I had recently had a set of blades replaced as well as purchased a new set of Riffe fiberglass composites and wanted to do something to keep them all from getting marred and scratched when doing the bottom...
ready, my brother in law says there's a nice black margate sitting in one rock. So I make my inaugural dive with my new Riffe/Cameron Kirkconnell pole spear that I gifted myself for my birthday some 5 months ago. This thing is a beast. When I shot the...
head clears the water... "You SOB, you shot her in the gut?!?!?" (I may be paraphrasing). We call for the rock gun (a short Riffe C-1 that can be used in very close quarters) and discuss our strategy to get this fish in the boat. We decide that a solid...
Seas: 3-5' Winds: 15-25 SE Viz: 10-15 Temp: 86F This week I was hoping for something a little extra. At the start of this weekend I hadn't shot a grouper yet all summer and I was hoping I would get the first one in spite of the fact that the weather...
particular gun was a departure for me in more ways than one. I had always (and almost singularly) owned Competitor series Riffe spearguns up to that point (with a No-Ka-Oi thrown in for good measure) and I had never even considered a reel as necessary...
spearfishing community because everyone that helped out did it solely for the love of the sport. After reaching out to Julie Riffe through a friend at Austin's Dive Center here in Miami, she responded with a contact in San Diego that could help me. She...
what he was chasing. All of a sudden he turns to his right and I hear and see his shot. My next sight is that of his 120cm Riffe Euro swimming away without him! I try to give chase, but was just simply out of air and viz and couldn't keep up. As we...
These shafts come standard in 6.75mm with tricut point and Hawaiian floppers in one (1) and two (2) notch varieties. Using a Riffe Euro myself, I expressed my concern over the usual occurance of sliced dyneema wishbones with notched spearshafts as...
so the 4th could get a chance in the water before the fish got scarce (I also knew he was anxious because he had a new Riffe MetalTech he wanted to break in). So I shot my 5 and jumped back in the boat giving him a chance to get his before we moved on....
Spearfishing. In addition to the expo that lets you check out the latest products from manufacturers like Spetton, Omer, Riffe, DiveR and just about any other one you can think of, there are a lot of local resellers and manufacturers of other items that...
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...
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...
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...
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.
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 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....
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...
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.
UPDATE: An article related to my story below was published in the April 2007 issue of Florida Sportsman. I post it here for the sake of any nay-sayers or persons who may be thinking that some of my descriptions or even the existence of Big Mo may be exaggerated or even fictitious. I invite you to read my story below and then enjoy the article as well. This story is true, and while actually pertaining more closely to my brother-in-law, is one that I was in the water for and probably closer to...
Winds: 10-12 South Seas: 2-4 feet Surf Temp: 83 F Viz: 10-15 feet Today started out a little slow, but we were rewarded for our continued effortrs by bagging some of our favorite and recently absent quarry, Black Grouper. Not just a Black, but a big Black , at least for this area (34 inches). We haven't bagged a specimen like this for more than a few years (actually, since 2001 ). We actually bagged more grouper today than we have for the past couple of weeks. The big one from above, another...
Seas: 2-3 feet Winds: 10-15 W/SW Viz: 5-35 feet Temp: 86 F Well, it's the end of yet another Summer of diving and spearfishing. I would say that this one definitely seemed to have come and gone a lot faster than other years in the past. Even though it started out pretty strong this Summer (even without the presence of large groupers), it really seemed to lighten up around mid-July when the water just wouldn't warm up like it usually does and with the added inconvenience of the swarms of...
Winds: 5-15 West Seas: 2-4 Surf Temp: 81F Viz: 20-35 feet This weekend the winds finally laid down although not as much as the fishing report promise. The seas were still a little rough, but the viz finally opened up so we could chase some fish. The water was a little cold in depths over 25 feet, but very tolerable. Especially in light of the viz we were getting. The mangoes still haven't started to spawn offshore in droves, but they are starting to do so in smaller numbers. We were able to...
Winds: 5-10 SSE Seas: 1-2 feet Surf Temp: +/- 73F Viz: 15-30 feet Finally, we get to start out a new year of diving and spearfishing! We had been waiting for a few days of calm winds for the water to clean up. We had been putting up with 20-25 mph winds and dirty water for almost 2 weeks until last week.
Seas: 1-4 feet Winds: 10-15 S/SE Viz: 25-30 feet Temp: 84 F After last weekend and the good luck we had with finding the large mangroves, we decided early on that this weekend we would focus on doing more of the same as we talked during the week. We also knew that we only had Saturday to fish since Sunday was Father's Day and even us dads have dads, so we knew most everyone needed to depart early Sunday to spend time wth family. With only one day to dive, I was hoping to arrive early on Friday...