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...
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Article
Author:
Bob Diaz
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SpearViews
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Gallery Spotlight
July 4-12, 2014 - Wonderful holiday weather and greedy Goliaths
March 4, 2023 - Key Largo African Pompano - Sailfish visitor
A video from a dive last week in Key Largo where my throw flasher proved 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!
March 4, 2023 - Key Largo African Pompano - Sailfish visitor
A video from a dive last week in Key Largo where my throw flasher proved 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!
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!
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....
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...
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...
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.
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....
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 SSE Seas: 1-2 feet Surf Temp: +/- 82F Viz: 20-25 feet The first full weekend of diving for the summer finally arrived and I was raring to go. We still had a little setup to do, but not enough to keep us from catching high tide. Unfortunately, while we were ready, the tide was not. The full moon (or waning full moon) was still wreaking havoc with the tide and its duration. We arrived at what we thought was the right time for the high tide only to end up swimming for an extra hour...
Seas: Sat - 1-2' Winds: Sat - 5-10 SW Viz: Sat - 15-20' Temp: Sat - 84 F I can't say I wasn't a little worried since the week before I finally get away for some time off after months of dealing with work responsibilities and a host of other distractions was more than a little frought with high winds and rain that pretty much kept most of South Florida under constant siege from foul weather. I had been looking forward to this week with so much anticipation. The Summer up to now has pretty much...
Seas: 2-5 feet Winds: 15-25 E-NE Viz: 40-50 feet Temp: 78 F Thank you for tuning in for another episode of "As the gripe turns..." I would think this episode needs to start on Tuesday as the winds started to die down and on through Wednesday and Thursday where some rain did roll through and finally Friday where the day saw picture perfect weather with 5-10 knot winds out of the East and 1 foot of chop inside the reef and get this... No small craft advisory for probably only the second or third...
Seas: 3-4' Winds: 10-20 ESE Viz: 30-40' Temp: 78F It's been a crappy year on many counts. Truth is, before the holidays I thought (or rather, I hoped) that the year of crappy weather, fishing, diving and the breakin/robbery at my house (along with numerous other stupid things going wrong along the way) was the worst of it. Unfortunately I don't think I could have imagined earlier this year how bad things could actually turn, but the unexpected and sudden death of my father in early December...
Winds: 8-10 South Seas: 2-3 feet Surf Temp: 82-83 F Viz: 20-35 feet (variable with the tideline) This weekend started out pretty nice. The weather was agreeable on Saturday to the tune of mild winds and very tolerable seas. On Saturday, we were able to head out to some of our offshore patch reefs and shoot up the mangoes with enthusiasm. We hit a couple of our favorite patch reefs and shot about 24 of the beautiful snappers, all in a very respectable size range. However, just as the dive was...
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...